Squandering and warehousing, Part 2

District officials boasted last week about possibly bringing popular Wegman’s to Walter Reed Medical Center, where the city has planned a mixed-use complex of retail businesses, homes and offices. No one even mentions a Safeway for Reservation 13. What’s up with that? Why are elected officials treating the upper Northwest property more preferentially than the Hill East campus located near 19th Street and Independence Avenue Southeast?

Walter Reed’s history and the surrounding upper-income community provide the cachet the 67-acre Reservation 13 lacks, officials told me, ignoring the advantage and appeal of an undeveloped waterfront Capitol Hill neighborhood.