In the affluent suburbs of the nation’s capital, a new grocery store could almost go unnoticed — a small addition to a spectrum of food retailers that spans tastes and price points. Some prefer Trader Joe’s to Wegmans, or Costco to Safeway, but those choices are rarely discussed in terms of a neighborhood’s survival.
Wp Get the full experience.Choose your plan ArrowRight
Much of Southeast Washington has no such luxury. No new supermarkets have opened in wards 7 and 8, the city’s poorest, in more than a decade, even as dozens have cropped up in the District west of the Anacostia River. And so it was that dozens of people stood in a parking lot off Good Hope Road SE on a below-freezing Saturday morning to celebrate the groundbreaking for a store that will end that streak: a Lidl food market in the unfinished Skyland Town Center development.
The store itself won’t open until later this year — for now, there was just a ceremonial pile of earth into which Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) sank a shovel. But even its promise was enough to draw a crowd to the site in Ward 7, where many have pinned their hopes on a store that might begin to reverse Southeast’s reputation as a “food desert,” where many residents procure their sustenance in the aisles of gas stations and convenience stores.
Advertisement
Story continues below advertisement
“The people who live in this ward deserve to be treated just like all other people in the city,” said Carrie Thornhill, a 78-year-old community activist who has been pushing for a grocery store at Skyland for decades.
What’s at stake, she said, is more than just a convenient place to stock up on produce and paper towels.
“We want everybody to understand that this is a part of the whole social justice and equity and civil rights conversation,” she said. “It’s a big deal.”
Thornhill, along with Bowser administration officials and developers, hopes that the long-gestating Skyland project will hit a turning point this year, with the opening of three stores: Lidl; Roaming Rooster, an upscale fried-chicken vendor whose food truck offerings were popular in the District’s pre-pandemic downtown; and a drive-through Starbucks. The larger development, consisting of hundreds of housing units and retail on 17 acres, began construction in 2018 and is slated for completion in 2026.
It is a part of an effort by Bowser and D.C. Council member Vincent C. Gray (D-Ward 7) to lure basic amenities east of the Anacostia while luxury condos, boutique gyms, stylish restaurants and cafes hawking $4 cups of coffee have piled up — at least before the pandemic — in commercial districts west of the river.
Lidl, a supermarket chain founded in Germany, has spread to more than 30 countries, and it established its U.S. headquarters in Arlington in 2015. The Skyland site will create 45 new jobs, Bowser said, with wages starting at $16.50 per hour and health-care and retirement benefits.
Advertisement
Story continues below advertisement
Getting this far hasn’t been cheap. John Falcicchio, Bowser’s chief of staff and deputy mayor for planning and economic development, said Skyland has secured $56 million in investment, some $40 million of it generated by the city in the form of tax increment financing bonds, which enable the city to borrow money against a development’s anticipated taxes.
“People ask: ‘Is this the sort of investment it will take to get retail to wards 7 and 8?’” Falcicchio said in an interview at the groundbreaking Saturday. “Yes, and it is worth every penny.”