'There just aren't enough stomachs.' Acme leaders push back on N. Canton Meijer project

NORTH CANTON – Acme Fresh Market leaders are speaking out against North Canton's plan to bring a Meijer Supercenter to the former Kmart property on North Main Street, directly across from an Acme store.

The Akron-based grocery chain has operated its North Canton store since 1979. At Monday night's City Council meeting, Acme President Nick Albrecht said he believes Meijer's presence will hurt surrounding businesses, including Marc's, Discount Drug Mart and Giant Eagle.

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"Acme, it will be hurt the most," Albrecht said. "We will suffer the largest loss of sales because of our proximity to the new Meijer."

The Stark County grocery scene is getting more crowded. In addition to the North Canton site, Meijer is opening a new supercenter on Thursday in neighboring Jackson Township and the company is working to open a store and gas station at the site of the Carnation City Mall in Alliance.

Michigan-based Meijer, which sells everything from groceries to home goods to electronics at its supercenters, started expanding into the Cleveland and Northeast Ohio markets several years ago. The company has nearly 50 stores in the Buckeye State.

What's next for Meijer in North Canton?

The North Canton Meijer deal is still under negotiation, without a clear timeline. However, the North Canton Community Improvement Corp. has entered into a contract to begin demolition on the Kmart site.

Albrecht was joined by his brother, Joe, president of Albrecht Inc., which owns the plaza that houses the North Canton Acme store. Joe Albrecht said he had hoped the city would make good on its original plans for the former Kmart site, which emphasized a mixed-use development with salaried jobs.

"Selling to Meijer and constructing new big box retail store is the easy way out," Joe Albrecht said. "It brings nothing new, nothing novel. It's just a simple repetition of the goods and services that are easily available throughout the community."

The property at the heart of the dispute has remained largely vacant since Kmart shuttered the store in February 2020. The seller initially took a bid from a private developer interested in bringing retail to the area, but the deal fell through, and the city opted to buy the property in April 2020 for $4.4 million.

The purchase was part of the city's "land-banking" initiative, which leaders have said allows the city to chart its own future rather than rely on developers to choose the function of land. The city's assumption is that the sale of the property will recoup their purchasing costs.

What has changed for the North Canton Kmart property since 2020?

At the time of the purchase, at-large council member Daryl Revoldt said the land would not be used for retail purposes, but rather as a headquarters or campus for an undisclosed company that would bring an estimated 200 salaried jobs. The city's stated goal was to build a larger income tax base to support city services.

"I can tell you grocery stores, as desirable as they are, when you have limited space is not the best use of scarce real estate," Revoldt told the Canton Repository in April 2020. "You're trying to place as many salaried jobs into the square footage that you have."

But plans changed through the COVID-19 pandemic, Revoldt said, and rather than pursue industries that saw their labor force working from home, the city opted to work with a Meijer offer that would bring in-person jobs and property tax revenue.

"We were making decisions in real time, based upon market considerations during COVID," Revoldt said. "The plan we had did not survive contact with the enemy: COVID."

Revoldt and the other council members at the meeting, as well as Mayor Stephan Wilder and Director for Administration Patrick De Orio, stated that while they appreciated the Albrechts' sentiments, they were looking forward to continuing with the Meijer deal as negotiations continue.

"What we hope with competition is that it leads to innovation, it causes you to reinvent yourself," De Orio said. "That innovation can lead to value for our residents, value in better pricing, more services, more goods."

The Albrechts expressed disappointment following the meeting, both saying that the city, unlike competition from a private developer, has the position of being able to enjoy greater control over the land's development and future, something they don't see happening with the current deal.

"This isn't an issue of competition," Nick Albrecht said. "This is about trying to talk about the things that we thought were important, which is a diverse tax base, a sustainable long-term tax base and then the simple math of there's not enough stomachs in North Canton to support all this retail."

Sam Zern can be reached at szern@cantonrep.com or 330-580-8322. You can also find her on Twitter at @sam_zern.

This article originally appeared on The Repository: North Canton's plan to bring Meijer store to Main Street concerns Acme