Giant to open grocery store at Owings Mills Mall site

Giant Food will open a grocery store at the Mill Station development at the site of the old Owings Mills Mall, the site’s developer announced Thursday. Giant’s store will occupy 66,450 square feet at Mill Station, a big-box retail center being developed by Kimco Realty. Other announced tenants include Costco, Lowe’s, HomeSense, Burlington, Marshalls and Five Below. Kimco said Mill Station is 90 percent leased. The stores will surround a “four-season landscaped lawn and outdoor gathering space,” according to Kimco. Costco is expected to open this fall, with more stores opening in 2019 on the former site of the mall, which closed in 2015. Giant Food officials did not respond to a request for comment. The grocery retailer already has stores in two nearby shopping centers, the New Town Village Center off Lakeside Drive and the Saint Thomas Center on Reisterstown Road. — year, forecasting another rate hike before year’s end and predicting that it will continue to tighten credit into 2020 to manage growth and inflation. The Fed lifted its short-term rate — a benchmark for many consumer and business loans — by a modest quarter-point to a range of 2 percent to 2.25 percent. It was its eighth hike since late 2015. The central bank also stuck with a previous forecast for three more rate hikes in 2019. In a statement after its latest policy meeting, the Fed dropped phrasing it had long used that characterized its policy as “accommodative” — that is, favoring low rates. The Fed had used variations of that pledge in the seven years that it kept its key rate at a record low near zero and over the past nearly three years in which it’s gradually tightened credit. By removing that language, the Fed may be signaling its resolve to keep raising rates. In a news conference after its meeting, though, Chairman Jerome Powell said the removal of the “accommodative” language did not amount to a policy change. “Our economy is strong,” Powell declared at the start of his news conference. “Growth is running at a healthy clip, unemployment is low. The number of people working is rising steadily, and wages are up. Inflation is low and stable, all of these are very good signs.”