Palisades Safeway to Shutter May 4
By • April 8, 2019 2 8990
The Safeway at 4865 MacArthur Boulevard NW will close on May 4, according to the company.
“Safeway will not be reopening our store on the site,” Beth Goldberg, senior manager of community and public affairs for Safeway’s eastern division, told The Georgetowner. “We have entered into a ground lease agreement with Trammell Crow Company and transferred control of the property rights to TCC.”
The long-suspected closure of the grocery store for a major redevelopment of the property in the Palisades neighborhood will leave residents with the nearest Safeway two miles away in Georgetown.
Plans for the 64,815-square-foot, mixed-use development at MacArthur Boulevard and 48th Place NW do not include a food store.
In a statement regarding the Palisades Safeway, which sits in her ward, Ward 3 Council member Mary Cheh wrote: “Dear neighbors, I was very sorry to learn that Safeway is closing in early May and that the property has been sold. My office will be watching to see what will be occupying that site and will use our best efforts to see that, whatever comes, the community will have a full opportunity to be engaged and will ultimately be well served.”
In 2014, Safeway merged with the Albertsons grocery company, which is owned by Cerberus, a private equity firm.
There is a neighborhood party on April 27 planned for the Palisades Safeway employees. Meanwhile, there is a liquidation sale going on —beginning at 25 percent off selected items with the sale expected to hit 75 percent off of whatever is left on the shelves. Check with the store manager for details.
Nice reporting. Nobody (including the local rep) seemed to have any idea what had happened. What can we now do to avoid the food-desertification of the neighborhood? How quickly can the developer shove through the resining application?
In January, Safeway filed a surreptitious and bad faith application with the Historic Preservation Board, designed to have the application be denied historic status, and thus blocking the filing of another application for the next 12 months. The community should file for judicial review of the HPB decision and request that it be vacated, as it was filed in bad faith and for reasons contrary to the process.
As for Safeway’s refusal to include the community in their plans, at some point the developer will need community approval for a Zoning Variance application. They will dangle a food store in exchange for the community assent (remember how Lab School promised a “community pool” – now gone – in exchange for community support of their construction few years back?) The community should steadfastly resist such an entreaty, unless they want the entire scale of the Palisades commercial strip destroyed (as well as turning it into a parking Nightmare for residents). Because, rest assured, once Trammell Crow gets a variance to build an enormous ‘mixed use’ mall, the Black Salt strip will demand equal treatment, Parkers Exxon will be sold and also demand the right to over-develop. Palisades, as we now know it, will no longer exist.