The German grocery chain Lidl has announced it will open a supermarket in the long-awaited Skyland Town Center development. It will be only the third full-service grocery store in Ward 7.

Lidl’s announcement is part of a larger regional expansion for the grocer, which opened a store in Bowie, Md., last year and recently announced that it will open six additional stores in D.C.’s Maryland suburbs. It has 10,000 locations across the world, but less than 100 in the United States.

The company is often compared to its close competitor, Aldi, another low-priced German grocery chain that is rapidly expanding its U.S. presence. Lidl has prided itself on being efficient and affordable. Its stores tend to be smaller than most major supermarkets, and it primarily sells its own brands.

The mixed-use development at Skyland Town Center, which is located at the intersection of Good Hope Road, Naylor Road, and Alabama Avenue Southeast, has been in the works for years. When it’s done, it will feature 135,000 square feet of retail and up to 500 apartments. The first phase, which will include more than half of the retail and apartments, is slated to be completed by the end of 2020.

The development replaces the Skyland Shopping Center, a historic center of community businesses that was demolished to make room for new development back in 2014. But it has been delayed for years; developers for the project were chosen back in 2002.

When the city finally broke ground in 2014, Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans joked that George Washington and Pierre L’Enfant had been in on the initial plans for the project, and “then Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln got involved, but then the Civil War got in the way.” At the time, the first phase was expected to be completed in 2017.

Skyland Town Center was initially supposed to feature a Wal-Mart, which spurred a debate about the minimum wage. The D.C. Council passed legislation that would have required large retailers like Wal-Mart to pay employees at least $12.50 per hour. In response, Wal-Mart cancelled its plans for the Skyland location. But then-Mayor Vincent Gray (and current Ward 7 councilmember) vetoed the bill, and the mega-retailer pledged to return to the site.

Yet, two years later, Wal-Mart ended up pulling out of the Skyland Town Center location anyway, saying additional D.C. stores were “not viable” given the performance of its other locations in the city.

Still, neighborhood residents have long said they need more access to fresh food.

A 2017 study found that more than three-quarters of the D.C.’s food deserts are in Wards 7 and 8. (The study defined a food deserts a neighborhood where residents have to walk more than half a mile to get to a grocery store, over 40 percent of households don’t have an available vehicle, and the median household income is less than 185 percent of the federal poverty level for a family of four.)

In 2018, Ward 8 resident Toni Lawson used a stronger phrase to describe the situation to WAMU: “food apartheid.”

“A desert is natural,” Lawson said. “This is planned, and it’s obvious.”

But there have been some signs of change.

Residents of Wards 7 and 8 are working on developing a food co-op. And earlier this year, the city broke ground on another new grocery store — Good Food Markets, in Ward 8.