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.