Washington Business Journal - By Rebecca Cooper

Wildly popular grocery chain Wegmans will not be part of a redeveloped Walter Reed campus in D.C., despite its best efforts.

The Rochester, New York-based grocer had a keen interest in the 110-acre Walter Reed campus, in part because the site lent itself to Wegmans’ massive size. (The average Wegmans is between 110,000 to 140,000 square feet.)

Wegmans was originally aligned with a team led by Roadside Developmentthat was bidding to redevelop the Walter Reed site, but when Roadside lost out to a team led by Hines Interests LP, Wegmans began working with the winner.

The company was in active discussions with Hines and its partners in 2015, but those talks have not been fruitful, according to Wegmans spokeswomanJo Natale.

“We have been unable to reach an agreement on economic terms or on an acceptable development plan,” Natale said. “We are doubtful that a deal will be struck.” She declined to provide more specifics.

The Hines plan does include a “large-format grocer,” and its renderings of its plans for Walter Reed certainly seemed to be optimistic that it would reach a deal: The image of the grocery store in the project renderings has a “W” on the sign that looks awfully similar to the Wegmans’ logo.

The District is on the verge of taking ownership of 66.27 acres of the Walter Reed campus back. Hines’ plan for Parks at Walter Reed includes 2,100 residential units, 432 of them affordable, 250,000 square feet of retail, 14 acres of open space, a Hyatt hotel and conference center, space for arts organizations, an ambulatory care clinic from Howard University and an innovative core anchored by George Washington University and theMassachusetts Institute of Technology.

A Wegmans at Walter Reed would have been D.C.’s first in the District proper, even as it has grown to 16 stores in Virginia and Maryland since opening its first in the region in 2004.

Natale said that while Wegmans continues to explore other opportunities in the District, there are no other sites to announce at this time. Hines declined to comment for this story.

The news will likely be disappointing D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, who has been vocal in pressing for Wegmans to be part of the project, telling my colleague Michael Neibauer in January: "I think it’s no secret that I’d like to see Wegmans in the District."

http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/blog/top-shelf/2016/08/womp-womp-no-wegmans-for-walter-reed.html