Grocery

An Ellicott City resident and union leader has appealed a Howard County Planning Board decision that permitted Wegmans to build a grocery store on an industrially zoned site in east Columbia, saying the board violated zoning law. In filing the appeal Wednesday, Buddy Mays said he was motivated by a concern for increased traffic and a loss of high-paying jobs that would accompany the construction of the proposed 160,000-square- foot supermarket. "What happens with these size stores, they draw from as much as a 25-mile radius.

Baltimore-area supermarkets are bracing for new competition and could face pressure to lower prices after Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said this week it would open three grocery stores in the region. The addition of so many stores at once means area shoppers could see some grocery costs fall across the region, retail consultants said, as existing supermarkets adapt to the world's largest retailer and its low-pricing power. The mammoth stores -- called supercenters -- essentially combine supermarkets with traditional Wal-Marts in buildings that are two to three times the size of normal grocers.

The fresh trout, $6.99 a pound, lay glistening on ice in a case at the Reisterstown Road Giant Food in Owings Mills earlier this week. There also was tilapia and cod and shrimp nestled in the frosty chips. But during the next few months, the familiar case of seafood dinner choices at this store and more than 50 Giant outlets in the region will be removed. In their place will be refrigerators and freezers filled with pre-packaged fish as the grocery chain moves to a self-service system in a little over a quarter of its 190 stores in the region.

WHEN SAFEWAY opened in Westminster in July, hundreds of hopeful people filled out entry forms for free flowers and television sets, but what captured most of the attention was the grand prize: $100 for groceries each week, for one year.I joined the dreamers by filling out a few (million) forms, and posted a note on my bulletin board: "Safeway winner/Great Feature Idea." In August I started stopping by the manager's office to express my interest in writing a story about the winner.Weeks passed.

Hechinger Co.'s announcement that it will close its remaining stores begs a basic question: who's going to occupy all that space left behind by one of the Baltimore area's oldest and most entrenched retail chains?It's a question that is likely to intrigue the commercial real estate community for some time to come.Susan B. Anderson, vice president of H & R Retail Inc. in Timonium, called the liquidation and dispersion of the Hechinger properties "a big deal."She said the sheer diversity of the chain's holdings makes it impossible to generalize about what will become of the properties.

A grocery store employee was shot and killed and the shop's owner seriously wounded during a robbery yesterday as the store opened, Baltimore police said.Witnesses told police they saw two people walk into Kim's Grocery in the 300 block of E. 24th St. about 9 a.m. The robbers shot the grocer and employee several times before fleeing with an undisclosed amount of money, said Sgt. Scott Rowe, a police spokesman.En Suk Oh, 40, who lived above the store, was taken to Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where she was pronounced dead at 10 a.m. Young Lee, 55, of the same address, was also taken to Shock Trauma, where he was in fair condition last night, Rowe said.

Crestar Bank said yesterday that it plans to open 75 branches inside Safeway Inc. grocery stores in Baltimore and Washington beginning next year.In addition, the bank will install automated teller machines in 123 Safeway stores that operate in Maryland, Virginia and Washington by 2002.Ten ATMs will be placed in stores in greater Baltimore, said J. Scott Wilfong, president of Crestar's Maryland region. "It is a significant investment. It is a real opportunity for us to continue to expand our franchise here," Wilfong said.

Safeway, a grocery chain that closed its doors in Westminster 11 years ago, returns to the community today with the opening of a store on the booming west side, where the residents are many but the stores have been few.The site at the new $8 million College Square shopping center on Route 140, near Western Maryland College, is the national grocer's third store in the county. The others are in Eldersburg and Mount Airy. In Westminster, Safeway will compete against seven other supermarkets.

A southern Anne Arundel County citizens group is lobbying county planners to bar Safeway from building a strip center in Deale, saying the project would destroy valuable wetlands and create acidic water runoffs that could contaminate the community's waterways.South Arundel Citizens for Responsible Development (SACReD) says the wetlands on the 16-acre site, at routes 256 and 258, have tripled in size since the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Baltimore division inspected the site and authorized Safeway's permit to clear the area in 1987.

In the southern Anne Arundel County "store wars," the field of possible supermarket sites has been narrowed from three to two.Food Lion Inc., which had considered two neighboring parcels in the region, apparently has pulled out of one site and is concentrating its development efforts on the other, the site of Smith's Building Supply in Churchton.Safeway, which would occupy a 55,000-square-foot store in a large strip mall, is still navigating county zoning rules and state environmental codes in an effort to build at another site in nearby Deale.

There was a time when a grocery store was simply a place that sold bread, milk, meat and a few necessities. Nowadays, in addition to 36 different kinds of olives, a grocery store offers an ethic. I guess that could be said of Wegmans, Eddie's, Graul's, Fresh Market and other area high-end groceries. But I thought of this after touring the new Whole Foods store in Annapolis, set to open this week. Rising out of what was once the tired old shopping center of Parole, now reborn as the Annapolis Towne Centre, this Whole Foods store is big. Covering 50,000 square feet, it is the largest Whole Foods store in the state.

With so many major issues confronting our country, it may seem silly to care about such a small issue - but as a farm girl, I understand the potential a seed has. My concern is simple, it's local, and it affects people in their neighborhoods: It is the disappearance of checkout clerks in grocery stores and box stores. I have refused to use "self-checkout" at stores since it first appeared. First, I do not wish to train to be a cashier (clearly it's a job without much of a future). Second, I am not offered a discount to do so. And most important, by using self-checkout, I effectively would cut the hours of work available to people in my community.

Someday, some unlucky family member is going to have to drive me to the emergency room, where my rapid-onset stomach pains and vicious headache will cause medical professionals to perform many tests to no avail. Appendicitis? Meningitis? Encephalitis? Writhing, delirious with fever, I will manage nonetheless to mutter an incongruous phrase that will prove instrumental in the diagnosis of my condition. Maybe it will be: "Harry and David currant jelly." But it could just as well be: "pickled beets," "minced clams" or "cranberry muffin mix."

Both sides in the heated debate over the size of a grocery store in Turf Valley can agree on one thing these days: The battle looks to be on hold until another, more far-reaching question gets answered. And coming to a resolution on that issue - what constitutes a legal signature on a referendum petition in Howard County - is generating a discussion among public officials that has expanded to include consideration of voter rights. "The biggest problem associated with all of this is that it is not just a Howard County issue, it is a statewide issue," said Del. Guy Guzzone, a Democrat who presided over a meeting with members of the county's State House delegation Wednesday.

Grocery stores are key While the Department of Planning and Zoning deliberates ZRA 102, which deals with future development in Columbia's village centers, I want you to know of my firsthand observations of the importance of a grocery store in each village center. As you may know, several of the Columbia Housing Corp.'s affordable-housing properties are located in the Village of Wilde Lake. During the more than two years since the Wilde Lake Giant closed, I have observed severe hardship on the part of our low-income families due to the lack of a nearby grocery store.

Two people were killed early yesterday in a fire at an East Baltimore corner grocery store. Firefighters responded to the report of a fire in the 2400 block of Jefferson St. at 12:30 a.m., said Chief Kevin Cartwright, a Fire Department spokesman. They found heavy fire and smoke at the two-story brick store, which has an apartment above it. When they searched the building, they found a man and woman who were unconscious and not breathing in the front room on the second floor, Cartwright said.

The divide over a developer's desire to alter plans for a retail district in upscale Turf Valley came into sharp focus during an often vehement debate over the proposal. More than 120 people packed a County Council meeting room Monday for a hearing on a proposed zoning change that would allow a larger grocery store in the planned community just west of Ellicott City. The proposal would raise the permissible size of food stores in "planned golf course communities" such as Turf Valley from 18,000 to 55,000 square feet.

I drove out to the future of grocery stores yesterday, but when I stopped for gas, I ended up on a detour to the past. There wasn't anywhere on the gas pump to stick my credit card, so I just started filling up, marveling that there was still a place where they trusted you to pay after rather than before. But then - cue the Twilight Zone music - a ghost appeared. Well, not a real ghost, but what seems like one these days: an actual human asking if he could help me. Turns out I had driven into what must be one of the last full-service stations around here.

For more than a decade, Henrietta Peters has made the 32-mile trek from her Harford County home to Red Lion, Pa., to buy groceries. The reason: low prices. On a recent trip, for example, she paid $5.99 for eight bars of brand-name soap, $1.59 for a 17-ounce box of shredded wheat and $7.50 for a frozen, ready-to-eat roasted turkey. "The savings far outweigh the costs of the extra gas to come up here," said Peters, 75. Calculating that the savings on skyrocketing food prices would outweigh the higher gasoline costs, many Marylanders are taking a similar path across the Pennsylvania line to surplus grocery stores.

New grocery store Redner's Warehouse Market opened its third Maryland store last week at 2126 N. Fountain Green Road in the Hickory Village Shopping Center, Bel Air. The grocery store offers an in-store bakery, deli, produce, meat, seafood, frozen foods, health and beauty aids, a pharmacy and nonfood products. Development chief The Humane Society of Harford County has hired Mary Leavens as its first director of development. Her responsibilities will include building and keeping existing long-term relationships, and making new contacts with community and corporate partners.