David's Natural Market's owner is talking with the Wilde Lake Village landlord about expanding into space vacated by the Giant more than a year and a half ago.
"We have become the de facto anchor," said Courtney Carpenter, David's nutritionist and a spokeswoman for the store. "We're staying in Wilde Lake. We're going to be a very significant part of their plan."
Kimco Realty Corp., the owners of the village center, did not return a call for comment.
Since September 2006, when Giant left the shopping center, where it occupied about 25,000 square feet, David's has seen customers come in seeking more traditional items such as milk and toilet paper. They even come in looking for aspirin, which the store only recently began to stock, Carpenter said.
"We're trying to be responsive," Carpenter said. "But, we can't be all things to all people and still be loyal to our customers. We don't want to turn it into a traditional grocery store. We'd want to focus on the model that has traditionally worked well for larger natural food stores."
Although the 11,000- square-foot store carries meats, its prepared foods are traditionally vegetarian, Carpenter noted.
The news of David's interest in expanding within Wilde Lake was openly discussed during a news conference yesterday in which County Executive Ken Ulman announced proposed legislation to make county zoning regulations more flexible for Columbia's village centers.
"I think that would be great," Ulman told the audience in response to a comment about the grass-roots movement for the "green" market to expand into the former Giant's space.
Proposed legislation regarding zoning in the villages, which would go before the Planning Board and the County Council, is in the draft stage and will be finalized in the next 60 days, Ulman said.
"Despite the overall success of the experiment, Columbia's village centers -- particularly our older village centers -- are caught in the changing tides of the retail marketplace and the shifting preferences of the consumers they serve," Ulman said. "We must revitalize and re-invent our struggling village centers. We will not dictate what a village center should be, and we recognize that each village center must have the flexibility to evolve with an individualized plan developed in conjunction with its community."
Anyone interested in making suggestions can submit them to villagecenters@howardcounty md.gov.
