Public Hearing Tuesday on Kroger's Plan for Marketplace Store

Supermarket retail giant Kroger wants to put a store in Royal Oak and some residents aren’t thrilled with the announcement.

Kroger announced its plans more than three years after the Royal Oak Planning Commission turned down another request.

The proposed store, which would occupy the vacant St. Dennis Catholic Church property, has been given preliminary approval by the Planning Commission and comes up again Tuesday in a public hearing on a rezoning request to reclassify the property as a Planned Unit Development. The property is currently zoned for for single- and multiple-family development.

The site plan will also be discussed at the meeting, at 7:30 p.m. at City Hall, 211 S Williams St.

““They have a pretty good site plan,” Mayor Jim Ellison, who also chairs the city Planning Commission, told The (Royal Oak) Daily Tribune.

The city has offered suggestions to be incorporated in the plan regarding traffic flow and buffer zones between the proposed store and nearby residential neighbors.

The changes may not be enough to satisfy neighbors.

Angela Toth, whose residence abuts the area of the site that would be a turnaround for diesel delivery trucks, told WXYZ-TV she opposes the development. A retention pond might also attract mosquitoes, she said.

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The store – a Marketplace store selling apparel, shoes, home goods, toys, and a Starbucks – would be similar to one built last year in Shelby Township, the first in the state, and built at a cost of $22 million.

“We’re just not happy because it’s going to deter (from the neighborhood),” Toth said, adding that even if a Kroger Marketplace nearby, she would reluctant to change her allegiance from Meijer. where she and her husband have shopped for many years, unless she could be sure of getting items the family regularly uses.

The proposal comes more than three years after the Planning Commission scuttled Kroger’s proposal to build a downtown store

With parking needs, the St. Dennis property is a better fit, Ellison said. The 2011 proposal called for a large parking lot fronting Main Street, and the downtown property – a vacant Fresard auto dealership just north of 11 Mile – has since been approved for a six-story Hyatt hotel and mixed-use development.

Kroger operates a store at 13 Mile and Woodward, but it’s on the Northwood Shopping Center land owned by Beaumont Hospital, which needs it for expansion.

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