Supermarket

If you haven't noticed rising prices at the supermarket lately, you haven't been paying close attention to your spending. Food prices are soaring. Over the past year, prices for some basic grocery staples are rising faster than at any time over the past decade, according to July figures of the Consumer Price Index. Across America, frozen orange juice prices are up 31 percent over a year earlier; eggs and whole wheat bread up 24 percent; milk up 21 percent; sticks of margarine up 17 percent; coffee and chicken breasts up 12 percent; ground chuck up 11 percent; and soft-drink colas up 10 percent.

Wegmans has won Planning Board approval that puts it one step closer to building a 160,000-square-foot upscale supermarket in East Columbia. The Planning Board voted unanimously Thursday night to approve a zoning amendment that would allow a large grocer to build on an industrially zoned property near Snowden River Parkway and McGaw Road. However, an official from the Mid-Atlantic Retail Food Industry Joint Labor Management Fund said his group might appeal the ruling. Wegmans, which plans to employ 650 at the proposed Columbia store, is a nonunion employer.

Mondawmin Mall, a West Baltimore landmark and the city's oldest shopping mall, will be spruced up and expanded with a large new supermarket and a warehouse-size specialty chain, mall representatives said yesterday.The mall's owner, Rouse Co., will build a 58,000-square-foot grocery store on the southern edge of the center and, in a second phase of development, construct a 132,000-square-foot store at the northwest corner, said Brian K. Gardiner, vice president and general manager for Mondawmin.

THE FERVOR against development has become so surreal that some people in northern Anne Arundel County embrace the dumping of dredge spoil on a nearby "brownfields" site just so long as a professional auto racetrack doesn't get built there. Meanwhile, groups in southern Anne Arundel are fighting plans by three supermarket chains on the premise that they'd rather drive 20 miles for a sack of groceries than see new businessg that might foster more growth. Vocal residents in Shady Side and Deale are treating proposals by Safeway, Food Lion and Shoppers Food Warehouse as if they were designs for toxic waste dumps.

IT'S NOT THAT Bob Santoni is an impatient man, you understand. It's just that at the tender age of 55, he has little patience for certain things. The Republican businessman -- who's running for a City Council seat in the 1st District -- says Baltimoreans aren't getting their money's worth from the $7,400 the school system spends per student."

Royal Ahold NV, the Dutch food retailer that acquired Giant Food Inc. in October, said yesterday that it plans to buy Pathmark Stores Inc. of New Jersey for $1.75 billion in cash and assumed debt as it strives to boost its growing share of the U.S. grocery market.Ahold, the nation's fourth-largest supermarket company, said it plans to pay $250 million and assume the company's debt of about $1.5 billion. Pathmark's 132 stores are mainly in metropolitan New York.Ahold said it will acquire all outstanding stock of SMG-II Holdings Corp, which controls Pathmark through its subsidiary, Supermarket General Holdings Corp.

A 26-year-old Glen Burnie woman was the victim of a carjacking early yesterday in the parking lot of the 24-hour Giant supermarket at 7940 Crain Highway South in Glen Burnie.Jennifer Wolfe, 26, was waiting for her boyfriend before 3 a.m. when she was approached by a man and a woman asking her for directions, Anne Arundel County police said.Sgt. Joe Jordan said the pair opened her car door and the man put a gun to Wolfe's head, forcing her to drive them to the Brooklyn Homes area off of 10th Street near Jack and Stoll streets.

MEXICO CITY -- Ever since the supermarket was built across the street, one by one the merchants in the Lago Gascasonica Market have been packing up their wares and pulling down the iron curtains in front of their stalls for good.Ten years later, perhaps half of Lago Gascasonica's 374 stalls remain open for business. Those who plan to stay are scrambling for ways to save the market -- bonuses for shoppers, new legislation that might help all the city's traditional markets.Improved maintenance would help.

A long-awaited supermarket in North Laurel opens today at U.S. 1 and Gorman Road.The 53,088-square-foot Weis store will serve North Laurel and Savage residents who for years had petitioned for a supermarket. The store will include a delicatessen, a pizza kitchen, a bakery and a pharmacy.The supermarket also will include a 400-item produce section with a fresh-cut fruit and salad bar, and an in-store bank branch."[Today] the Savage section of Laurel will finally get a store of its own," said Weis Markets President Norman S. Rich in a statement released by the Pennsylvania company.

FBI agents were searching last night for the second of two men accused of robbery and carjacking who were freed after their case languished in the city's criminal justice system for nearly two years.Both are now accused of violating the Hobbs Act, which makes it a federal crime to obstruct or interfere with commerce that crosses state lines.Agents were seeking Kevin Lewis Cox, 27, formerly of Lanham, after arresting Christopher Wills, 28, Friday evening at his Oxon Hill home. They had been accused in the 1996 robbery of a Northeast Baltimore supermarket and a subsequent string of crimes.

Safeway is slashing the prices on thousands of items in its stores as the region's grocery market becomes more competitive and consumers look for deals to survive the recession. The grocer, with 140 stores in the Baltimore and Washington area, has cut as much as 25 percent off prices on items in every department. It follows other supermarket chains, including Giant Food and Wegmans, which have cut prices because of the economy. The economy has caused people to change their shopping habits, by using more coupons, buying more store brands and buying cheaper cuts of meat.

Devotees of James W. Rouse, the urban planner who spearheaded the founding of Columbia more than 40 years ago, can be prickly about change, especially if they fear it might compromise the legendary founder's ideas. But if testimony at a public hearing last week is any indication, the planned community's residents are receptive to a proposed amendment that would alter the process by which village centers - linchpins of the town Rouse conceived and designed - can be modernized. "No one really seems to oppose [redevelopment]

Louis Rankin, the retired manager of a well-known neighborhood supermarket, died of cancer Sunday at a nursing home near his St. Andrew's Estates home in Boca Raton, Fla. He was 96. For more than three decades, Mr. Rankin stood at the door of the Eddie's of Roland Park market and greeted his customers by name. "He was a standard-bearer for our industry," said Jerry Gordon, owner of the Eddie's of Charles Village market. "He was impeccably dressed and was a refined man. When you thought of that store, you thought of him."

A plan for a larger supermarket at Turf Valley's proposed town center was unanimously approved by the County Council on Monday night, despite objections from some residents. The five members approved one change to the bill that is intended to prevent big-box retailers from coming to the planned office/retail center near the western edge of the redeveloping 809-acre hotel/golf resort. The amendment, introduced by Fulton Republican Greg Fox, caps the size of any other store in the retail center at 20,000 square feet.

The new comedy The Promotion suggests that if American life is an extension of high school, laboring at a corporate supermarket is the equivalent of high-school detention. It's a funny insight undone by a scenario akin to a foul-mouthed after-school special. Life lessons get learned, and the pretty good are pretty well rewarded. The movie has a touch of truth to it, but afterward you feel as if you've been tickled by a worn-out feather duster. On the plus side, anyone who's taken a long hard look at himself and wondered, "How did this happen?"

A proposed 160,000-square- foot Wegmans supermarket in Columbia was approved in a 4-1 vote by a reluctant Howard County Planning Board, but store officials still face several appeals filed by a food workers union. The two-story store - nearly triple the size of most area supermarkets - and an adjoining two-story garage would be built on 12.2 acres at the southwest corner of Snowden River Parkway and McGaw Road, opposite Apple Ford in east Columbia. Parking on the site would total 939 spaces, according to testimony.

A 25-year-old man became the city's 282nd homicide victim yesterday. The man was found with multiple gunshot wounds outside a supermarket in East Baltimore, police said. Officers found him about 12:30 p.m. outside the Stop, Shop & Save supermarket in the 900 block of N. Caroline St. Police withheld the victim's identity, pending the notification of relatives.

Homicides since Jan. 1: 282 A 25-year-old man died of gunshot wounds; he was found about 12:30 p.m. yesterday outside a supermarket in the 900 block of N. Caroline St. LAST YEAR: Baltimore had recorded 273 homicides as of Dec. 28, 2006.

Supermarkets aren't the only places to make supermarket-type purchases, such as food, personal-care items and household supplies. Alternative stores, such as large discounters, dollar stores and warehouse clubs, can offer better deals, depending on who you are and what you're buying. It's a big area of spending. The average family of four spends about $6,700 a year on store-bought food, housekeeping supplies and personal care items, according to the federal government's Consumer Expenditure Survey.

Wegmans has won Planning Board approval that puts it one step closer to building a 160,000-square-foot upscale supermarket in East Columbia. The Planning Board voted unanimously Thursday night to approve a zoning amendment that would allow a large grocer to build on an industrially zoned property near Snowden River Parkway and McGaw Road. However, an official from the Mid-Atlantic Retail Food Industry Joint Labor Management Fund said his group might appeal the ruling. Wegmans, which plans to employ 650 at the proposed Columbia store, is a nonunion employer.