Meijer Chain Puts Wauwatosa Store in Its Plans

A large, vacant property in Wauwatosa's northwest industrial corridor will get a makeover as a new supercenter store if a Michigan company has its way.

Meijer Inc., which owns nearly 200 combination supermarket and discount merchandise stores in the upper Midwest, has applied for permitting to build on the former Stroh Die Casting property at 11123 W. Burleigh St., according to city planner Jennifer Ferguson.

The store would occupy 157,000 square feet on the site, Ferguson said.

Stroh Die Casting left Wauwatosa in 2009 and the property has been unoccupied since. It lies just south of the former Roundy's Inc. distribution center now commonly known as the Burleigh Triangle.

The proposal is part of a major move by Meijer into the Milwaukee area. The company has proposals in place for stores in Grafton and Franklin as well, according to a report in Thursday's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

The newspaper reports that Meijer has been given final zoning approval for the Grafton site and preliminary approval in Franklin pending a decision on a natural resources exception for mitigating a loss of wetland there.

The Wauwatosa proposal will introduced before the Plan Commission when it meets at 7 p.m. Monday, Ferguson said.

Meijer, based in Grand Rapids, MI, has about half its current stores in that state and the rest spread through Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky. On its website, Meijer bills itself as "the original supercenter," saying in its company history that it founded the concept of an all-encompassing retail and grocery discount store 50 years ago.

Ferguson said she did not know whether a request for city funding assistance would be part of the Meijer proposal.

The city has been working with HSA Commercial Real Estate of Chicago on creating a tax incremental financing district for its proposed $45 million redevelopment of the Burleigh Triangle.

That development, for a mostly retail center called "The Mayfair Collection," as HSA and the city continue negotiations on TIF support.