I think Fresh Market is a good choice. I visited one in Boone, NC and it was more intimate (smaller) than Whole Foods. I think that size grocer would better serve College Park as well.

I'm sorry, but when did higher-quality food become yup-scale? Are you aware that on the west side of campus there isn't ANY non-international grocery store? Are you certain that people are happy with the same low-quality produce? I have heard from MANY people in other forums that mention they drive all the way to Silver Spring to shop at Whole Foods because they can't find a quality grocer within 3 miles of where they live. Harris Teeter's price point is not that of a Balduccis, Whole Foods, or Trader Joes. Can College Park have a grocery store that they can trust to maintain a certain level of quality. I don't know about you, but I care about what goes into my family's bodies. We don't just eat anything. And you don't have to make $100,000 to shop at Harris Teeter, which is really comparable to Giant. Does College Park not deserve higher quality food choices? That's what everyone complains about right? There not being enough upscale choices close to home. Your reaction to having a better quality grocer within walking distance is outright shortsighted and pessimistic. You're concerned about Whole Foods becoming Bestway ten years from now? Really? lol

I agree with you. As I said, I'm not against change, but all of this development up and down Route 1 seems to be a scatter-gun approach with no regard to the future impact on the area. You mentioned University Town Center; I'd heard at one point they WERE considering putting a Fresh Market there, dont' know why that never went through. But if University Town Ctr. is in financial difficulties, maybe it's just as well they didn't build. Anyhow - if someone wants to put in a grocery store, what about the site of the Shoppers Food Warehouse on University Boulevard, which is vacant? Guaranteed if developers try to saturate Route 1 with a lot of upper-income-type grocery stores, some of them will go belly-up. And, as you said, there we are with yet another abandoned building.

harris teeter is a mass-market grocer in the style of giant and safeway's nicer stores (such as the greenbelt safeway and the PG plaza giant). it offers inexpensive store-brand products, double coupons up to 99 cents, and a weekly sales flyer, just like giant and safeway do.

but are you, a hyattsville elected official, really calling bestway "blight" even before the latino-oriented ethnic market has had a chance to open in hyattsville? the bestway at riggs and adelphi roads is a clean, lively, and reasonably priced store, far nicer than the dumpy, dowdy safeway it replaced, and given the poor condition of and frequent complaints about the hamilton st. safeway, i can only imagine that bestway will be an improvement over that safeway, too. and are you predicting bestway will be short-lived, leading to an "abandoned building"? i, for one, was thrilled to read the announcement that the old safeway would not become an abandoned building but rather would become another supermarket. given the less-than-ideal location of that property vis-a-vis aldi and the queens chillum giant, i think we're quite lucky to have bestway opening there.

I hear it was Safeway. Unless Fresh Market was a recent endeavor? UTC was as much a product of the recession as it was bad business decisions. UTC was completed in 2008 at the height of the recession. We can always look at UTC as a bad development, but I'm not so sure you can blame UTC without understanding the economic climate in was built in. The economy is different than it was 4 years ago.
The Shoppers on University has been leased to yet another international food market much to my disappointment. Because now, in order to get mainstream items, my wife and I either have to go to Silver Spring, or Moms. So it would be nice to have something close by that we are familiar with. I'm not sure if people notice, but University Park, Riverdale Park, College Park, and Hyattsville can support a higher quality grocer. Harris Teeter is no Whole Foods, Balduccis, or Dean and Deluca. Like I said, I know many people who trek to Silver Spring for Whole Foods anyway.

@Adelphi Sky: I wasn't arguing in favor of Whole Foods over Harris Teeter. Actually, I agree with you that Harris Teeter is a better fit for our market. But the two chains look for very similar demographics.

You should think about *why* there currently are few non-international grocery stores in our region. Free markets are pretty efficient at correlating supply with demand.

However, in order to gain approval for profitable but less popular projects (e.g., high-density residential), developers propose more marginal accessory uses (i.e., upscale groceries). The resulting mix of uses may not be optimized for actual consumer demand.

Bestway is a scavenger chain of discount international food markets. They procure assets cheaply that are being left behind by traditional supermarkets. If there isn't sufficient market demand to support the Whole Foods (and, according to WF's own demographic criteria, there is not), then Whole Foods will not survive at that location.

Who would take their place? These days, chain stores don't like to move into facilities that arent't built specifically for their brand. That leaves scavenger grocery chains like Bestway.

You may scoff because Cafritz is being sold as a trendy, upscale mixed-use community. But being new and trendy never lasts. What is more likely to perdure is an underlying match between the project and the local market conditions. If that isn't there to start with, then things can go downhill fast.

@Chris, I don't know. I guess I'm more optimistic. I talk to people every day who travel outside of our area to do their shopping. Maybe I hang around in different circles. I think Whole Foods will do just fine. Especially for the Hyattsville/UP crowd. No, not everyone is knocking down a six-figure household income. And Whole Foods doesn't need to be THE grocer in the area. You forget, "Have Whole Foods, will travel." Whole Foods would attract people from outside the area just as the one in Silver Spring does. Whole Foods markets itself like Wegmans as a destination grocer. Which is why you don't see one in every neighborhood. You forget about those who travel from Howard and Anne Arundel counties down Rt. 1 to work. Or those who travel out of D.C., etc. All those people who have to crowd Whole Foods in Silver Spring because it is the only one this side of Bethesda will now have an alternative.

@Danny: I retired from elective office several years ago (which is why I now feel free to say whatever I want ;-). If you read with care what I wrote above, I wasn't calling Bestway "blight." I was describing a process whereby economially productive properties can devolve over time and eventually end up as blight.

Bestway, in fact, forestalls blight at the Hamilton St. site after Safeway's departure. One hopes that remains the case for a long time. However, it is an easily observable reality that "devil takes the hindmost" in the world of commerce. As the value of economic activity ratchets down and the value of assets depreciate, the chances of cessation of productive use of the property increases.

This process, of course, can affect whole commercial districts as well as individual assets -- as we can see in older stretches of Route 1 and elsewhere.

@chris currie -- i apologize; i didn't realize you were no longer on the city council. (BTW, i think there's a campaign website of yours still online, from 2004. that may explain my ignorance.)

but with all due respect, i'm glad you're no longer on the council, given your pessimistic view of our city. you seem to suggest in your comments on this thread that there is a near-inevitable race to the bottom in northern PG county retail development -- safeway leads to bestway, which then leads to an abandoned building. this process, of course, can happen, but it need not happen. PG plaza, for example, has reinvented itself over and over since my parents shopped there in the late 1960s, and it stands today as a nearly fully occupied regional shopping center that knows its market and serves it well.

i believe that there is a market in our community for additional quality grocers like harris teeter (which is honestly not as "yuppie" as you believe, in my opinion -- see their store in NOMA, a block from sursum corda, and their planned store near the ballpark in SE DC).

accordingly, safeway fully intended to open a prototype store in hyattsville until UTC's troubles precluded the lot from being developed. giant just reinvested in its PG plaza store. even bestway poured quite a bit of money and care into its adelphi/riggs store before opening it in the safeway shell. harris teeter would fit quite nicely into the mix, especially in the sadly supermarket-void downtown CP.

The students already have cheaper alternatives.
1. On Campus Meal Plans
2. Food Court at the Student Union.
3. Plenty of Fast Food Choices.
Great college towns strike a balance between affordability and also upscale services for those who hold degrees and middle to upper-middle-incomes. I'm not against an affordable grocer locating within College Park, but also provide a grocer for those who may not want to drive to another county just to shop at upper-scale grocers. I'm not asking for College Park to become Georgetown, but College Park doesn't need to shoot so low either as if it has self-esteem issues. Harris Teeter is not up-scale. My wife laughs every time she hears about developments touting it as if it's Whole Foods. she grew up around Harris Teeter in North Carolina. I think College Park can support a mid-scale and an upscale grocer. Both are long overdue. I could settle for Fresh Market. The one I visited was a little smaller than a Safeway but bigger than trader Joes. I think that would be perfect for College Park. Put one on the West Campus side. I don't care. But I'm tried of driving to Silver Spring and Largo for Wegmans all the time.

@Pachacutec - "As for the Harris-Teeter/Whole Foods thing; we're talking about 2 stores within a few blocks of each other - will both of them be able to stay afloat, esp. with the economy today?" - Interesting point. This will also be the case with East Campus and their promise of a grocery store. Two possibilities will play out if both stores get approved. The first, Harris Teeter caters to those students within walking distance and those students and residents who can't afford Whole Foods. And Whole Foods will cater to the more professional residences in the area. Not just College Park/Riverdale Park, but up and down Rt. 1 and the surrounding communities as the Whole Foods in Silver Springs does. Remember Whole Foods is not a "neighborhood grocer" but tends to attract those outside of the neighborhood. As as a result, Whole Foods it too will be sustained. The second possibility is that the both store sizes are reduced as to not over compensate each other. Whole Foods already alluded to the fact that the Cafritz store will be a smaller prototype than its larger stores in the area. If Harris Teeter follows the same path, I think both can exist with needs for all different types of shoppers. There are two Giants and a Safeway within 2 miles of the Whole Foods in Silver Spring and it seems to be doing just fine.

I couldn't agree with you more, LH. Students do desperately need a real grocery store of some kind in downtown College Park, especially since many of them live not only on campus but in the town itself and do not have cars. As for Harris Teeter, it is not my favorite grocery store by any means, but it is certainly better than the main chains, like Giant which is indeed overpriced and Safeway even more so, and Shoppers, which, as you point out, is dirty. I must confess that I am very fond of the Coop grocery in Greenbelt but, again, it requires a car and is at quite a distance from College Park. Harris Teeter is also of a more manageable size and proportion with respect to the local community. Apropos of grocery stores in our nearby area, I checked out a couple of stores on Kenilworth Avenue near 410 and they were atrocious! I don't know if one of them is Superfresh or not but if it is fuggedaboudit! Those stores are really dirty over and you have to have at least a minimal knowledge of Spanish to shop there! As for Whole Food, it is far too pricey for my budget, as it would undoubtedly be for many students and other members of the community who do not live in upscale areas of College Park. Even when I go to Silver Spring to shop or see a movie, I sometimes go into Whole Foods to check out the multitude of goodies that they have there, but I come out with very little. Right now though, Harris Teeter is looking very good to me.

i don't recall either of the proposals for cafritz or the CP shopping center calling for the closure of the grocery choices that you list and are happy with. on the contrary, these proposals call for additional, new stores to supplement the existing offerings. one of the many benefits of living in america is that you can acquire your groceries wherever you please and can support companies that you believe are "good."

I don't drive, so it's difficult for me to go all over the place for Asian groceries; used to go to Chinatown on the subway, but I don't think there's ANY more grocery stores there. Sigh. Thanks for the info on the one in Laurel, is it ALL Asian groceries? Used to be a place called Korean Korner in Wheaton, is that still there? I do a lot of my basic shopping for produce, some meats and seafood, etc., at LaGrande in Riverdale Plaza; it's mostly Latin-American foods, they also have a small section of Asian groceries. Their prices are very reasonable - I picked up a good-sized package of fresh shallots the other day for a dollar! However, when it comes to canned goods, cleaning supplies, etc., I can usuallly find better deals at the "chain" stores, so I make a trip to Shoppers in New Carrollton every so many weeks. Not a fancy store, but I can't afford fancy, anyhow (smile). I think the other big Latin American store MegaMart of whatever it is, at the bottom of the hill (next to St. Bernards Church)i seems to be pretty grubby. And speaking of stores, does anyone know if the Super Fresh way down Cherry Hill Road (Calverton) was closed? I'd heard that was due to close down. If it is closed, does anyone know if any other grocery stores are going in THAT location? I do stop at Giant and Safeway occasionally but as you said, they're way overpriced. Yeah, if we didn't need to eat, we could ALL save a lot of money, hm?

Superfresh was taken over by another grocery store, Shoprite.