Apparently not. (Photo courtesy The Heights Life.)

UPDATE: Now the owner of Ellwood Thompson’s has refuted Graham, stating that the grocer is still working on plans to open at DCUSA.

Organic grocer Ellwood Thompson’s long-talked-about plan to move into DCUSA is dead — so reports Lydia DePillis at her Housing Complex blog.

DePillis quotes Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham as stating that the grocer will lose about a million dollars after it spent years teasing a neighborhood who has long grumbled about Giant’s inefficiency. Graham told DePillis that he’s already been in discussions with other organic grocers for the space and — in a moment of Bronsonish fury — said that Ellwood Thompson’s would “pay for this very bad decision.”

While not having a new grocer around the corner is a bit of a downer for Columbia Heights residents, it’s somewhat of a relief, after years of speculation, to get some kind of closure on the matter. (And the addition of Target’s food section probably buffers the disappointment slightly.) We first mentioned the potential of Ellwood Thompson’s moving to DCUSA in July 2007; what followed was a somewhat laughable series of stops and starts over the next three years — signs stating that the store would open in Fall 2009 even went up at one point.