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Say Cheese? I’m Just About Ready


It is not Howard County Government’s fault. It is not the Columbia Association’s fault. It is not the Wilde Lake Village Association’s fault.

The Grocery Outlet parent company has made the decision to close 36 stores. One of them is the one in Wilde Lake. 

Companies like this do not make it their business to know the history of this individual site. They do not know how long Wilde Lake was without a grocery after the Giant closed. They probably don’t know about the work that went into the building to create the perfect home for an expanded David’s Natural Market.

Big companies know spreadsheets and profits, earnings, losses, demographics, projections…But Jay and Rizwana Mirza, who have operated the Wilde Lake store, probably understand far better how much the people of Wilde Lake wanted their own grocery. They tried to give it to them.

I went googling for a photo of the old Wilde Lake Giant and found this article in Columbia Patch instead.


Image from Columbia Maryland Archives, used by Lisa Rossi in Columbia Patch, 2011


Dream City: Wilde Lake, Then and Now, Lisa Rossi, Columbia Patch

I include it because it contains a reference to the Really Good Cheese Shop, which has become an immovable trope in my Columbia experience.

The quote:

In newspaper advertisements, readers learned about the Giant Food supermarket in Columbia’s first village center, as well as its bank, book store, drug store, music shop, barbershop, dry cleaner, liquor store, candy store, cheese shop, beauty shop and service station, all open in the bustling neighborhood.

For some reason, unknown to me, that cheese shop has survived in the memories of many as the quintessential Columbia village center experience. It must have been a truly amazing place. Whenever two or more are gathered online to discuss how Village Centers could be reimagined or updated, someone is bound to show up and say,

“But what about a nice cheese shop?” - - A Nice Cheese Shop, Village Green/Town², 2/4/2023

Compare the Wilde Lake Village Center of 2011 to the space as it exists today. So much progress has been made to create a community space that is also commercially viable. The people of Wilde Lake have much to be grateful for and to be proud of. You might even say that they have taken the word “vibrant” and run with it. 

They’re still walking the walk. 

I’m sure many of us were rooting for that store to succeed. But the commercial realities of retail grocery stores appear to be conspiring against them.

Oakland Mills was without a grocery store for a long stretch and no large retailers wanted to invest in us. We have been wildly fortunate to become the home of LA Mart. It took a long time to make that happen. I imagine it’s rather like a negotiation for marriage that involves discussions of family fortunes and the size of potential dowries. It takes time. It doesn’t always work out. 

At this very moment I am feeling a sense of exhaustion about the long road of grocery store ‘courtship’ in Wilde Lake. They didn’t deserve this. They did nothing to provoke this. But: here we are again.

In that spirit of exhaustion, and with nothing but the deepest respect for Wilde Lake, I want to offer a purely unserious suggestion.

We’ve tried everything else. What about A Nice Cheese Shop? I mean, we can’t say people haven’t asked for it already.











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  1. Julia A. McCreadyMarch 10, 2026 at 4:22 AM

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