The Strange Legacy of the Rosslyn Safeway
Once billed as an ultra-modern grocery store, it was eventually swallowed by the Rosslyn concrete canyon. Along the way, it was also the location of a clandestine meeting of government operatives.
The site upon which the subterranean Safeway in Rosslyn now sits, 1525 Wilson Boulevard, began many years ago as a used car dealership. In the April 23, 1948 edition of the Fairfax Standard, one Gay O. Strawser, formerly of S & S Auto Sales and Service in Tysons Corner, announced he was the new sales manager at Arlington-Tucker Sales, Inc., 1525 Wilson Boulevard. By 1956, it had become a branch of Stewart Buick, founded by former Madison Avenue advertising executive Robert D. Stewart.1
Arlington-Tucker Sales, Inc. and Stewart Buick both rented from Catharine Delaney of Delaney Realty.2 Catharine’s brother, Paul, a local attorney, helped manage the business.
Safeway Moves In
In 1961, Safeway announced that it was closing its location at 1719 Wilson and moving into 1525. According to an ad in the Northern Virginia Sun, manager Jim Brent, of 2001 N. Monroe Street, and his “friendly staff” were ready to welcome shoppers to a “wonderful, new ultra-modern Safeway food store” with “spacious aisles, gleaming fixtures, and lots of free parking.”3
Brent had previously been the assistant manager at another Safeway on the corner of N. Harrison & Lee Highway (now Langston Boulevard), where Howard W. Snider was manager. At the new location, Brent was assisted in his managerial duties by assistant manager Richard E. Barrington, meat department manager Loren E. Johnston, and produce department manager Cecil R. Settle.
Over the next twenty years, the Safeway at 1525 Wilson was a relatively quiet spot, with the occasional cigarette theft or local interest survey on Metro completion. In the 1980s, however, things began to change.
Safeway Spooks
In 1980, the Vietnam War had been over for five years. Ronald Reagan was president. And covert operations were being resurrected after the Church and Pike Committee hearings, which aired the CIA’s dirty laundry before the American people; and the CIA directorship of Admiral Stansfield Turner, who fired over 800 employees of the Agency’s Directorate of Operations, its covert operations branch, in what was dubbed the “Halloween Massacre.”4
At the CIA, William Casey, Reagan’s appointee for Director of Central Intelligence, was a firm believer in covert operations, having cut his teeth as a member of the wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor to the CIA. Casey’s love for covert operations played out most infamously during the Iran-Contra scandal. Under Casey’s watch—and probably with his blessing, though he died before Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh could confirm this—proceeds from weapons sales to Iran, where the Reagan administration hoped to curry favor with more moderate elements of a post-Shah Iran and by extension free American hostages, were diverted to the bank accounts of Contra leaders in Nicaragua in violation of U.S. law.
Casey also blessed the U.S. Army’s creation of a secret unit called the Intelligence Support Activity, or simply “the Activity.” As an element of the newly formed Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), the Activity would provide “intelligence preparation of the battlefield” for JSOC’s combat elements—the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, commonly referred to as SEAL Team Six, and the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment - Delta, commonly referred to as Delta Force.
In 1981, the Activity approached James “Bo” Gritz (pronounced GRITES), a Green Beret and Vietnam veteran turned soldier of fortune, after learning of Gritz’ alleged POW sightings in Laos. While in Gritz’ telling, the Activity was “handling” him in the way a CIA case officer handles a source, the ISA saw their relationship differently. As Michael Smith wrote in Killer Elite, an unauthorized biography of the Activity:
“Several members of the [Activity] knew of Gritz and did not hold him in high esteem. It was decided that we needed to preclude him from blowing a potential operation with a premature solo effort [to rescue the POWs], secondly, we were extremely interested in Gritz’s alleged numerous contacts in the region.”
Nevertheless, an ISA agent met Gritz’ wife, Claudia, codenamed “Little Bear” in “a specified aisle in the Rosslyn suburb Safeway” to hand over material for an intelligence-gathering mission to Laos.5 Here, again, different accounts emerge of what was handed over. According to Gritz, after “an exchange of signs and countersigns”, the ISA agent handed over a grocery sack full of money and false passports. The ISA, however, denies ever providing Gritz with false documents, and claimed they were simply “buy[ing] time in the hope that [Gritz] would identify his contacts.”6
Safeway Goes Subterranean
In the mid-1980s, 1525 Wilson was acquired by 1525 Wilson Boulevard Associates Limited Partnership, c/o The Kaempfer Company, later KMSI.7 The Kaempfer Company, a real estate development and management company, was founded in 1977 by J.W. “Joey” Kaempfer. In the words of a Washington Post profile, Kaempfer was a “mercurial entrepreneur with an aggressive attitude toward risk[.]”
In 1984, the Post reported that the Arlington County Board approved the construction of a 12-story office building in Rosslyn by the Kaempfer Company, provided the company include a grocery store at ground level. One year later, the Kaempfer Company broke ground on its $42 million office building, which, when completed, would feature a Safeway “one story below ground.”
In 1987, the Kaempfer Company finished construction and the new underground Safeway opened soon after. As part of the unveiling of the new building, Kaempfer commissioned the creation of a sculpture by Canadian painter Miriam Schapiro, whose painting “Pas de Deux” served as inspiration for the painted aluminum duo, “Anna and David.” However, there was another reason for the sculpture’s unveiling: its bright colors helped offset the bland palette of what was derisively being called Rosslyn’s “concrete canyon.”
As evidenced by the above clipping, the drive for profit over prettiness left Rosslyn looking drab (“Drab Rosslyn Needs a Little Spice”), a “cement city” rather than the Gateway to Arlington it was supposed to represent. Conversely, when the nonprofit Ballston Partnership got together in 1987 to discuss revitalizing their neighborhood, they focused on that which would be “aesthetically pleasing, varied, and dynamic.” As one Arlington County staff member put it, “[t]hey don’t want Rosslyn to happen again.”8
The claustrophobia engendered by living in the concrete canyon extended to Rosslyn’s businesses as well, none more so than the Rosslyn Safeway. Consider these reviews on the underground grocery store:
As you descend into the underground, cavernous concrete structure (stark brutalism by even Rosslyn's humble standards), you are met with intense yellow signs for Shingles vaccines all over the place. Whoever considered that to be a major selling point for the average yuppie Arlington customer may want to rethink that strategy [from the Ode Street Tribune].
I hate this store. The couple of times I've gone in there, it feels like the whole thing is going to collapse upon itself at any moment. So claustrophobic [from ARLNow].
As I read these, I’m reminded of the meeting between “Little Bear” and the ISA agent, whose clandestine meeting would have been much more at home in the claustrophobia of the underground aisles.
Kaempfer Says Goodbye
In 2003, the Kaempfer Company was acquired by New Jersey-based Vornado Realty Trust for $29.8 million.9 Mr. Kaempfer had long since moved to Europe to serve as chair of the McArthurGlen Group, “Europe's largest owner, developer and manager of designer outlets”, which he founded in 1993.
In 2019, the Rosslyn Safeway underwent major renovations, prompting more residents to heap abuse on the grocery store in the ARLNow comments:
That Safeway was "aging" ten years ago. One of the worst grocery stores in the DC area.
It looked stale 35 years ago when I first shopped there.
It's the Highlander Motel of grocery stores [presumably a reference to the since-demolished Highlander Motel on Wilson Boulevard, which boasted a 3.4 star average based on 15 reviews on Yelp, and on whose former site sits yet another CVS].
In 2024, 1525 Wilson, which had previously been purchased by The Meridian Group for $113 million in 2019, was sold to DCC White River LLC in March 2024 for a third of that.10 According to corporation filings, DCC White River has a principal office address in Englewood, Colorado with Nate Cann as its primary contact. The “DCC” stands for “Dry Creek Capital”, as in Dry Creek Capital Partners, “a platform for investments in debt obligations of both distressed commercial real estate and company assets up to $50 million” where Nate Cann, “a veteran of both the turnaround and distressed debt industries”, serves as managing partner.
Today, Safeway’s neighbors at 1525 Wilson include Airbus U.S. Space & Defense, Identiv (a security system company), and the Arlington Asylum Office of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (formerly INS).
Stewart was intimately familiar with the Buick line of automobiles, having handled advertising for the company “on a national level” for 16 years. See “From Agency to Buick Dealer.”
According to an obituary for Catharine, Delaney Realty was “[f]or over 60 years…one of Alexandria’s few woman owned businesses[.]”
The term “Halloween Massacre” was also used to refer to a shakeup in President Ford’s cabinet in 1975. See “A Halloween Massacre at the White House.” Just two years prior, another “massacre” had taken place when President Nixon ordered his Attorney General, Elliot Richardson, and Deputy Attorney General, William Ruckelshaus, to fire Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. Both men refused and resigned in protest, leaving the task to Solicitor General Robert Bork.
It’s interesting the ISA would choose the “spacious aisles” of the Rosslyn Safeway for a clandestine meeting, but perhaps they thought a grocery store was so innocuous as to be completely above suspicion. Famously, the parking garage where Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward met with his source, “Deepthroat” (later revealed to be FBI Deputy Director Mark Felt), is right down the road from the Rosslyn Safeway, and, in this author’s opinion, would have made a much better clandestine meeting site.
Needless to say, Gritz never found any POWs, nor did the ISA. As is more commonly known now, the presence of POWs in Indochina after the end of the Vietnam War was a fiction invented by the Nixon administration to harden American public opinion against North Vietnam. Historian Rick Perlstein wrote an excellent article on the topic for The Nation. See “The Enduring Cult of the Vietnam ‘Missing in Action.’”
There is scant information on KMSI, though The Payphone Project, a fascinating database of old payphone locations compiled by sorabji, reports that a payphone with number (202) 296-7098, once existed at KMSI, 1150 18th St NW.
For those who want more information on the deal, check out “Kaempfer Sold to N.J. Trust.”
The sales code in the Arlington County property records is listed as “1-Foreclosure, Auction, Bankrupty.” Perhaps the more real estate savvy of you can figure out whether this means The Meridian Group went bankrupt, thus enabling DCC White River to acquire 1525 Wilson for a song.