Grocery Store

I strongly resent the comments made by Del. Donald H. Dwyer in regard to his arrest for operating a boat while intoxicated ("Dwyer gets 30 days in jail in boating incident," May 15). He sounds like the 5-year-old who gets caught taking a candy bar from a grocery store and uses the excuse that "everybody does it. " He recently made the statement that he made a mistake and that "who out there hasn't made a mistake and who out there hasn't been drinking on a boat out on the bay. " As a boater of many years, I can tell him - not me. As my mother would have said to me, "Just because everybody else jumps off the roof, would you?"

Much of the draw of a small, neighborhood grocery store is the neighborliness it fosters. In the Roland Park area we've had several over time. Graul's once sat where Eddie's on Roland Avenue is today. Graul's was also farther down Roland in the space where Roland Park Wine & Liquor is. Victor's sat at the center of the Roland Park Shopping Center, and the A&P at the corner of Roland and Colorado Avenues. Today Eddie's on Roland Avenue is the only small grocery store in the Roland Park area.

So that's it, then. No more Superfresh. The grocery store at 1020 W. 41st St. closed its doors July 6 and is awaiting a revamp and takeover by its new owner, Mrs. Greene's Natural Grocery.. The grocery store at 1020 W. 41st St. closed its doors July 6 and is awaiting a revamp and takeover by its new owner, Mrs. Greene's Natural Grocery. Depending on whom you talk to, this is either a welcome change or a very upsetting disruption. I've been unable to get a comment from the new owners about when they'll be opening, what kind of grocery store it will be, and whether the Superfresh employees will be rehired, among other questions.

A community grocery store that has been passed down through four generations of one New Windsor family will close its doors Dec. 31."Sales are down, that's the main thing. I just can't keep on not making any money," said Neal C. Roop, owner of Roop's Grocery, at 142 Church St. He said he started thinking about closing when sales slacked off during the summer, but made the final decision last weekend, weighing the needs of loyal customers and the possible impact on the community against the decline in income.

An Arbutus businessman is seeking a $250,000 loan from the state to open a grocery store in a shopping center on Maiden Choice Lane, seen as key to Arbutus' revitalization efforts.Paul Nalley, who owns Nalley's Great Value grocery stores in Dundalk and Lansdowne, wants to open a third store in a vacant space in Arbutus Plaza. Nalley has applied for a state loan.Before Nalley can go ahead with his project -- which he estimates will create up to 100 jobs -- he needs a resolution of support from the Baltimore County Council.

A local grocery chain and a Philadelphia-based nonprofit have opened a ShopRite in Parkville and are employing hundreds of local residents who had been jobless, the grocery store's owner said. "The community has been very positive about the store and about revitalizing an area of Baltimore County that has been underserved," Marshall Klein, chief operating officer of Klein's ShopRite of Maryland, said by phone Tuesday. The 56,000-square-foot ShopRite of Perring Crossing, in the 2400 block of Cleanleigh Drive in Parkville, opened Friday.

From the time she pulls into the specially marked parents' parking space outside the Super Fresh market in Towson Place to the moment she loads groceries and children for the trip home, Margaret Schlossberg has a plan for that often-dreaded adventure of parenthood: the supermarket run with kids in tow. She comes in the morning, when her kindergartner is at school and the 18-month-old twins are fed and rested. She brings a sturdy backpack to tote either Grace or Charlie -- they must alternate each trip, so each gets a turn being "up high" -- while the other twin rides in the shopping cart.

"Would I lie?" This was the petitioner's answer when I asked questions about the petition she was anxious for me to sign. A brief sentence on the petition did state that any Baltimore County resident could sign even though the referendum would only affect land use decisions in two Baltimore county districts. Although this is true, when I asked if the purpose was to prevent land currently zoned for less dense growth from changing to higher density, she answered, "Yes," followed by, "Would I lie?"

Safeway Inc. has signed a letter of intent with the Rouse Co. to open a 55,000-square-foot grocery store at Columbia's aging Harper's Choice Village Center and to nearly double the size of its store in the Long Reach Village Center.The new and expanded stores could open by late 1997.The plans -- announced at Rouse's annual shareholders meeting in Columbia yesterday -- came as welcome news to both communities, particularly at the Harper's Choice center, which in December lost Valu Food, its previous supermarket anchor.

Mars Supermarkets has set May 5 as a target date for opening its first store in Harford County, says the chain's president, Angelo D'Anna.The grocery store -- to be Mars' largest, at 42,000 square feet -- will be the anchor store in Aberdeen Marketplace, a shopping center under construction on state Route 22 at Beard's Hill Road.Mars, which bought the plaza last year after Bel Air developer Steven R. Hankins filed for bankruptcy, is altering the facade of the complex as well as completing the interior of the grocery store.