Columbia Heights News - Washington, DC - Whole Foods Market

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!

Saturday, May 17, 2008

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Whole Foods Market - An Uphill Battle

Written by Columbia Heights News

Thursday, 12 January 2006

We spoke with Marc Katz of H & R Retail, the leasing agent representing Whole Foods Market in the DC USA negotiations. Mr. Katz was much less encouraging about the prospects of Whole Foods coming to DC USA.

Issues

Mr. Katz has been representing Whole Foods Market for many years and has been working on this particular case for two years. He said that Whole Foods Market's business model has changed dramatically over the past two years. For future locations, Whole Foods is looking to occupy much larger retail spaces than it has in the past. In the case of DC USA, it wants a total of 60,000 sq. ft of retail space. Unfortunately, DC USA could only configure space for 35,000 sq. ft. For reference, the Whole Foods in Logan Circle is 37,000 sq. ft.

Whole Foods also wants dedicated parking spaces for Whole Foods customers in the underground garage. But this can't be arranged because the City will own and operate DC USA's parking garage and they are unwilling to dedicate such spaces.

We asked Mr. Katz if there is anything the community could do to help make Whole Foods a reality in Columbia Heights. He said no. The decision has already been made. He said he couldn't continue pushing Whole Foods to come to DC USA because that wasn't his job and his job would be on the line if he did. We mentioned that we had already spoken with DC USA developers (DCCH, Grid Properties, and Newmark Knight Frank) and how they expressed much more optimism and still felt that the deal was on the bargaining table. Mr. Katz was unsure where they were coming from.

More Information Needed

At this point, we have heard conflicting stories for whether Whole Foods Market is still considerating the DC USA site or not. We need to gather more information. We have posted a list of contacts for the parties that are involved in the negotations. We have spoken to each of the contacts to gather the information that we have reported here. Please feel free to contact them yourself to try to get more details. If you find out more news, please contact us.

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