For years the buzz has been that Crozet was about to get a grocery store, first a Food Lion and more recently a Harris Teeter.

Yesterday Great Eastern Management Company confirmed that it’s breaking ground September 21 for a Harris Teeter on U.S. 250 west beside Blue Ridge Builders Supply and across from the Clover Lawn Shopping Center.

The store is expected to open in late 2008 or early 2009, and it will be joined by 11,000 square feet of retail space suitable for small shops in the new Blue Ridge Shopping Center beside the Builders Supply. The parcel has room for a restaurant or bank as well.

Great Eastern has owned the property since at least 1990, estimates Andrew Boninti with CB Richard Ellis, the brokerage firm that negotiated the lease. Principals Chuck Rotgin and Don Wagner, who developed Seminole Square and Pantops shopping centers, are no strangers to lengthy development projects that can take decades, such as North Pointe on U.S. 29 north past the airport.

When the company first considered adding a grocery store to Crozet all those years ago, it was going to be a Food Lion, says Boninti. But as Crozet’s demographics have changed with more upscale developments like Old Trail, Grayrock, and Waylands Grant, the company opted for a Harris Teeter instead.