The power centre in St. Jacobs would see the addition of a Value Village location and a rearrangement of the Walmart store to allow for more grocery items under a plan introduced this week at Woolwich council.
To proceed, the projects require the township to amend both its Official Plan and the property’s zoning.
While a Value Village store is a permitted use, current restrictions mean it couldn’t be built until the second phase of the entire power centre project. At the Walmart location, the grocery component is restricted to 6,000 square feet inside the 134,000 sq. ft. building, so changes are necessary to allow that area to expand to 25,000 sq. ft.
The details of King/86 Developments’ plan were unveiled at Tuesday night’s public meeting. Dan Kennaley, Woolwich’s director of engineering and planning, said the developer had submitted reports, including market studies, backing the suitability of the proposed changes.
For Ed Fothergill of Fothergill Planning & Development, a planning consultant for operator SmartCentres, the amendments sought by the company reflect changes in the market.
“It’s important to react to these changes, to keep up.”
At the Walmart store, the larger grocery section is in keeping with the offerings at other Walmart locations, driven by market demand, just as grocery chains are continually adding general merchandise to their locations, he explained.
The addition of the Value Village store now reflects slower-than-expected growth at the power centre, he added. Phase one, which covers 230,000 square feet of the 305,000-sq.-ft. project, was anticipated to be built out years earlier. Currently, 157,000 sq. ft. of space has been built. The addition of a 24,500-sq.-ft. building would bring phase one to about 80 per cent complete.
SmartCentres has identified the delay in getting the at-one-time-controversial development off the ground as a factor in the slower growth there. Over the years of delay, prominent would-be tenants found other locations to build or lease space, leaving fewer potential clients once the St. Jacobs centre got rolling.
“The whole project has slowed down,” said Fothergill.
With the construction of the Value Village store, the developer expects a boost in overall business – “new investment … brings new investment.”
While the stockyards area is the subject of an ongoing secondary planning review by the township, the changes proposed by the developer are “minor enough” not to have any impact on that process, Kennaley said in response to a question from Coun. Mark Bauman.
Coun. Allan Poffenroth, meanwhile, raised the possibility of an expanded grocery area at the Walmart drawing the attention of grocery chains in Waterloo, in turn putting pressure on the city to withhold cross-border water and sewage services.
Kennaley said he would expect the city to stick with current agreements, dealing with servicing as a technical issue, not a political one. Fothergill noted the changes would have no impact on the overall servicing levels for the site agreed to at the beginning, as the footprint of the site would not change.
As well, marketing studies have shown there would be no negative impacts on existing retail areas in Waterloo or Woolwich, he added.
Aside from the developer, nobody else addressed the issue at the meeting, nor were there any members of the public in the gallery, a far cry from the often-charged public meetings that greeted the Walmart-anchored project when it was still on the drawing board in the late-1990s.
Tuesday’s meeting was for information and input purposes only. A decision on the applications will come some months down the road after planning staff have reviewed the documentation and compiled a recommendation for council.
