Grocery Store Renovation Has Brentwood Buzzing

By Jonathan Wilson

Residents and community leaders say a newly renovated grocery store in a Northeast D.C. neighborhood is about much more than festive fruit displays and greater food selection.

It's not like the Giant grocery store in Brentwood was exactly rundown. It's only been here for seven years.

Erline Frazier shops here every day. She's currently the president of the Brentwood neighborhood association, and remembers how hard it was to get a new grocery store in Brentwood.

"We, of course, fought to get a Giant here," says Frazier, "and once you get a product, a lot of times, it starts to go downhill."

The fact that the Giant committed to updating a relatively new store, with four more aisles, new signage and warmer lighting in the midst of this great recession is what has Frazier so excited.

D.C. Congressional Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, who was on hand for a ribbon cutting Friday morning, says it's a great show of confidence in the future of this mixed income, largely African American neighborhood--one that she considers a backbone community in Washington.

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"I think of it as the quintessentially D.C. neighborhood, where people often look for quality and don't find it," says Norton.

Just a few weeks ago, the only other grocery store in the neighborhood, Safeway, closed its doors. The manager here says Giant will be hiring a few more people to staff its expanded store.

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