City wipes away $500,000 from loan to troubled ShopRite store on Liberty Heights
ShopRite argues the break is needed to “help continue operations at the location.” BDC and other officials who arranged the deal aren’t talking. BREW EXCLUSIVE.
Above: Freshly seeded grass and a large parking lot greet shoppers on the opening day of ShopRite’s Liberty Heights store on . (Mark Reutter)
Hailed by city officials as a capstone achievement to end a “food desert” in an underserved Baltimore neighborhood, the ShopRite supermarket on Liberty Heights Avenue is in financial trouble.
Today the Board of Estimates excused $500,000 from a $2 million promissory note issued to the Howard Park store, which has suffered from lower-than-expected revenues, according to two sources.
The action means that the principal owners, Klein’s ShopRite of Maryland, will only have to pay $600,000 on the loan’s first installment due next month.
The board also agreed today to wipe away the remaining $900,000 (currently due in $100,000 yearly installments) if the store employs “no fewer than 100 Baltimore City residents with gross wages of no less than $2,000,000.”
Translated, that means that Klein’s ShopRite must maintain a city workforce whose individual gross pay would average $20,000 a year over the next nine years.
According to the BOE agenda, the retailer had requested the $500,000 reduction to “help continue operations at the location.” Klein’s is now seeking “a larger refinancing” to keep the store afloat. (tovább…)