Supermarket planned for Howard Park if mayor OKs land sale

Baltimore's Howard Park neighborhood could get a full-service Klein's ShopRite supermarket by late 2012 if Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake accepts a recommendation to sell city-owned land for the project.

The Baltimore Development Corporation's directors voted in closed session Thursday to recommend that the city approve a land sale agreement with a Maryland group that wants to build the supermarket. The land is on Liberty Heights Avenue near Gwynn Oak Avenue. The development team selected after responding to a city-issued request for proposals is headed by Leonard Weinberg II of Vanguard Equities and businessman Roland Campbell.

According to the BDC's president, M.J. "Jay" Brodie, the project is consistent with an initiative to bring full-service grocery stores to city neighborhoods that need them. If the mayor concurs with the recommendation to sell land for the Klein's ShopRite project, Brodie said, construction could begin by the end of this year and be complete in about nine months.