The closing of a supermarket in a Baltimore suburb is hardly big news; most of the people affected by it usually just drive to the next available store. In the city, the condition is more delicate; Baltimore is eager to attract new stores, not see them close. So, in that regard, I found it surprising that the only person to call me about the looming closure of the Safeway in Mount Clare, on the city's southwest side, was the guy who runs the check-cashing place next door.

Robert Rombro, of the Cash Bar, worries he'll lose customers if the Safeway closes, but he also had this to say: "There are no other major supermarkets in the area, and the local residents will have to find transportation to the county; most don't drive. It will be a hardship for the many elderly in the area.

"Perhaps," Mr. Rombro added, "if you were to bring attention to this situation it could be prevented, or perhaps the city could offer assistance or incentives to Safeway to remain open."

It doesn't sound like that's going to happen. Craig Muckle, manager of public affairs and government relations for Safeway, says the 60,000-square-foot Mount Clare store, which arrived in 1987, "has not been profitable for a very long time." He says Safeway, a company that has shown real commitment to the city when others kept to the suburbs, "tried to make every effort to turn it around and keep it open," but ultimately Mount Clare failed.

Mr. Rombro's call reporting the demise of the store came just after I'd visited Mount Clare for the first time in years. I was surprised to see that the Safeway was still open when I drove into the area. For one thing, the store has always been out of sight - its massive parking lot and entrance are not visible from West Pratt Street - and you could drive by and never know it was there.

"The location does not face a main drag," Mr. Muckle says. "That's always been a problem. You have to go down a one-way street to get there, and you really have to know your way around to find it. We're a convenience business, and [the location] is not very convenient." He also cited competition from big-box and independent grocers.

That's been a problem with the whole Mount Clare retail environment since the development of the place, near the B&O; Railroad Museum, in the 1980s. The historic area has a history of retail failure, and the lack of visibility and convenient access were noted as problems from the start.

Still, you would think that people who live on the west and southwest sides of the city, where fresh food is not easy to come by, would have supported the store to a profitable level.

Mount Clare is within a section of the city surveyed by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for a Livable Future. It found, among other things, that, in the community's 41 stores: 75 percent had no fruits or vegetables for sale; 29 percent sold no milk; 75 percent sold only white bread or none.

A lot of people, a high percentage of them low-income, still rely on corner stores for food, the survey found. Plus, says Anne Palmer, food and nutrition expert at Bloomberg, all people, no matter their income levels, look for the best buys and find ways to get to the stores that offer them. People who live near Mount Clare might have shopped elsewhere.

But Mr. Muckle indicates that the customer base eroded when the city tore down public housing on the west side in the 1990s. Despite some strong redevelopment efforts, the customer traffic has not returned to adequate levels. He says the store closes in two weeks, and its 50 employees have been given the option of working at other Safeway locations.

In an e-mail, the city's deputy mayor, Andrew Frank, said, "The Safeway is in a good location, although its visibility could be improved. We would make every effort to retain Safeway; however, if that was not possible, we are confident that the location would attract another quality grocer to meet the demonstrated demand." (He noted that, in a recent survey of Baltimoreans, 22 percent said they did not have access to a full-service grocery store.)

Mr. Frank said the Dixon administration and the Baltimore Development Corp. are trying to attract supermarkets to Oldtown, Howard Park, East Baltimore near Hopkins, and Remington. "We would add [Mount Clare] to the list," he said. "Profit margins are thin for grocery stores, and in this economy, developers are seeking public-private partnerships to make the economics work. We're making progress at several locations."

Dan Rodricks' column appears Thursdays and Sundays in print and online, and Tuesdays online-only. He is host of the Midday talk show on WYPR-FM.