First new supermarket breaks ground east of Anacostia in more than a decade

Peter Jamison, The Washington Post

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.

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.


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.

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.

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