D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser unveiled a plan Thursday she says will bring a new grocery store to a long-vacant plot of land on the eastern edge of the city, where few fresh food options currently exist.

According to her office, Bowser will ask the D.C. Council for the ability to use eminent domain on the Capitol Gateway Marketplace, an 11-acre barren field located at the intersection of East Capitol Street and 58th Street NE in Ward 7, only blocks from the Maryland line and the Capitol Heights Metro station.

Plans for a grocery store and residential development on the site have been floating around since the early 2000s, and it was at one point set to be the location of one of a number of Walmart stores opened in D.C. In 2016, though, Walmart backed out of plans to open two stores east of the Anacostia River — the Capitol Gateway site and Skyland, also in Ward 7 — largely derailing hopes that the Capitol Gateway lot would be developed.

As part of Bowser’s plan, Walmart will pay D.C. $6.6 million to take over its lease of the Capitol Gateway site, one half of the effort to free the parcel for new development. The other half will be the use of eminent domain to acquire the land from the current owner. According to Bowser’s office, the city has already gotten a “preliminary commitment from one of the largest grocery store operators in the area to deliver an approximately 55,000-square-foot grocery store.”

Should the council allow her to use eminent domain and should other obstacles be avoided, Bowser will have taken a significant step towards almost doubling the number of grocery stores that exist east of the Anacostia River.

Currently, only three of the city’s 79 full-service grocery stores are located in the portions of wards 7 or 8 east of the river, home to more than 160,000 residents. By comparison, Ward 3 alone had 16 grocery stores in 2020, according to a recent report from D.C. Hunger Solutions, and Ward 6 had 14. Earlier this month, Bowser helped break ground on the construction of a new Lidl at the Skyland site in Ward 7, and last November a Good Foods Market opened in Ward 8.

As part of her 2022 budget, Bowser created a $58 million fund to attract grocers, restaurants, and other food sellers to underserved parts of the city, and she also made changes to an existing tax break for supermarkets so that it was more focused on those areas.

“Our residents and families east of the river deserve an array of fresh and healthy food options and we will not stop until that goal is fulfilled,” said Bowser in a statement.