NORFOLK
In less than a month, more than 1,000 people have joined a grassroots social media movement to bring a grocery store downtown.
Residents who live in the center of the city say they need a closer place to buy milk, eggs and fresh produce. Today, most hop into a car and drive to Ghent to do their food shopping – a nuisance for those who picked their apartments and townhouses for a walkable lifestyle.
Though city officials say they’ve been trying to find a supermarket to replace the Farm Fresh that closed on Boush Street in 2011, few downtowners might know that Norfolk could have already snagged a grocer. It turned down an offer while pursuing other development opportunities.
Joe Mersel, senior vice president and partner at S.L. Nusbaum Realty Co., said he began working in early 2015 on a deal to bring a grocery store to the site of the Greyhound bus station at the corner of Monticello and Brambleton avenues. The plan would have involved a partnership with another property owner.
For the deal to work, Norfolk would have needed to sell or lease the bus station land to the developers. City officials have estimated the site’s value at $1.6 million.
But Mayor Kenny Alexander announced different plans this spring for the bus station: The city is donating the land to Tidewater Community College. The school wants to build a $20 million visual and culinary arts center at the site, bringing about 2,000 students into the neighborhood. The new campus is slated to open in January 2021.
“It was determined this was a better fit and more in line with the future plans of NEON,” Lori Crouch, a city spokeswoman, said, referring to the city’s arts district.
The failed deal highlights the complicated and sometimes competing interests weighed by the city when considering a grocery store proposal for a densely built area in the midst of revitalization.
Many national grocery chains have rigorous parking, square-footage, traffic and truck-loading demands that aren’t easy to fulfill in urban settings. The city, meanwhile, wants vibrant anchors – not cookie-cutter chains – along that section of the Brambleton corridor, which is considered a gateway into Norfolk.
Mersel wanted to build an 18,000-square-foot grocery store on the land. Aldi, a chain that is expanding in Hampton Roads, provided a letter of interest for the site in July 2015.
Mersel, an 85-year-old developer known for a long career building and selling shopping centers nationwide, said he was referred to Work Program Architects, a design firm that often collaborates with the city, for the project. He estimates that he spent about $5,000 on drawings.
The plans evolved from a traditional, suburban-style grocery store and parking lot to a building with a parking garage. Mersel said there were later versions that included a potential microbrewery and other mixed uses.
Despite lobbying City Council members and the economic development team, it never gained support. Barclay Winn, a former city councilman, recalls “a bunch” of different plans brought to them for consideration around that time that didn’t align with the city’s vision for the key property.
Mersel said that when he discussed the plan with Chuck Rigney, the city’s economic development director then, he was told Norfolk wasn’t interested.
“Chuck said, ‘The city wants a Taj Mahal,’ ” Mersel said.
Rigney, who is no longer in Norfolk and was named economic development director for Hampton last month, declined to comment.
Pete Decker III, a lawyer who was involved in the proposal because of some of the land he owned around the bus station, said though the deal didn’t pan out, he still believes downtown needs a grocer.
“They were floating around the possibility of something on the other side of Brambleton, which isn’t ideal because you’ve got to cross Brambleton,” he said. “But it’s pretty darn close, as opposed to driving all the way to Ghent.”
Crouch said even the developer’s revised plan wasn’t “economically feasible” because it would have required the city to finance the parking garage.
Josh Walls, director of real estate for Aldi, said the chain has had an interest in the Norfolk market for a while. The company has a plan for a store at Janaf Shopping Yard on North Military Highway. But downtown has always been tricky, said Walls, who used to oversee acquisitions in this region but is now in Arizona.
About three or four years ago, the chain looked at the former Farm Fresh spot on the ground level of the Harbor Heights condominium building. Walls said the tight truck-loading area, which might have required moving transformers, was a deterrent.
Aldi also was looking closely at the bus station, but Walls said there would have been “a lot of moving parts” to make it work.
“Downtown areas are always hard to figure out,” he said. “Ghent is a lot more attractive than downtown Norfolk.”
Though Ghent, a neighborhood just north of downtown, has more grocery competitors, Walls said the families in Ghent are larger, which tends to increase sale totals in checkout lanes.
Other developers have tried their hand at bringing a grocer to the downtown area. Frank “Buddy” Gadams, president of Marathon Development Group, said he looked into leasing a grocery store for an apartment project he’s planning at Boush Street and Olney Road. Gadams said in the cost analysis, building a parking garage and giving up three floors for a grocery store versus what he could make in rent on more apartment units just didn’t add up. Building anything over five stories already requires more expensive construction materials, he said.
And at the same time, online grocery delivery businesses and meal subscription services are becoming more popular with consumers living in urban areas.
Randi Ferraro, one of the two downtown residents spearheading the Wanted Urban Grocer movement, said she wasn’t aware of the bus station proposal. She and her collaborator, Linda Hester, say they aren’t trying to scrutinize or substitute the city’s recruitment efforts, just show there are a lot of enthusiastic customers for a neighborhood store.
The downtown population has grown more in the past couple of years, Ferraro said, and perhaps since the last time Aldi or other grocers took a look at the area.
“We’ve hit a button, and people are coming out of the woodwork to show their support,” Ferraro said. “Our timing might be right.”
Elisha Sauers, 757-222-3864, elisha.sauers@pilotonline.com
