Nicole Thevenot lives in Little Italy, but that's not where she buys groceries.
She drives five miles north, past downtown, past the penitentiary, past North Avenue, past Druid Hill Park, 40 blocks in all, to a store that she says is "crazy," crowded and hard to park near.
Inside is her reward: 17 wide, white aisles of brisket, salami, turnips, mandarins, Wheaties, Pepsi, Ruffles and SnackWells, an acre of the world's bounty, fresh and bar- coded.
In its own way, the Super Fresh store on West 41st Street has become as much a cross-town draw as the nearby Baltimore Museum of Art. They don't have Warhols and Cezannes east of Charles Street, and they don't have 124-foot dairy cases and 1,300-item produce sections in Little Italy. Or most other places in Baltimore City.
The 41st Street Super Fresh is a merchant's fantasy: an attractive, chock-stocked store nestled among hundreds of thousands of hungry customers -- and few competitors.
Only a handful of other city markets display the gleaming, 45,000-square-foot plenitude that suburban grocery shoppers have come to take for granted. The year-old Super Fresh's biggest rival is a 33,000-square-foot Giant store in the nearby Rotunda shopping center.
Such stores pull customers like Ms. Thevenot from much farther and generate sales that are much higher than industry averages.
"It's somewhat of a monopolistic situation, and that's what most retailers are trying to gain," said Jeff Metzger, publisher of Food World, a Columbia-based trade monthly.
Other major grocers are taking notice. Having all but exhausted the suburbs' capacity for new stores -- and enticed by the kind of checkout lines they see at Super Fresh's 41st Street outlet -- many chains are reconsidering older cities.
Several of Baltimore's largest grocers said they intend to place new stores of 45,000 square feet and larger within city lines in the next few years, despite the huge headaches and costs that come with building urban outlets. As a result, the city's census of suburban-type, football-field-sized markets could rise from about a half-dozen now to 10 or more in the next few years.
"We think that that's where most of your growth is -- in servicing the inner-city people," said Larry Johnson, public affairs director for Safeway Inc.'s eastern division. "We like to be in those communities. The population is there, and the services generally are not as plentiful in those areas."
Not every gleam in a grocer's eye becomes a store, especially in urban settings, where obstacles to a grand opening are huge and many. More than eight years passed from when Super Fresh first considered the 41st Street site to when customers entered, said Herb Whiteside, vice president of Super Fresh's mid-Atlantic group.
But the industry seems sufficiently infected with city-store interest that Baltimore residents can expect at least a few more shopping choices.
"You can find examples of this in Miami, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Oakland, Detroit. . . . There's a lot of activity," said Karen Brown, senior vice president of the Food Marketing Institute, a supermarket trade group. "You have these city centers where you have dense populations of under-served customers. It's a marvelous business opportunity."
Some advocates for the urban poor believe the trend could improve shopping access for blighted neighborhoods, where transport-deprived residents depend on expensive convenience stores and small grocers.
Quality of life
"You can improve people's quality of life when all of the sudden you give them access to a large store," said Peter L. Borges, president of Retail Initiative Inc., a New York-based nonprofit group that promotes inner-city stores.
So far, though, Baltimore's poorest pockets are getting little benefit from major grocers' urban interest.
City supermarkets of 45,000 square feet or more include Super Fresh at 41st Street; Safeway at West Pratt and Carey streets; and Basics on Fort Avenue. Some stores in that range, such as Food King and Giant on Patapsco Avenue, are barely in the city.
All are carefully placed to draw from wealthier districts; none is accessible by foot from the heart of Baltimore's poorest areas.
"There needs to be investment in food markets in the inner city, particularly areas like Sandtown-Winchester and East Baltimore," said Michael Gaines, president of the Council for Economic and Business Opportunity, a local nonprofit group.
Currently at least five chains are looking at the possibility of building more stores in Baltimore.
* The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., owner of the Super Fresh chain, is seriously examining three more city sites, Mr. Whiteside said. The company operates six city markets and recently renovated three of its four older stores there.
Urban plots big enough to hold a major supermarket are rare enough that Mr. Whiteside and other chains' executives declined to disclose some of their prospects' whereabouts.
* Metro/Basics Food Markets has two or three city sites "in various stages of development right now," said President John Ryder. "There are a lot of people developing back into the city," he said. The company's Fort Avenue store is its only city location now.
* Valu Food said last month that it signed a preliminary deal to operate a 50,000 square-foot supermarket on the site of the vacant Eastern High School on 33rd Street. The company has one city store.
"We're looking with a lot more interest at the city than ever before," said President Louis Denrich. "The density of population is unbelievable."
* Safeway hopes to start building a 45,000-square-foot store at 24th and Charles streets by the end of 1996. The company also has proposed a 62,500-square-foot store for Canton at the site of the former American Can Co. factory.
* Giant Food Inc., which has five older, mostly smaller Baltimore City stores, has talked with the Baltimore Development Corp. about building new, bigger outlets.
"We're always looking for good sites," said spokesman Barry F. Scher. But, he added, "The problem has always been finding a parcel of land that is suitable for a 55,000-square-foot food/pharmacy combination store and shopping center."
Site problems
Actually, finding a nice urban site isn't the problem. Assembling it, buying it and clearing it for a new store is. Grocers
accustomed to developing suburban farm fields have long been intimidated by cities' welter of zoning, planning, architectural and neighborhood groups.
Take Safeway's project at 24th and Charles. To assemble just 2.5 acres -- half the land generally deemed adequate in the suburbs -- the company had to control nine small parcels through lease, option and purchase. One townhouse owner was especially resistant to moving, but getting property rights was only the beginning.
The Baltimore Art-Deco Society opposed Safeway's plans to raze three structures on the 24th Street site -- the Chesapeake Cadillac showroom and two former school administration buildings. The city's Design Advisory Panel rejected the project twice before relenting.
Environmental snags surfaced. The school buildings were filled with asbestos and lead paint. A buried oil tank contaminated the soil. The city agreed to pay for remedies.
City planners had to review the scheme while Safeway cooled its heels as alternative plans were sought, as required by law. Traffic experts had to bless parking and road setups. Safeway recently needed three separate City Council bills to buy and shut several streets.
If no new obstacles appear, Safeway still doesn't expect to start construction for more than a year.
Even after the bulldozers are ready, complications and costs multiply for urban supermarkets. City planners often require expensive construction materials and design features. Tight sites need special architectural work. Because a hill rises behind Super Fresh's 41st Street store, for example, the store had to be designed with truck bays on the side instead of the back, said store manager Roy Hall.
Taxes, insurance premiums, utility bills and security expenses also are higher in the city. City residents shop more frequently and make smaller purchases, so stores must be fully staffed most of the day.
"Obviously costs are significantly greater in an urban area than in a suburban area," Giant's Mr. Scher said. "You're often looking at a 2-to-1 and sometimes 3-to-1 cost ratio per-square-foot even before you turn the first shovelful of dirt."
Urban stores' payoffs, however, often are even bigger.
A suburban store of 45,000 square feet typically generates about $430,000 in sales each week. By contrast, good city stores, summoning people like Nicole Thevenot from the far precincts, can generate $800,000 weekly, analysts said.
Baltimore City operators declined to reveal financial results. Profitability in Super Fresh's 41st Street store is "average," Mr. Whiteside said.
"Some of the operators that are in the inner city that are doing very well aren't going to talk about it, simply because they don't want to be in a position where they're creating competition for themselves," said the Retail Initiative's Mr. Borges.
"Think about it. We all eat. It doesn't matter, your socioeconomic position in life. We all eat."