Meijer pulls plans for Franklin store

Franklin - A Meijer official today informed Mayor Tom Taylor that the company is no longer pursuing a 190,000-square-foot store at the southwest corner of Highway 100 and Loomis Road.

Taylor told NOW Newspapers that Mike Flickinger, director of real estate for Meijer, called to inform him of the decision. He noted that the decision centered on the company's difficulty in getting approval from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to build on or near the site's wetlands.

The Wisconsin Department of Transportation also had some difficulty with the entrance and exit traffic flow plan of the site, though that concern reportedly had been cleared in recent months.

"Meijer is a quality store and they tried to come up to the standards that we as a city had established for architecture, landscaping and the location of the docks," Taylor said.

He noted that the potential flooding and traffic issues were problematic throughout the process.

Frank Guglielmi, a Meijer spokesman, also noted that the contract with the current owner of the land had expired.

The company is in negotiations with neighboring Oak Creek for a similarly sized store in the new Drexel Town Square on the former Delphi site at Howell and Drexel avenues.