"Meet me at the corner of Wawa and Starbucks," is what someone will probably say about the intersection of 22nd & South, sometime in 2018.
Yes folks, South Street West has gone corporate as Starbucks opened its doors a couple days ago on the northwest corner of 22nd & South, in a space that was long occupied by the restaurant L2. We first told you about this possibility back in 2014, only to see the plans seemingly fall through before pulling a Lazarus about a year ago (is "pulling a Lazarus" even a saying?). The renovation effort has been thorough for this building, and it looks better today than it's looked in decades. We took a peek inside the Starbucks and, well, it looks like a Starbucks, but a shiny new one, at least. We wanted to snap some photos of the interior but it was so crowded that it felt a little weird.
Did South Street West really need another coffee shop? We'd think that the owners of Ants Pants Cafe and Lava, both located within a block of the new Starbucks, would argue that it didn't, as would the owners of, ahem, other coffee shops located a little farther away. Still, Starbucks has a strong reputation for picking locations that will be successful and we have a little doubt they'll find a way to make it work at this location. As for the locally owned businesses nearby, things definitely just got a little tougher.
But hey, them's the breaks in big bad corporate America. And as we said, this intersection is the corporatest on South Street West. Across the street, you may remember a CVS was built back in 2012, and with the addition of the Starbucks, this intersection is now home to two large corporations. And there's a third on the way.
Just a couple months ago we mentioned that Omega Pizza was getting demolished on the northeast corner of 22nd and South, and as we told you for the last half year or so, Alterra Property Group is planning a large mixed use building on the corner in place of Omega Pizza which will have 29 apartments and a Wawa on the first floor. While we love ourselves a delicious Wawa hoagie and appreciate that Wawa is a local company, it still isn't the same thing as a local small business and it will give a very different vibe to the commercial corridor.
All of this development of course begs the question of what will happen on the south west corner. My Thai has been operating out of a space there for as long as we can remember, but we have to wonder, will Olive Garden come calling? Perhaps a Wegmans?
Oh, the mind reels at the possibilities.