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Long-Awaited Ward 8 Giant Opens This Week

Photo by Marvin Joseph/The Washington PostSOME OF THE DISTRICT'S most underserved residents will soon be able to shop at a full-service grocery store in their neighborhood for the first time in nearly a decade. This Friday, a Giant supermarket will open on Alabama Avenue near Stanton Road in Congress Heights, complete with an IHOP restaurant and hardware store.

Currently, the closest such store is the Safeway just across the Ward 7 border, at Naylor Road and Alabama Avenue. Otherwise, residents had to journey two miles away for a full supermarket, either across the Maryland border in Prince George's County or on Capitol Hill, across the Anacostia River.

While the move is a positive step for Ward 8, The Post's Paul Schwarztman reports that it still doesn't set the area on equal footing with its northern neighbors:

Even with its first supermarket, Ward 8, with a population of about 70,000, lags far behind more affluent areas of the city. In Northwest, wards 2 and 3 each have six supermarkets serving roughly the same number of residents, according to a study last year by the D.C.-based Food Research and Action Center. The report concluded that Ward 8 offered the city's least nutritious food options.
Since 2001, 6,000 new housing units have been built in Ward 8, where calls for a full-service grocery store have been growing louder. Now, residents will have easy access to, sushi, 200 types of cheese and 14 kinds of honey, among other things.

» "Signs of Change Line the Shelves" [WaPo]

Pictured above: Loretta Smith, left, and Sandee Wallett stock medicine at the new Giant, which opens Friday; Photo by Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post

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COMMENTS (1)

  • grocery store=most important part of neighborhood change. (see whole foods/logan circle).

    By IMGoph , Posted December 3, 2007 9:31 AM
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