I Want My Harris Teeter
“I want my Harris Teeter.” Not since Solome uttered the words “Bring me the head of John the Baptist” has a more important phrase been spoken. The Montgomery County Planning Board today postponed the hearing originally scheduled for this Thursday that was to address the very historic Falkland Chase Apartments and its arch nemesis: progress.
Now postponed until sometime in July, the hearing will help decide the fate of Falkland Chase, and whether or not developers would be allowed to (reportedly) take nine of its 22 acres to build more dense housing and a (gravely needed) Harris Teeter. I certainly wouldn’t advocate trashing the whole complex, but I think the CBD is where we need more dense development.
While there has been listserv traffic trying to get people to the meeting to protest the “destruction,” I plan on showing up with big Harris Teeter signs showing my support. There are certainly valid questions about traffic and infrastructure, but I think a solution can be found.
It’s the Central Business District, for crying out loud. And our two venerable grocery stores – Safeway and Giant – suck. So until then…
12 Comments so far
Now, I’m all for the Teet (up in Burtonsville, we were promised with a Harris Teeter, and even a Wegmans, but we’ll be getting another Giant instead) but not with the kinda shitty apartment block proposed for the Falkland Chase redevelopment. Now, if we can get a pedestrian-friendly neighborhood with a Harris Teeter in it – that’s a winner!
Ooooh… I would LOVE to get a Wegman’s in here. That’d be flippin’ sweet.
No Wegman’s for you. Thanks to Giant and Safeway and our quasi-socialist county government, I doubt one would ever get through the approval process.
Bring the Teet! Bring the Teet!
I cry for the Wegman’s, and yearn for the Teet.
And I’m a bit disappointed with the Council for applying the Wal-Mart law to Wegman’s, though at this point, I suppose we should expect nothing less than idiocy from the council.
Newly-elected Councilmember Praisner just cast the deciding vote to trash a potential homeless shelter in Bethesda. I’ll let washingtonpost.com say it properly – that the motion was…:
No commentary – just take it for what it’s worth.
As I’ve said before, the Giant and Safeway union people — working, for once, in concert with management — will never let these stores into downtown SS. They will be strongly supported by “progressives” in the neighborhood who abhor non-union stores — but continue to shop at Whole Foods and Snider’s, because those businesses fit their socio-political worldview that small (or if not small, organic)is best. The rest of us have to learn to live with the situation — because having Wegman’s or Harris Teeter would make those other folks unhappy, and they do not like being unhappy with the types of businesses in “their” neighborhood.
SHOW ME THE HARRY TEET!! (we should bring beads to the hearing)
I wonder if anyone who has signed up to testify is actually FOR this development.
I don’t want to be labeled “against progress” (again), but I am so disappointed in the design and architecture of the building that has gone up around downtown Silver Spring (what a waste of the Canada Dry building!) that I will not get on board with taking down some of the lovely, treed, stable Falkland Chase. Don’t make me get Joni Mitchell on you folks, but it would be really nice if we could keep the tree preservation to a maximum, further cement and asphalt to a minimum, and for heavens sake, not build more places to require massive parking lots, parking garages, and create more angry grocery store-related traffic jams (see Whole Foods).
But I will show major support for overhauling the already built, already parking-ready, easily walkable Safeway.
These apartments are historically important? Am I missing something here? Did Eisenhower or Bill Gates sleep there or something?
I have stopped being surprised by how these historic preservation labels get tossed around these days. As a former resident of Savannah GA (oldest historic preservation zone in the nation), I just have a hard time thinking of a building constructed after 1940 as being historically important.
The Falklands are historic because Fala peed on one of the trees.
Aha! Thanks for clueing me in on that important piece of local history. And I call myself a Washingtonian!?
This makes me wonder how many other historic buildings are the product of canine markings. There must be a book in there somewhere ….