The Benderson company of Buffalo, New York bought 6.7 acres on the edge of Greenfield roughly 20 years ago, behind the Mohawk Trail McDonald’s. At a July 6 state hearing, Benderson presented plans for a 19,482-square-foot Aldi’s grocery store with a 97-car parking lot.

The Massachusetts Environmental Protection Act (MEPA) requires developers to produce an “alternatives analysis” that seeks “to avoid or minimize damage to the environment to the greatest extent feasible.” As an “alternative,” Benderson presented a “reduced footprint” plan proposed 16 years ago, for a 13,250-square-foot CVS, with 81 parking spaces. This configuration had a 32% smaller building than Aldi’s, 17% smaller parking lot, 33% reduced traffic numbers, 40% less land altered, and 75% decreased impact on the wetland buffer. The CVS alternative minimized damage to the environment but Benderson abandoned that plan because it “ultimately did not proceed as a result of the economic downturn of 2007/2008.”

Sixteen years later, the developer found Aldi’s as a tenant. Instead of making Aldi’s fit the site, they made the site fit Aldi’s. I asked Benderson if they had approached Aldi’s to consider a smaller store? Benderson replied: “This is the smallest footprint Aldi’s is able to do.” The abutting McDonald’s building is one-third the size of Aldi’s. Wendy’s on Federal Street is one-eighth the footprint. Benderson had 16 years to find a retail use that would fit inside an acre or less — causing no impact on the wetlands and riverfront area.

Instead, the Aldi’s building sits in the middle of the 100-foot wetlands buffer zone, and the 200-foot Smead Brook riverfront area. Greenfield’s Wetlands Protection Ordinance also says applicants must “avoid or minimize alteration whenever feasible.” Benderson’sAldi’s does not avoid or minimize alteration. Aldi’s one-size-fits-all footprint is like squeezing a size 12 foot into a size 5 boot.

The state is building a new traffic signal at the Big Y/Route 2 entrance, just yards away from a second traffic signal at Colrain Road. Pedestrian crosswalks will also increase light-cycle delay. Total traffic will increase by 14%, to 17,660 car trips per day. That’s 3.22 million cars per year converging on this Mohawk Trail choke point — a roadway that had 47 car crashes over a 5-year study. Our Conservation Commission minutes described this roadway as having “motor vehicle accidents occurring at a higher rate than the state average along heavily traveled routes with hazardous intersections.” No traffic impact was projected for the 14,309-square-foot empty spaces at the Big Y plaza. Traffic going past homes on Robbins Road will increase 75%, to 1,750 cars in and out daily.

Benderson is giving Aldi’s a “solar ready” roof, but they told me “Aldi’s doesn’t do solar roofs.” Amazon, by contrast, has 400 renewable energy projects. Greenfield should object to two acres of concrete, and promote an energy-efficient building. Benderson rejected “low impact development,” like pervious surfaces or grass swales, saying none of it was feasible due to the limited scale of the site.

Enlarging the west side plaza will pull grocery sales from our downtown, from existing family, co-op, and chain grocers. Our downtown will suffer more “retail leakage.” A 1993 study by Land Use, Inc. noted that there was 9,406 square feet of grocery stores in Greenfield’s Central Business District, vs. 188,010 square feet of grocery stores in “outlying retail centers.” Ninety-five percent of our food store capacity was no longer in the downtown. Benderson claims Aldi’s will add only 25 jobs but how many grocery jobs will be lost elsewhere in our over-stored grocery trade area?

We continue to encourage developers to expand on the highway fringes of the city. On March 20, 2019, the Greenfield City Council voted 12-1, to gut our Major Development Review ordinance. Our traffic threshold for requiring an MDR was tripled from projects generating 1,000 car trips per day, to 3,000 car trips per day. The president of the City Council admitted: “I cannot tell you there was evidenced-based study on this.” Greenfield now has a higher traffic threshold than MEPA, which requires an environmental review for projects over 2,000 car trips daily. Another councilor said: “This will spur economic development.”

What we have “spurred” is higher sales leakage from our downtown. Ironically, the “grand compromise” vote in 2019 to bring more people downtown to our new library, actually made it easier for chain stores to suck shoppers from our central retail district.

Aldi’s goes to the Greenfield Planning Board next for a site plan review, with not even a special permit required.

Al Norman’s Pushback column appears every third Wednesday of the month. Comments can be shared at info@sprawl-busters.com.

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