A Chevy Chase Summer, Between Grocery Stores

The block at Romany and Duke has been quiet in a particular way since 2015, when Kroger closed its long-running location there. For most of the last decade, residents built workarounds: a coffee run on Romany, a produce stop on the way home from work, a Saturday drive to the mega Kroger on Euclid for the real haul. This summer, that improvised rhythm is the neighborhood's actual identity, and it has a shelf life. Precast concrete panels are going up where the old store stood, and by the time the Chevy Chase Street Fair returns to Euclid on August 22, the block will look measurably different than it did in May.

The through line for the season is that Chevy Chase is between grocery stores, and the interim is more interesting than the endpoint.

What the crane on Romany actually means

A new Publix is coming to the Romany neighborhood, and a crane arrived around May 13 to start installing precast panels for the store's facade and parking decks, with construction requiring multiple 18-wheelers for roughly seven to eight weeks. If you live on Cochran, Fincastle, or the streets that funnel into Romany, that means dust, staging trucks, and, per the project manager quoted in the FOX 56 report, signed lane closures on Romany and Duke tied to the construction permits.

The store itself is designed for the block rather than the arterial. Developers said it will be about 40,000 square feet, nearly two times bigger than the existing space, yet nearly three times smaller than the city's other two Publix stores, giving it that community-type feel. The store will feature underground parking and elevators, which is unusual for a Lexington grocery and speaks to how tight the lot actually is.

The timeline matters if you are planning your fall. A public meeting last summer confirmed work would begin in four to six weeks from June 2025, and it was expected to take a total of 21 to 25 months before the store opens. Do that math against the May 2026 crane, and the practical read is straightforward: this is a 2027 store. The summer of 2026 is not the transition summer. It is the middle-of-construction summer.

That framing changes what a walk down Romany feels like right now. The site at 344 Romany Road has historically been home to a grocery store, most recently housing Kroger from 1995 to 2015. What is happening today is the loudest work the block has seen in a generation, and it is the last summer before the finish work starts to give the corner back its scale.

The Aug. 22 hinge

The Chevy Chase Street Fair has been the neighborhood's late-summer punctuation for two decades. This year it lands with unusual weight because it is the first one where the corner store is visibly rebuilding.

The annual Chevy Chase Street Fair returns on Aug. 22, from 4 to 10 p.m. on Euclid Avenue between Ashland Ave. and High St., with dozens of local vendors, live music, kids' activities, street food, craft beer and cocktails, and neighborhood camaraderie. If you have gone every year, treat this one as a benchmark. The frontage on Euclid you will walk past is the last full-form version you will see before the Publix opening reshuffles the retail gravity a few blocks north.

A practical suggestion for the day: start at the west end near Ashland, work east toward High, and cut back through Fincastle or Cochran on the walk home. It is the loop that puts you past the construction site under evening light, which is when the block reads its softest.

Where the neighborhood is eating while the block is under construction

The absence of a corner grocery has done something quietly generative to Romany and Euclid. It has pushed daily patterns onto the specialty stops, and it has pulled new operators in.

On Romany itself, Rise and Brine sits at 331 Romany Road next to Papa Diamond's Mustache and Suggins, which means the walk that used to end at Kroger now ends at a chicken biscuit or a coffee to go. Two doors down, A.P. Suggins keeps its role as the reliable dinner. Across the neighborhood spine, Chevy Chase Inn, which opened in 1932, remains Lexington's oldest bar and wallows in the fact that its biggest change over the years has been a new sign. Graeter's is still the raspberry chocolate chip ice cream stop. Wheeler's Pharmacy is still the fluorescent-lit counter breakfast when you want it fast.

The newer arrivals are the interesting story. Char on Ashland at 316 S. Ashland Ave. roasts its own coffee and has been rolling out lunch and dinner in a staggered approach, with $4.50 lattes daily from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. A few blocks east, The Obstinate Sons opened in Chevy Chase Place from Dexter Murray and Cannon Applegate, both formerly of Merrick Inn, with a plan to serve elevated comfort food and vintage bourbon. Entrees are priced in the $20 to $30 range, and hours are 4 to 11 p.m. daily, closed Monday.

The pattern to notice: Romany is holding its everyday character, Euclid is where the ambition is landing, and the Ashland Avenue spine between them has quietly become the connective tissue.

A short reference for the summer walking radius:

None of this is news to a resident, which is the point. The value of the summer is in noticing how the pieces are working while the corner is unbuilt.

Walkable summer beyond the block

Two of the season's larger draws sit inside a comfortable walk from most Chevy Chase addresses, and both are worth planning around.

The Woodland Art Fair, now in its 50th year and produced by the Lexington Art League and Lexington Parks & Recreation, features artists and makers selling handcrafted items ranging from ceramics and wood art to jewelry and photographs, along with food and beverage vendors, live music, and more in a shaded park setting. The 50th year is not a small anniversary. If you have taken the fair for granted, this is the one to walk to.

For weeknights, the free concert series carries the summer. Big Band and Jazz runs Tuesdays through Aug. 11 from 7 to 8:30 p.m., at Moondance Amphitheater through June 30 and Ecton Park from July 7 through Aug. 11. Ecton is the Chevy Chase leg. Bring a chair from your porch, and you are there in under fifteen minutes on foot from most of the neighborhood.

Ashland: The Henry Clay Estate remains the anchor at the northern edge, the reason the streets bend the way they do, and the greenspace that quietly sets Chevy Chase apart from the rest of the city's older neighborhoods. It is the walk when out-of-town family visits. It is also the walk when you want to remember that the neighborhood was carved out of the estate in the 1920s by a Clay descendant, and that the scale of the original acreage still reads in the tree canopy.

The block's next chapter

The Publix on Romany will change something specific about how the neighborhood functions. The corner will absorb foot traffic that has been dispersed across a decade of workarounds. The store's smaller footprint and underground parking suggest a design that wants to belong to the block rather than dominate it, which is the right instinct for this stretch. Whether it lives up to that is a 2027 question.

The summer of 2026 is the last one where the answer is unresolved, and the everyday texture of Chevy Chase is written by the improvisation rather than the plan. Walk Romany on a Tuesday morning. Sit outside at Char with the $4.50 latte. Take the long way home past the construction fence. Show up to the Street Fair on the 22nd and notice which vendors are new, which are still there, and which corners of Euclid feel different than they did last August. It is a good year to pay close attention.

If you find yourself thinking about what any of this means for a home on Cochran, Ridgeway, or one of the streets closer to Ashland Avenue, Bradford Queen with Bluegrass Sotheby's International Realty is glad to talk through it. Connect for a tailored market strategy and white-glove representation.