Walmart is planning to convert its Riverhead store into a supercenter, the national retailer’s one-stop shopping destination, combining a full-service supermarket offering groceries, bakery, deli, meats and produce with a discount department store.
Walmart representatives met this morning with Riverhead Planning Department staff to discuss the company’s plans during a pre-submission conference at Riverhead Town Hall.
The footprint of the existing store, currently about 167,000 square feet including the outdoor garden center, would be expanded to about 180,000 square feet under the current plans, according to engineer Alek Kociski of Bohler Engineering.
The plan is to build an addition in the area presently occupied by the outdoor garden center and convert the tire center, which is not active, into retail space. The entire interior of the store will be redesigned to accommodate the new supermarket’s offerings, he said. The existing entrance will be moved east of its present location and a new, separate supermarket entrance will be constructed on the eastern end of the structure where the addition will be built.
The expansion will require the purchase of development rights to allow additional floor area in the shopping center, Riverhead Senior Planner Greg Bergman told the Walmart representatives. The developer in 2010 purchased 41 development rights to build the original center, to develop the Walmart store and the other buildings on the site. The number of development rights Walmart needs to purchase will have to be calculated and will depend on whether the original TDRs purchased for the Walmart development have been fully utilized.
The facade of the building will get a facelift as well, Kociski told planners. But it will retain the same brick and general appearance, he said.
Walmart would like to reconfigure parking so that there is more “front door” parking, Kociski said. That could be accomplished by removing some of the landscaped islands and rearranging others, he said. Kociski discussed the code requirements with planners, such as minimum landscaped areas and minimum number of trees. It’s a balancing act, he said. The approved site plan built out by the developer has “a lot of land-banked parking” that Walmart will convert into active parking, Kociski noted.
The expansion plan will require no variances, Walmart attorney Brian Kennedy said.
Suffolk County DPW may ask for a traffic study, Bergman said.
Since the supercenter will have a deli and a bakery, grease traps are needed, so that requires health department approval, Senior Planner Matt Charters said.
Source: RiverheadLOCAL
