German grocery giant Lidl has acquired the site of an
aged industrial building in Port Richmond for what may be the expanding chain’s
first location in Philadelphia.
Lidl’s Arlington, Va.-based U.S. unit paid $2.88 million
for two parcels covering nearly four acres at 2270 and 2300 E. Butler St.,
near Aramingo Avenue, according to city
property records.
The discount-oriented retailer would be taking a bold
step by putting one of its first stores in a shopping district that other new
entrants to the region might consider too far off the beaten path, Lars
Kerstein, a vice president with brokerage Metro Commercial Real Estate, said in
an interview last week.
“They came in very aggressively with a lot of capital,
with the intention of buying the best real estate in every one of the nodes in
this entire area,” said Kerstein, who is not currently involved in any deals
involving Lidl. “They’re trying to blanket the region.”
The Butler Avenue site, near a Walmart Supercenter and a
ShopRite grocery store, also shows the company’s confidence that it can compete
with big grocers operating in the area,
Kerstein said.
Lidl Stiftung & Co. KG, a unit of the Schwarz Gruppe
grocery conglomerate, has been quietly identifying store locations along the
East Coast since establishing its U.S. headquarters in mid-2015. It aims to
eventually own and operate 150 stores in the eastern United States, according
to the German Embassy’s website.
Its first stores are expected to open by 2018, company
officials have said.
Philadelphia-area locations previously disclosed in news
reports include Warminster (at the site
of a former Pathmark supermarket on York Road); Ridley Township (a former
Pathmark site on MacDade Boulevard); and the Cumberland County, N.J., city of
Millville (on an underdeveloped lot near Union Crossing Boulevard and Second
Street).
The company’s website also includes a store-management
job listing in Burlington County, but no specific location is identified.
Also, Lidl is portrayed in an online marketing
presentation by brokerage MSC Retail as anchoring a retail-and-residential
project proposed by developer Bart Blatstein along the Delaware River in South
Philadelphia.
An earlier version of MSC's plan for the retail space at
the 21-acre site, where a Foxwoods casino had once been proposed, featured an
Aldi supermarket rather than a Lidl.
Property records show no transactions at the site
involving Lidl, which generally buys its own real estate rather than leasing
space from landlords.
Jason Bock, an MSC vice president marketing space at
Blatstein's property, did not respond to an email.
Lidl U.S. spokesman Will Harwood declined in an email to
discuss specific locations, but said the company was “actively preparing a
number of sites in the area, and throughout Pennsylvania.”
The company also opened a regional headquarters and
distribution center in Cecil County, Md., in August that will be capable of
serving multiple states, Harwood
said.
According to real estate criteria on its website, Lidl
plans to open stores of about 36,000 square feet. That's about half the size of
a standard supermarket, but around twice as big as a typical store operated by
fellow German-based deep-discounter Aldi. The companies are longtime rivals in
their native country.
Lidl is turning its attention to the Philadelphia area
after concentrating most of its real estate activity in the Southern states
where it plans to operate, especially North and South Carolina, said Robert
Gorland, a supermarket-site-selection specialist with Rahway, N.J.-based
Matthew P. Casey & Associates.
Lidl is expected to adopt a retail strategy similar to
Aldi, which sells its merchandise under its own private-label brand, Gorland
said.
The chain appears to be targeting consumers across the
socioeconomic spectrum, with locations in neighborhoods of varying wealth,
Gorland said. Its primary objective, he said, is just to be where the most
shoppers are.
“They like to be in retail hubs,” he said. “They like to
be in main thoroughfares with high traffic.”
Source: Philly.com
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