Plan fuels Trader Joe’s speculation
Halfmoon OK’D site plan for unidentified grocer on Route 9 parcel
The town has approved a site plan for a small specialty grocery store at Halfmoon Crossing on Route 9, but what that store will be is a mystery.
The town Planning Board’s minutes say little about plans for the site, other than it is a specialty grocery store. The proposed site is 4.83 acres of vacant land next to Berkshire Bank.
“We have not been told anything related to who the tenant might be,” Richard Harris, the town’s building, planning and development coordinator said. “There has been speculation at the (Planning Board) meetings. One board member speculated Trader Joe’s, but there has been no confirmation.”
The applicant, he said, told the Planning Board it is under a confidentiality agreement with the building’s tenant and was not permitted to discuss.
“They have to disclose how many employees, hours of operation and a site plan, but we don’t need the exact name of the tenant,” Harris said. “We will find out at the latest when they come in for a building permit that will show the mechanics of the building. That’s when the cat will be out of the bag. They haven’t submitted that yet.”
The Albany Business Review reported last week that it would be a 12,500-square-foot grocery store, which would be smaller than most grocery stores but be approximately the size of the Trader Joe’s in Colonie. There is already an Aldi’s around the corner from the Halfmoon site as well as a nearby Market 32, Walmart and Target that sells groceries.
In the July 13 minutes, Halfmoon Planning Board members expressed concerns over issues like setbacks
and parking. The site plan calls for 120 parking spaces, according to the meeting minutes. An engineer representing the unnamed retailer estimated that peak traffic could see roughly that many visits per hour.
When the highly-anticipated Trader Joe’s on Wolf Road in Colonie was revealed in 2012, the information was able to be kept secret up until near the opening because the company was leasing space that already existed.
It appears the store in Halfmoon Crossing would also be a tenant of the developer. During an exchange recorded in the minutes of the July 13 town Planning Board meeting, board member
Richard Berkowitz was trying to tease out what kind of parking might be needed for this particular tenant.
“This was brought up at the last meeting, specifically one on Wolf Road, to take a look at specialty grocery stores and this far surpasses the parking,” the engineer said, referencing Trader Joe’s small parking lot in Colonie. The engineer, Chris Boyea, said they hadn’t looked at other specialty grocers in Latham or Saratoga Springs (which would be Fresh Market) as a comparison.
If Trader Joe’s were to do a second location in the region, it would be a first in upstate New York for the chain. Syracuse, Buffalo and Rochester all have single locations. The Halfmoon site would be 10 miles from the Colonie location — which is more common in larger markets. For example, there are Trader Joe’s in Larchmont and Scarsdale that are 5 miles apart in Westchester County.
Bohler Engineering, which is working on the Halfmoon site plan, has also represented another small grocer in site plans across the East Coast — Lidl discount grocery, a German-based chain. But those stores have been double the size, around 30,000 square feet, and the closest other locations are on Long Island and Staten Island.
The Halfmoon store, for now, remains a mystery even to town officials.
“We have heard a lot of rumors,” Harris said. “But no one has yet disclosed the name.”