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Shoppers Food & Pharmacy plans to relocate its corporate headquarters and about 160 employees from Lanham to Bowie by October, the company and Bowie's mayor have confirmed.

Shoppers plans to move about 130 office and 30 field staff into the Maryland Science and Technology Center @ Melford business park at routes 301 and 50, according to Shoppers spokesman Steve Sylven.

"They liked the site, the amenities and the location," said Bowie Mayor G. Frederick Robinson. "They looked at a couple of areas, and this matched their needs and interests."

The business park is owned and managed by Woodlawn-based St. John Properties, one of Bowie's largest taxpayers.

"The building is already on the tax rolls, but if employees decided to become city residents, it would affect local businesses and restaurants," Robinson said.

Shoppers plans to move out of its space at 4600 Forbes Boulevard in Lanham, where it had been located for 20 years.

"Our lease at the Lanham location was up, and we were looking to upgrade our office," Sylven stated in an e-mail.

In answer to a question about whether the move saved the company money, he said the company does not disclose financial information related to its operations.

Shoppers surveyed its employees "to determine which improvements they felt were needed to create the best working environment possible," Sylven said about the new space, which will include a fitness center, café, outside walking path, new furniture and a full kitchen.

"The Bowie location provides the state-of-the-art facilities as well the amenities we were looking for in a new headquarters, in addition to being even closer to the heart of our operations," he wrote.

"Bowie is better located in that it lies more central to Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, which is where the majority of our stores sit," Sylven wrote. "It is also central to our employee base."

Shoppers is part of Minnesota-based SuperValu and operates more than 60 supermarkets in Maryland, Washington, D.C., and northern Virginia.

Within the Maryland Science and Technology Center@Melford business park, the company is leasing 25,000 square feet in the Melford Plaza II office building and 2,520 square feet on Telsa Drive which will serve as a central distribution site for sales and marketing materials to the company's stores.

Tenants in Melford Plaza I, which opened in 2006, include ITT Corporation and Plan B Technologies, said Al Cunniff, marketing director for St. John Properties, which owns and leases space in the complex.

Other tenants in Melford Plaza II, which opened in July 2009, are the Retina Group of Washington, Advanced Billing Concepts Inc. and USGC, Cunniff said.

"Considering the state of the economy, the [build-out of the Melford business park] is going reasonably well," said Robinson, who sent a letter to Shoppers last week welcoming the company to Bowie.

"They'll be a nice presence here," he said. "They're good corporate citizens, and we look forward to having them here."

vterhune@gazette.net