Meijer, Redico appeal Plymouth Township denial of new store

Meijer Inc. and a developer are appealing Plymouth Township’s decision to scrap plans for a new store there.

The Wayne County Circuit Court lawsuit, which was filed last week by the Walker, Mich.-based retail giant as well as Southfield-based developer Redico LLC, asks the court to overturn the Planning Commission’s June decision that put the brakes on the proposal for a new 159,000-square-foot Meijer grocery store with a gas station at Five Mile and Beck roads. The complaint says the commission rejected the proposal through reasoning “not supported by competent, material and substantial evidence on the record.”

At that time, residents and non-residents alike expressed concerns about increased traffic, crime, disruption to the community’s character and the existence of other grocery options within a few miles of the proposed store, which would sit on 21.5 acres of land that Redico currently owns but would sell to Meijer.

In the complaint, which is before Judge Brian Sullivan, Meijer and Redico say the Planning Commission’s reasoning for denying the special land use request are either not rooted in reality — such as that the road infrastructure to support the development is lacking — or ambiguous.

The appeal says traffic concerns are “unsupported by the record” and that the Michigan International Technology Center Authority — which oversees the 800 acres of former state prison property that encompasses the Meijer site — plans on millions in improvements to the area’s road network. It also says the argument that the project is “not the intent of the MITC” is vague and without meaning.

Frank Guglielmi, senior director of corporate communications for Meijer, said in an emailed statement that the company believes the Planning Commission “mistakenly denied a request that met all the stated requirements for approval. An appeal is a common step in these situations, and we look forward to having the request reviewed by the Commission again in the near future.”

Township Supervisor Kurt Heise, who has supported the Meijer development, declined comment, citing pending litigation.

One of the project’s opponents, a local gas station owner, helped coordinate a campaign against it. An email requesting comment was sent on Tuesday to Joseph Xuereb of Livonia-based Xuereb Law Group PC, who represented the gas station owner, Ned Jarwich.

The campaign, Heise has previously told Crain’s, involved misinformation about the project as well as an effort “to bully and intimidate the planning commissioners,” including doxxing the chairman of the commission by sending his home phone number via text to campaign supporters and asking them to call him to sway his vote.

The broader development area, the MITC, consists of 800 acres across 15 different chunks of land north and south of Five Mile Road spanning between Napier Road to the west to just west of Beck Road to the east. It sits in both Plymouth and Northville townships, and a host of new uses for the former state prison site have cropped up over the years, including warehouses, hotel, retail and other properties.