Whole Foods

We had a new Whole Foods store open up near us, down in Columbia this past week.  Middle son is working across the street from the store, and since I have been driving him to and from work, I decided I would stop by on opening day to see what the store looks like.

First of all, I do need to say how much I love and appreciate the fact that Whole Foods will move into an existing building and retro fit their building to meet the needs of the building.  The whole foods at Mount Washington is built inside of an old textile mill along the Jones Falls.

This location was designed by Frank Gehry and was, for many years, the headquarters for the Rouse Corporation.  In the last decade, the Rouse corporation was sold to another developer, and they left the Columbia building and moved elsewhere.

Whole Foods is now in this gorgeous piece of architecture.  Lovely, beautiful, airy building.  If you're not familiar with Frank Gehry's work, take a look at this website to see some of what he has designed over the years:  http://architecture.about.com/od/greatbuildings/ig/Buildings-by-Frank-Gehry/.  When I first began working in the library world, I worked in a library that had been designed by him.  I loved that building!

The building itself is marvelous, the store is amazing.  It is a very large store, with many more offerings than I had seen in their other locations.  The windows overlooking the lake add a certain something to the store.  The store does have a certain advantage in that it is located directly on the Columbia waterfront.  They have added a seating/dining area for patrons overlooking the waterfront and out on the balcony over the lake.

Whole Foods is known for their environmentally friendly approach to food, and prides itself on the goodness of their food, as well as the organic nature of much of their food, their energy saving measures in store, etc.

And yet... when I was walking through the parking lot this week, I was struck by the number of giant SUV's, each filled with one person, rushing to be at the front of the line for a free tote bag.  Yep, giant gas guzzling SUV's, everywhere you looked, even in the spot reserved for electric cars, with the electric charging station.  My poor little Honda Civic was lost in that lot full of monster cars.