Monday, October 26, 2009

Say Cheese!

Some members of the Wilde Lake Village Board appear to be having difficulty coming to grips the demographic changes in Columbia and the resultant new retail realities. According to this story by Larry Carson in The Sun yesterday, “board members have already created a laundry list of stores they'd like in the renewed center - a list remarkably similar to what existed at the center a decade or more ago.”

“The board suggested a coffee shop, hardware store, movie theater, cheese shop and deli among other ideas. A pub, perhaps like the former JK's Pub that once existed in the center, was also mentioned.”

A cheese shop!

I actually worked in the Cheese Shop that was an original tenant in the village center. Even back in those days the store made more money selling sandwiches to construction workers than it did by selling cheese to village residents. The home construction activity eventually moved on from Wilde Lake and Harpers Choice to other villages, business dropped off dramatically and the store eventually closed.

The hardware store and the pub didn’t make it either.

I think the board would better served by learning from the centers history than seeking to repeat it.

5 comments:

HowChow said...

A cheese shop? I actually won the Baltimore Sun's contest for "person who would most love a cheese shop in Howard County," and I wouldn't invest $1 in a cheese shop in Wilde Lake.

A restaurant, maybe. But no one gets a neighborhood cheese shop unless the neighborhood is really rich or has some terrific location. That doesn't sound like Wilde Lake.

Personally, I love that Today's Catch survives at Wilde Lake. I try to shop at Today's Catch precisely because it offers products -- like scallops that aren't injected with saline solution -- that I can't find elsewhere. But I have great fears that Wegman's will make it even harder to open/run speciality food stores. I love Wegman's. I just think it's crazy to ask anyone to invest their life savings in a cheese shop to compete with Wegman's.

Anonymous said...

howchow - you should let the wilde lake village board know that!

Anonymous said...

Be sure to send that message to all the village centers so that Columbians can become accustomed to sitting in cars and then lines all weekend after Wegmans, Walgreens, and Harris Teeter have closed down 9 village centers. You like the mall now? More of the same coming.

Anonymous said...

Seriously, a cheese shop? This is why Columbia is stuck in the 1970's. I can't wait for the old people to move out.

Bob O said...

I'd rather have a "snuff" shop then a cheese shop. If we could have both, we'd reflect BBC programming, because everyone knows that BBC1 is the Cheese channel and BBC2 is the Snuff channel. Then we could all be anglophiles.

Now, walk this way!

("Can't we just have a Spam Shop?")