LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
Musings from Midway |
by Alex Yearley |
As a resident of that wonderfully suburban neighborhood of Midwaybetween Rehoboth and LewesI would like to give our out-of-town readers a heads up on what to expect on that first spring trip down to the shore. Things look very different as you enter Rehoboth from the north. Ill start at Five Pointswhere Route 9 from Georgetown meets Route 1. You cannot miss seeing it, but getting to it is another problem. I am talking about the new Lowes Home Improvement Warehouse at Five Points. Its enormous. I stopped in recently to pick up a few things and was pleased to find how easy it was to locate them. Plus there were no lines at the checkout counters. Of course, I fell victim to the Girl Scout cookie sellers just outside the door. Actually the cookies cost more than the stuff from Lowes. Now about getting to the store. There is no entrance from Route 1. Do not try to cut through the Wright Chrysler/Plymouth, it will get you no where. From the north, turn right on Route 9, then do an immediate left at the next light onto Route 1-D. From Rehoboth turn left on Road 276 (Shady Rd) by the Grand Slam then right at Route 1-D to Lowes. You can get back to town by retracing your steps and will avoid the two stoplights at Five Points. Below Lowes things look about the same unless you notice the new Savannah West Apartments that were built last year in the woods next to Troop 7. The old Lowes sits quietly with no new tenant as yet. Down at the next light, Postal Road, the new Bob Evans restaurant opened before the holidays. Expect a line for late weekend breakfasts. You should be okay before 9 a.m. Just across Postal Rd. from Bob Evans rises the new Pelican Square. This will be our first new non-outlet shopping center in a while. It is the home of the new larger Super Fresh which opens March 12 and the areas first Marshalls and Staples. The new Staples opened in late February nicely filling a gap in local retailing. Sussex County is getting a little smarter now, requiring that sidewalks be installed with all new Route 1 construction. You can walk from Pelican Square to the neighboring Outlet Center, and there is even a parking lot connection between the two centers. At the far end of the block at Route 24, Bills Sport Shop has been torn down to make way for a new McDonalds to replace the old McDs next door. Bills has relocated about a mile north. Down at Rehoboth Mall, the Super Fresh closed on March 11 and the Pizza Hut is expanding. On the northbound side of the highway just above K-Mart is a new addition to Lighthouse Plaza that is not quite finished. Its largest tenant will be Giant Foods new Super G Supermarket. It is scheduled to open on March 20. Rehoboth will gain both a new player in the local grocery market but will also get the first true supermarket on the east side of the road since the old A & P at the BayMart Plaza closed. Just a little north of the Super G is Cocos Diner. The new restaurant opened on February 21 and does not plan to close its doors on weekends. This could be just the spot for late night noshing after a long evening at the Renegade. Cocos is exactly 1.4 miles north of the Renegade and will serve breakfast all day and night long. Up at Midway Shopping Center, the new theater complex is now under roof, but will not open until mid-May, just in time for the new Star Wars flick. Route One itself has been the hot topic in our local papers this winter. DelDOT has just published a long-term master plan for traffic in the Midway to Rehoboth area. Basically they have come to the realization that having only one access road for both local and tourist traffic is not going to work. They want to construct secondary roads parallel to Route 1 to permit local access to shopping centers on Route 1 from the back. Also in the plan is a third lane for southbound Route 1 between Five Points and Route 24. Do not expect any changes this year except for the new left turn lane being added in front of Midway Shopping Center to facilitate access to Pelican Square with the new Super Fresh. That construction is bottling up traffic in Midway right now but will be finished before the season. Also planned is a new Park and Ride at Five Points and a network of bicycle paths to keep willing souls out of their cars altogether. We look forward to the summer season with a few more offerings for our visitors and perhaps a little less traffic down the road. I remember well; stocking up here on the weekend for the rest of the week in the city. Now with Marshalls, Staples, Lowes and two new supermarkets, stocking up in tax-free Delaware will be easier than ever. Alex Yearley is the manager of Community Pride Financial Advisors on Baltimore Ave. in Rehoboth and commutes down Route 1 from Midway daily. His musing on life north of town will appear when he does not feel like producing a financial column. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 9, No. 2, March 12, 1999 |