A Baltimore retail developer is counting on shoppers' propensity for bargain hunting to help revive an old, half-vacant shopping center in Edgewood.

The Morris Weinman Co. plans to open a large flea market in a former Valu Food supermarket that once anchored a 100,000-square-foot neighborhood shopping center.

Flea markets and other non-traditional tenants such as ethnic grocery stores are increasingly breathing new life into dying shopping centers around the Baltimore region.

The nearly 30-year-old Edgewood retail center on Pulaski Highway once thrived with an Ames discount department store, which closed in 1998, and a Valu Food, which closed when the company went out of business in 2000. A Revco drugstore moved elsewhere after the supermarket closed.

Value Village thrift shop moved into the Ames space in 1999. But nearly half the center has remained empty.

Like a lot of older, neighborhood centers, the Pulaski Highway center is too small and not visible enough to attract a new, state-of-the-art grocery store, most of which require at least 50,000 square feet. Valu Food had operated in 20,000 square feet.

A flea market is expected to transform the former neighborhood center into a discount center that will draw shoppers from beyond the immediate neighborhood, said Timothy R. Hearn, a partner with real estate brokerage firm NAI KLNB. KLNB represented the shopping center's owner, RAR Partnership, in bringing the flea market to the center.

"Consumers are going out looking for discounted goods and buying based on price and budget," Hearn said. "Wal-Mart has educated consumers that every-day low pricing is a good thing. The opportunity to go to 100,000 square feet of discount goods is an appealing, regional draw."

Weinman leased 50,000 square feet of space at the center, including the former supermarket space, and has an option to buy the center. The new, 20,000- square-foot, weekend-only flea market will open by the middle of the month with permanent vendors who will constantly rotate their merchandise.

Weinman, which owns commercial real estate around the Baltimore area, also operates a flea market in the Route 1 Center on Washington Boulevard in Jessup.

As with the Jessup flea market, the company expects some of the Edgewood flea market merchants to become successful enough to move into small but permanent stores of their own.

Weinman also plans to fill some of the vacant space by eventually expanding the flea market and expects more traditional retail tenants to follow.