Help Bring Whole Foods Market To Columbia Heights!
Would you like Whole Foods Market to come to Columbia Heights? You can join our campaign to bring Whole Foods Market to the DC USA retail complex! The best way for you to voice your support for Whole Foods is to email Karen Riley at karen.riley@wholefoods.com. Karen Riley is the real estate coordinator for Whole Foods Market. She can demonstrate the level of our support directly to the Whole Foods team working on the negotiations. Please be as descriptive as you can in your emails. Please also cc or bcc your emails to Ms. Riley to us at info@columbiaheightsnews.org. We need to keep a running tally of how many messages have been sent to Whole Foods Market so we can gage how much more work we need to do. The more people who can email Whole Foods Market the more powerful our collective voices will be! It looks like we are facing an uphill battle but as a community we can make a difference! Please spread the word!
Councilmember Jim Graham has been following the interest that this Whole Foods Market issue has generated among community members. This morning Mr. Graham posted the following message on the Columbia Heights listserv:
Dear Friends: I have been reading with interest the recent emails concerning whether Whole Foods was coming to the Parcel 27 development. I have contacted Drew Greenwald, who is the person heading this development for his statement on the status of this matter. I am passing along his statement fro yesterday for your information. I think it is important that we all have the latest facts on this matter.
Bests Councilmember Jim Graham
Statement:
Dear Jim: As you know Whole Foods has been looking at DC USA for several years and we have signed two separate letters of intent with them over that time period. In each case they have pulled back because of their concerns over parking. The store would have been 53,000 square feet on two levels (35,000 square feet at grade). With regard to the parking issue Whole Foods looks to have complete control over a finite number of spaces. After Closing we plan to explore this issue with them once again. There are two obstacles - tax exempt bond financing which does not permit dedicated parking and Target which does not require its own dedicated parking and thus does not permit others to have it either. We will continue with our efforts to convince the company that the nature of the location with a significant number of people either walking to it or arriving by public transportation reduces the need for dedicated parking. Additionally the presence of a 1,000 car garage is different than the typical Whole Foods location. I think a continued push from the community can only have a positive impact. We will keep you up to date on our efforts.
Thank you again for all of your overwhelming support for DC USA.
Mr. Greenwald is the President of Grid Properties, the lead developer of the DC USA project.
Keep Sending Your Emails To Whole Foods Market
As Mr. Greenwald wrote to Councilmember Graham, "a continued push from the community can only have a positive impact." Please continue to write Karen Riley of Whole Foods (
). Again, for those of you who will be primarily walking or riding the Metro to DC USA, we need to let Ms. Riley know. We have to impress upon Whole Foods Market that dedicated parking will not be a major factor for most of us.
Remember to express your support to the rest of the community by signing our online petition. At the appropriate time, we will compile all the entries in the petition and send it to Ms. Riley. But this petition is not a substitute for writing to Ms. Riley directly.
As of this writing, we know of ninety individuals who have written to Ms. Riley. You can keep track of the latest count here. There may be more who have written, but we have not been informed yet. Again we ask you to either cc or bcc us on the messages that you send to Ms. Riley at
. Alternatively, you may simply write us a quick message letting us know that you have sent your message to Ms. Riley.
Although there has been a good response from the community, we need to work harder in getting the word out. Please talk to your neighbors, friends, and other community members and explain to them how they can get involved if they would like to see Whole Foods Market in Columbia Heights!
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 14 March 2007 )
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Would you like Whole Foods Market to come to Columbia Heights? You can join our campaign to bring Whole Foods Market to the 
