Writing Life

Harris Teeter is nearly here! It’ll be almost two years since our Safeway supermarket closed in the Kings Contrivance Village Center. It’s been just shy of a year since workers started to demolish the Safeway facility and the neighboring, but long-closed, Friendlies Restaurant building (also see here). Now, the exterior of the Harris Teeter building looks complete and the inside is shaping up as well. It’s very exciting. Officials in the Village have said it should open on Wednesday, May 21st.

You can’t see from the picture below, but there is one thing that really strikes me when you view the new building as a whole. (To be fair, others have mentioned it in the local newspapers.) The entrance to the market is directly from the parking lot. For those who remember, you entered the Safeway from inside the area of the village center. All store entrances used to open onto a central courtyard, architecturally tying all the shops together. You could ambulate around the center, walking in and out of stores while still enjoying the ambience of the open space. The new Harris Teeter only has what looks like a fire door along its courtyard facing side. The rest is all brick. While aesthetically pleasing from the parking lot, the new occupant looks divided and separated from the rest of the center.

While this might seem an academic argument, foot traffic is paramount for the survival of small businesses in the village center. We’ve already lost Keighley Jewelers, which closed last December. Owner Terry Keighley noted a decline in visits to the store after the Safeway closed and the delay in finding a new anchor and rebuilding. If people come to shop who don’t know about the other stores in the center, they might just park in the lot, run in the front door, and never wonder what’s around the corner. They might see the liquor store but that’s about it. If the entrance were inside the courtyard area, they’d see almost every storefront or at least see that there were plenty more shops only steps away.

Village centers in Columbia might not be as important as they once were. But, if you’re refurbishing them with brand new construction and a first-in-the-area supermarket, I’d think you’d want to help the center thrive.

The Baltimore Sun has a nice piece up on the Wegmans grocery store that may open up on the corner of Snowden River Parkway and McGaw Court in Columbia. Part of the traffic/parking work has been approved, but the overall decision won’t be voted on until the end of January.

Having lived in Maryland since 1989, Howard County since ’91 and Columbia since ’98, I’ve been a longtime shopper in the area. I’ve seen Giant drop in quality across the stores in Columbia (Owen Brown, Hickory Ridge), Laurel and Silver Spring. Safeway never was that great and I wasn’t sad to see it leave my village center in Kings Contrivance. Weis has some good things, especially their produce at the Gorman Road location, but it’s not a great overall store (i.e. I can’t by my dry foods, meats, fishes, spices, etc.) all in one place consistently. Shoppers, Food Lion and others have no appeal and are much lower in quality that the others. Wegmans would bring a much higher quality experience and might even help Giant and Safeway update themselves.

I don’t accept the anti-Wegmans argument that says opening one of its stores will kill the village centers, figuratively and literally. I’ve seen the disregard of my village center where stores have closed, rents have gone up and the whole bank is being bet on a Harris Teeter store that won’t even architecturally/symbolically be a part of the center complex (it’s entrance points away from the commons area). I watched the Oakland Mills village center implode and know that people are having problems trying to resurrect it now. Just so you know, I love my village center. I continue to shop at the CVS, Liquor store, Bank of America, Michael’s Pub, Enrico’s trattoria, the Bagel Bin, the dry cleaners and the cobbler. But I don’t see a lot of foot traffic there these days.

But, I also shop at other stores, like Roots, a high-end small grocery store off 108. Roots hasn’t crushed other business. I think that they and stores like them (Produce Galore, David’s Natural Market) actually helped make good quality organic food, a variety of cheeses, vegetarian foods, etc. a mainstream concept. I think Wegmans will continue this community quality uplift. I also shop at big box stores like BJs. And, if the parking lot outside and the lines inside during the evening or on weekends is any indication, many of my fellow citizens shop there too.

Given that, though, I have two concerns. First, I was shocked at the enormity of the Hunt Valley Wegmans complex. I went to school where Wegmans was born (Rochester, NY), and I’d never seen such a monstrous store like the one in Hunt Valley. It was too big. The Hunt Valley store is 140,000 square feet and the proposal for the Columbia store is 160,000. I’d like to see that scaled down. That may be a negotiating point to close the deal.

I’m also concerned about traffic on Snowden River. It is crowded now and such a huge store is going to have an impact. However, I don’t think the apocalypse is coming. I didn’t hear the outcry when they built the huge new complex off 175 and that’s added a ton of new traffic. There wasn’t an outcry when the Target plaza was built, but I’ve spent years waiting through 2-3 traffic light cycles to get into the plaza no matter what day of the week it is.

I’m hoping that we do get a Wegmans, though a smaller store than planned.

The destruction of the Safeway and Friendly’s in the Kings Contrivance Village Center continues. Kindly, they’ve left the facade up in the parking lot while destroying the interior and back walls of two facilities. Let’s hope they keep a steady pace and put in the new Harris Teeter as soon as possible.

The merchants in the Village Center need this project to be completed. Foot traffic and drive-by customer visits are down. A local farmer’s market is supposed to help a little. I went to it last week and there was just one vendor. Let me say she was extremely kind and the asparagus I bought was pretty much hands-down the best I’d ever had. But, she was only selling a few items. This is hardly going to be enough to draw business to the Village Center.

Please, do whatever you can to help out the merchants. Visit the Liquor store, which has an amazing staff. Grab a slice or a nice meal at Enrico’s. Have a morning bagel and coffee at the Bagel Bin. Grab a pint and a burger over at Michael’s Pub. Visit the CVS and Bank of America. Drop off your dry cleaning at the cleaners. There are other stores too, please help!

Below are two pictures that I took this afternoon, looking into what used to be the front entrance to Safeway. The first is looking to the right at the Safeway entrance. The second is looking to the left, ostensibly to the parking lot.