The potential closure of the Safeway grocery store on MacArthur Boulevard in the Palisades has some members of the D.C. Council looking to intervene.
Councilmembers Mary Cheh, D-Ward 3, and David Catania, I-At Large, have introduced a bill that would prevent grocery store owners from selling their properties with a deal including a prohibition on the property remaining a grocery store.
The practice is common among grocers, and members of the Palisades Citizens Association and Catania expect such a covenant to be a requirement of the deal for the Palisades Safeway. Safeway has been seeking bids for the property, located at 4865 MacArthur Blvd., with a Tuesday deadline.
Cheh and Catania’s bill would prohibit owners of property used as grocery stores from imposing such covenants.
Safeway has not yet received any responses to its RFP for the store, according to Safeway’s Eastern Division President Brian Baer. In a letter to D.C. Council Chair Phil Mendelsohn, Baer did not say if it was Safeway’s intention to institute such a covenant should this property be sold.
He did, however, defend the use of the covenants.
“Covenants are a longstanding common business practice in retail found thousands of times around the country, and are helpful in enabling another of the retailer’s stores serving that community to be successful,” Baer wrote. “In a highly competitive grocery marketplace, covenants are important to help ensure business success in the long term.”
Catania and Cheh’s bill, which will go before the D.C. Council at Tuesday’s legislative hearing, says Safeway has used this practice in D.C. before. It doesn’t, however, cite a particular example.
“Such a restriction is harmful to the residents of the neighborhood as the next closest grocer is approximately 2.5 miles away,” the bill states. The Palisades has more than 17,000 senior citizen residents, many of whom depend on the local grocery store, according to Brendan Williams-Kief, chief of staff for Catania, who is running for mayor.
“Grocery stores are community assets. We spend millions a year in tax incentives in order to try to encourage the location of grocery stores around the city,” Williams-Kief added. “The emergency legislation is intended to at a minimum not permit conditions that would decrease the potential for grocery stores to locate in the District.”
Safeway, unsurprisingly, opposes the measure.
“Acceptance of this legislation is bad public policy and would have a chilling effect on business, clearly stating that Washington, D.C., is not open for business,” Baer wrote.
Chicago lawmakers pursued similar legislation in 2005, including a blanket prohibition on the restrictive covenants. The Chicago City Council ultimately adopted a pared-down versio n of the bill, prohibiting covenants of more than a year, or more than three years when the departing store was relocating nearby.
