Photo by Associated Press Middletown Burgess John Miller wrote in an e-mail that town officials are being proactive to keep “big-box” stores such as Wal-Mart and Target from coming in.

AC Jets LLC, a firm represented by Mackintosh Realty in Frederick , has asked Middletown to annex a parcel of land east of the Safeway. The company wants permission to build a 75,000-square-foot store on the land.

The proposed ordinance will be featured at a joint workshop Dec. 7 between the burgess, commissioners and Town Planning Commission at Middletown Municipal Center.

The maximum supermarket size allowed under the Middletown ordinance is 60,000 square feet. The Middletown Safeway is 38,000 square feet.

"The developer was stating that there's not much out there that can come in under 75,000 square feet," said Cynthia Unangst, town planner and zoning administrator.

"When the Safeway came in, there wasn't the breadth of products available now," she said. The developer told town officials that a Weis or Food Lion would require 75,000 square feet, she said.

The recently renovated Weis supermarket at Alternate U.S. 40 and Old Camp Road is 52,000 square feet. In contrast, Home Depot at Frederick Towne Mall is 101,000 square feet.

One of the newer supermarkets in Frederick County, the Giant Food off Md. 26, measures 85,000 square feet, Unangst said.

"I think the potential developer wants town officials to understand you can have a large retail store that doesn't look so large," she said.

Burgess John Miller wrote in an e-mail that town officials are being proactive to keep big-box stores such as Wal-Mart and Target from coming in.

"I don't believe we have the demand in Middletown for such big-box stores, but we also don't want the valley to be the destination for such stores either," Miller said.

Town officials are asking that the new store not be any larger than the 60,000 square feet now permitted, which Miller said is reasonable for the area.

Frederick and Hagerstown are not inconvenient for Middletown residents who need to buy more than what is offered locally, he said.

The Safeway in Middletown opened in the 1980s, but it closed after less than a year because the community didn't have the population to support the store at the time. Apple Valley, a small supermarket chain, reopened in the same location.

Corporate issues caused Apple Valley to shut down a few years later, and Safeway reopened in the early 1990s. By then, more development had occurred in and around Middletown , and the local population was enough to support the Safeway.