Brighton officials have set a pair of meetings on the Whole Foods Plaza proposal, both dealing with key environmental review documents.
The Town Board will hold a public hearing on the supplemental draft environmental impact statement at 7 p.m. May 10. (The town has posted all the documents pertaining to the development, including the latest EIS, at http://www.townofbrighton.org/DocumentCenter/Index/359.)
And it’s holding a workshop at 6:30 p.m. May 2, so the developer can make a video presentation of traffic data for the project. Both meetings will be at Brighton Town Hall, 2300 Elmwood Avenue.
The Daniele Family Companies wants to build a Whole Foods grocery store on Monroe Avenue, where the former Mario’s restaurant building stands. It also wants to build a standalone Starbucks and a retail plaza.
The Town Board accepted the developer’s environmental statement, which includes a traffic study, during its meeting last week. That was necessary before the town could set a public hearing on the highly detailed document. That’s not to say that town officials accept the statement’s conclusions, just that they believe the document is complete enough to warrant public scrutiny.
The board rejected a previous submission from the developer because it felt that while the document offered lots of data, it didn’t provide enough explanation of it. This time around, the submission contained the sort of analysis and interpretation the board wanted, says Supervisor Bill Moehle.
Residents of adjacent neighborhoods have pushed back hard on the proposal, which they say is simply too intense for the site and will likely make existing congestion on Monroe Avenue worse.
The developer has included plans for a traffic signal at the plaza entrance, turning restrictions, and consolidating nearby businesses’ driveways. It claims these will better control traffic in the development’s corridor while minimizing any additional congestion.
This article appears in Apr 19-25, 2017.
Whole Foods as they are are not price conscious. If they’re comin into this town, they’re in for a big surprise as far as food pricing. As alot of you know ,Wego’s has admitted their profit margin has been eroding. Price-Rite & Aldi’s gives them a bit of competition, price wise.
Whole Foods is a publicly traded entity & are doing a lot of restructuring from gen’l staples to organic foods, which is becoming more of a demand product and they know it. Kroger Foods is WF’s major competitor. Since Kroger is not here, be it Wego’s.
If this goes thru, watch Wego’s prices come down even more. As is, I’m not impressed with Wego’s pricing to begin with. Some argue, “the quality matters” and so it should to the individuals who care. Whole Foods IS the competition for Wego’s. This is the mkt. test for the competition comin into Rochester, how exciting! NEXT!
As Cera said, I’ve never understood the big draw to Wegmans. Do people like spending more when they shop? Using coupons (suzysaverwny is a good place to start if you’re new to the coupon/rebates game), and with Tops having actual sales, I manage to feed myself for appx $20 week. And this will probably garner a bunch of thumbs down, but here goes. No, it’s not crap food, and no I’m not obese…. As the argument seems to constantly go, “unhealthy food is cheaper than healthy food”. It’s really not if you understand unit pricing. I’m sure at a place like Whole Foods, yes, healthy food costs more, but do they even have unhealthy food there? lol. They cater to a niche crowd that’s willing to be ripped off.
The traffic in that area will not get any worse. People use that as a way to get to what’s already there. Another traffic light at the proposed entrance will allow for shoppers to exit both sides of the proposed entrances, which means faster exiting from the adjacent parcels. Will this back up traffic moving east & west, not as much as some are visualizing.
WF won’t be taking anything away from all current shops, etc., so there’s no damage control there. Environmental impact seems to be a key issue, which I am confident, will be resolved.
Cera- If your statement to the effect that, “The traffic in that area will not get any worse. People use that as a way to get to what’s already there” is correct then Whole Foods and the Danieles better throw in the towel right now.
The fact is that their success depends on generating a significant increase in traffic in the area of their store. Said traffic will include cars utilizing the north and south bound exits off 590, and those driving along Monroe Avenue from both the east and west. Even to the extent that some of that traffic already exists in the form of shoppers using 590 and Monroe Ave. to drive to Wegmans but who will instead drive to Whole foods, their diversion will cause existing traffic to concentrate in a new and more restricted geographic area than is the case today.
And certainly Whole Foods’ success will require them to attract far more shoppers then they can glean from Wegmans. It will require attracting thousands of new shoppers (and thousands of new vehicles) to the area, an area already rife with traffic bottlenecks today. The idea that a couple of parking lot entrances and exits, and a change in traffic light patterns can in any way mitigate the negative impact of Whole Foods traffic is a pipe dream.
If anyone on this board really thinks that people outside the immediate area is going to bum rush WF daily is sadly mistaken. If they’re going to Wego’s to begin with, that’s who you’re looking at, not anyone from the inner city, Victor, Webster, or even Irondiquoit.
You got loyalty to Wegman’s, then go there. Don’t give inane excuses why it shouldn’t be built. Yeah, “build it they will come”. That’s why Wego’s, Aldi’s, Tops has MULTIPLE locations, so it satisfies the immediate consumer. Please…
A few years ago at the intersection of Dewey Ave and Stone, a plaza was torn down to make way for an unneeded drug store. There was a beloved restaurant in the doomed plaza. Consequently the drug store was boycotted and failed. Just a thought.
I actually really like their proposal for consolidating the driveways across Monroe Ave from the proposed new plaza and hope people give this a chance. Seems like it would really clean up traffic through the area and eliminate the dangerous left hand turns through traffic people need to make from that center turning lane now.