WHITEHALL — After years of rumors it might be on the way, discount grocery chain Aldi is officially heading to Whitehall, likely to open sometime in 2025.
The Whitehall Township planning commission gave approval at its regular meeting Wednesday to a site plan presented by civil engineer Erik Allore of Short Elliott Hendrickson (SEH) that will call for Aldi to take over the Colby Street space that once housed Plumb’s Valu-Rite Foods. The store, which briefly became Great Lakes Fresh Market after Plumb’s went out of business in February 2017, closed the following October and the space has been vacant ever since.
The commission’s vote was unanimous apart from chair Sharon Sikkenga, who was absent; commissioners told Allore a couple of times they found the proposal to be very thorough.
Allore was the only person at the meeting on Aldi’s behalf. He said there is no target date to open the store, but the company hopes to do so “in approximately a year.”
Rumors have swirled for years about Aldi potentially taking over the former Plumb’s spot, but township supervisor Arnie Erb said Wednesday was the first time a formal proposal was submitted for the site.
“I’ve heard rumors for the last two or three years,” Erb said. “There probably was talk before that, but this is the first time they’ve presented it. As far as the issues here for the planning commission, it was an existing (place), same (type of) business, so there really wasn’t much to approve. That’s why they did it pretty easily. It’s in an existing building, an existing parking lot.”
Commissioner Madge Kraai said after looking over the site plan, it looked very similar to the look of the Aldi currently located on Apple Avenue in Muskegon (coincidentally, that space also used to be occupied by a Plumb’s store).
Allore said, in response to a question about the parking lot, that the entire lot that’s linked to the site will be repaired and a “curb island” will be added to the lot in order to make traffic between the site and the nearby plaza that houses Colby’s Cafe and Brew, White Lake Nutrition and Luna’s Floral Market operate more smoothly.
Speculation about a new Aldi heated up in July when civil engineering firm Driesenga and Associates out of Holland posted on Facebook that the store would be coming to Whitehall. At the time, Aldi declined comment via email, and Driesenga accounting coordinator Tricia Henning said, “We don’t have anything more to say except we’re doing the geotechnical investigation for it. It’s kind of the preliminary stages of how we could improve the lot.” Henning added at the time that Driesenga first took on the project May 23.
Erb said now that Aldi has the commission’s approval, it is free to go forward with the project without seeking further approval from the township board.
“The next step is, the engineers are going to design the building, or the interior, the look of it,” Erb said. “It has to go through the building inspectors, the fire marshal, it has to go through all of that, and those are separate issues, but as far as the zoning permit and site plan, that’s done.
“If I owned the building, I wouldn’t like it to sit empty for that long, and it’s not good for the building either. That helps the area. I think everybody’s looking forward to it.”
Aldi, though, wasn’t the only matter brought before the commission Wednesday, as David Schultz presented a development proposal on behalf of Kyle Zack of Go West Investments, based in Salt Lake City. The commission took no action on the proposal at the meeting.
Though Zack is out west and wasn’t part of Wednesday’s meeting, he is a Whitehall grad, as Schultz pointed out during his presentation. Zack hopes to develop a 72-lot area on Durham Road opposite the township hall into a Planned Unit Development, or a PUD.
Schultz said a large part of the reason Zack was aiming for a PUD specifically was that it enables him to work directly with the township as opposed to Muskegon County proper.
Schultz said each lot would have its own well, as hooking into the city’s water system would add to the costs of the project, and that the PUD would have a community garbage program to limit blight. The PUD is in a similar vein as the Tannery Bay development in the city of Whitehall, though Schultz made pains to note that the houses would not be as “crammed in” as in that development, but it would be more of a classic subdivision feel. He added that he felt tightly packed lots didn’t fit the character of the township, though he conceded he might have been projecting his own biases.
One commissioner asked Schultz if the plan called for manufactured homes, noting attorney Robert Eklund submitted a proposal for the same site a few years ago that called for manufactured homes. Schultz replied it does not.
One man who lives next door to the currently empty lots wondered how the proposal might affect home values, noting each lot is smaller than his current 0.6 acres.
Erb said he would have to dive further into the proposal to know for sure, but he felt like it had promise.
“A new development draws more (buyers), and of course, they’re new, so the prices are up,” Erb said. “If (you have) a $100,000 house and these are all $180,000 houses, (your house’s value) all of a sudden is going to go up to maybe $120,000 to $130,000.”
Erb noted an earlier version of the proposal included multi-family homes, but this new one did not, likely because the use of multi-family homes would have required a special use permit and would’ve enabled the commission to put more constraints on the development.
