Commission approves signs for Trader Joe’s

Trader Joe’s officially put its name on Germantown Tuesday evening as the city’s Design Review Commission approved a sign package for the longawaited grocery chain.

The California-based grocer still hasn’t announced an opening date, or even given official confirmation of a Germantown store, but approving signs bearing the familiar Trader Joe’s name and colors is the most tangible evidence yet of the impending arrival.

“You would think they would be updating their website soon with a Germantown location,” Alderman Forrest Owens, the Board of Aldermen liaison to the DRC, said with a smile after the vote.

No Trader Joe’s representatives were in the chamber for the anticlimactic vote, which came as part of the consent agenda without discussion.

Owens said no changes were made in executive session, and Trader Joe’s was granted the signage requested even though it was a little larger than allowed by guidelines.

He said approving the signs is the final step in the legislative approval process. Trader Joe’s has already received its beer permit and met other requirements that would need city approval.

The DRC went along with a sign package request that calls for three signs. The main sign on the front, or west-facing side, of the building will be red and located above the main entrance. A smaller sign on the north wall, where there is no entrance, also would be red. The third sign, a ground-mounted Germantown Collection shopping center sign, will be off-white.

The request was not consistent with the shopping center’s existing sign policy in terms of total size for signs and the font of the lettering.

Trader Joe’s will still need to get a permit from the Memphis-Shelby County Office of Code Enforcement before installing the signs.

The store is expected to anchor the old Kroger building at 2130 Exeter in the Germantown Collection shopping center. The building, where renovation is well under way, has bays for two more businesses.

Last month, the DRC approved design changes for a retail space adjacent to the Trader Joe’s space. The proposed tenant of the adjacent space has not been identified. The DRC approved a request from 2130 Exeter Holdings LLC to change the exterior facade of the adjacent space to allow white bricks, white metal trim and white canopies.

The unidentified tenant would occupy the middle of three retail bays in the existing building. Trader Joe’s would occupy the largest space at the northern end, with the unidentified tenant in the middle, and a retail bay for a third yetto-be-named tenant at the south end.

A development contract approved by the Board of Aldermen in December also calls for a separate 7,000-square-foot building on the property.