My colleague Lorraine Mirabella found out today that construction on a 144,000-square-foot Wegmans Food Markets store in Abingdon will begin Thursday.
It is slated to open in the spring of 2011.
The grocer will anchor a retail and office center planned for the intersection of Box Hill Corporate Drive and Woodsdale Road, near I-95 in Harford County in a complex called the Boulevard at Box Hill.
Wegmans now has one Maryland store in Hunt Valley that is of similar size at 140,000 square feet. The grocer is also building in Columbia in Howard County and would like to build others in Maryland. A chain spokeswoman had told The Baltimore Sun that it selected the Harford County site in part because of the area's expected influx of residents who will work at or near Aberdeen Proving Ground as part of base realignment.
Developer Ward Properties is starting the first phase of the Boulevard at Box Hill, including the Wegmans, two free-standing restaurants and a free-standing bank. Besides the grocer, known for its gourmet offerings, the center is expected to eventually include more than 450,000 square feet of stores, 50,000 square feet of restaurants and 88,000 square feet of office space, said Mackenzie Retail LLC, which is handling the center's leasing.