Drive down Romany Road and you'll see it: a crane that arrived this spring, precast concrete panels swinging into place for what will eventually be a three-level structure with underground parking. It looks like progress, because it is. But if you've lived in Chevy Chase long enough to remember when there was a Kroger on that same lot, the crane isn't the end of a wait. It's the middle of one.
The neighborhood has been without a walkable grocery store since that Kroger closed in 2015. Eleven years. A Publix was confirmed for the site in March 2024, developers said at the time it could take three to five years to become a real shopping option for the area, and now that the demolition and foundation work are behind it, the honest math on the developer's own construction window says most residents are still looking at next spring or summer before they can walk over and buy milk.
That gap between "there's a crane" and "there's a store" is the thing worth understanding if you live here, because it explains something people get wrong about this neighborhood: the assumption that Chevy Chase feels incomplete without a grocery anchor. It doesn't. The two blocks of Euclid Avenue that residents have leaned on instead have only gotten more crowded, not less, and this past weekend proved it.
The timeline, run out to the end
Here's what's actually happened, in order, and what it means for anyone doing the math on when this ends:
- 2015 — The Kroger on Romany and Duke closes. Chevy Chase loses its only walkable grocery store.
- March 2024 — A public meeting confirms Publix for the same site, replacing the vacant Kroger with a smaller, roughly 40,000-square-foot store designed to sit about five feet above Romany Road with underground parking. Developers estimate three to five years before it's open.
- June 2025 — A follow-up meeting sets a firmer number: demolition begins within four to six weeks, and the full build is expected to take 21 to 25 months from that point.
- May 2026 — A crane arrives on-site to install precast panels for the facade and parking decks, a process the project's manager said would take seven to eight weeks and require lane closures on Romany and Duke.
- April to August 2027 — Working forward from the June 2025 start date using the developer's own 21-to-25-month window, that's the realistic range for opening day.
That last line is the one worth sitting with. If you're a Chevy Chase resident who's been circling "almost done" every time you see the crane, the developer's own numbers put the finish line somewhere between eight months and a full year out from today. This isn't a criticism of the project. Underground parking and a three-level structure squeezed onto a tight urban lot take time to build correctly. But it does mean the neighborhood's actual grocery routine, the one you use every week, isn't changing this year.
A longtime resident named Anne Graham put the stakes plainly at that first 2024 meeting, and her framing has aged well:
"The best developments are walkable neighborhoods, and that's what we lost when we lost the grocery a few years ago, and that's what we are going to be gaining, and even more so with this one."
She's right that walkability is the real prize here, not the Publix logo. And that's exactly why the store's absence hasn't hollowed the neighborhood out the way you'd expect.
What's filling the gap isn't a grocery store, it's a block
While Romany Road has spent a decade without a produce aisle, Euclid Avenue has kept doing what it's always done, and lately it's been doing more of it. The Chevy Chase Inn, Lexington's oldest continuously operating bar, has poured drinks there since 1933, right after Prohibition ended, and it's still the kind of place where the bartenders know their bourbon and the regulars know the bartenders. A few doors down, Charlie Brown's has been serving the same dimly lit, book-lined dining room for decades. Longtime patrons still talk about Jim Varney stopping in.
That stretch hasn't been standing still, either. The Obstinate Sons opened in Chevy Chase Place in early 2024, bringing a bourbon-forward menu of Southern comfort food from owners Dexter Murray and Cannon Applegate, who cut their teeth together at Merrick Inn before striking out on their own. Bourbon n' Toulouse has been serving Cajun and Creole plates on Euclid since 2004. Stella's Kentucky Deli remains the neighborhood's answer for a quick sandwich without getting in the car. And on Ashland, a newer coffee and pizza spot called Char has picked up a steady following for its pastries and cocktails, adding one more reason to walk instead of drive.
None of that replaces a grocery store. You still need a car, or a longer walk, to stock a pantry. But it does mean the daily rhythm of the neighborhood, the errands, the dinners, the after-work drink, has never actually depended on the store that's been missing since 2015. The commercial spine did the job a supermarket usually does: it gave people a reason to be outside their houses on a Tuesday night.
The evening loop that doesn't need a grocery cart
Ask anyone who walks a dog in Chevy Chase after work where they go, and odds are they'll mention the University of Kentucky Arboretum. It's a short trip from most streets in the neighborhood, and the draw is simple: a free, paved 2.5-mile perimeter loop through a hundred acres holding more than 500 species native to Kentucky. Dogs are welcome on leash, bikes aren't allowed on the main loop, and the whole thing takes most walkers under an hour.
It's not a substitute for a grocery run. But it's part of the same pattern that shows up on Euclid Avenue: the neighborhood's actual infrastructure, the stuff people use every day, was never centered on the vacant Kroger lot to begin with. It was centered on the walk, the loop, the block.
This month's proof
If you want the clearest evidence that Chevy Chase's social center of gravity sits on Euclid Avenue and not on Romany Road, you didn't have to wait for the Publix to open. It showed up this past weekend, when the Chevy Chase Street Fair returned for its annual run. Organized by Smiley Pete Publishing, the event shut down Euclid Avenue for a day of live music, dozens of local vendors, and a crowd organizers expected to reach a couple thousand people.
Treehouse Goods owner Tara Modjeski, one of the vendors set up along the avenue, said it plainly: the neighborhood shows up for these events because the community itself is what makes them work, not any single anchor business. That's the same lesson the grocery gap has been teaching for eleven years. Chevy Chase doesn't run on a supermarket. It runs on the strip that's already there, and on the residents who keep filling it.
None of this means the wait for a real grocery store doesn't matter. It does, especially for anyone without a car or with mobility that makes a longer drive genuinely difficult. But if you've been wondering whether the crane on Romany Road means your errands are about to get easier, the honest answer, based on the numbers the developers themselves have given, is not yet. Plan on next year. In the meantime, Euclid Avenue is still exactly where it's always been.
If you're weighing what a home in a neighborhood like this is actually worth once that grocery store finally opens, or you're curious how walkable commercial strips like Euclid Avenue tend to hold value over time, Thaddeus Blevins can walk you through it. Get Your Free Home Valuation and find out what your Chevy Chase property looks like in today's market.
