Grocer Lidl pays nearly $8M for part of Roosevelt Blvd. center for Northeast Philly store
Lidl bought the 3½-acre property, where a Hooters restaurant once operated, in May.
German grocer Lidl has paid $7.8 million for a section of the Northeast Shopping Center on Roosevelt Boulevard at Welsh Road, where a Hooters restaurant once operated.
Lidl US Operations LLC bought the 3½-acre property at 9175 E. Roosevelt Blvd. from Federal Realty Investment Trust of Rockville, Md., in May, according to property records filed with the city.
Will Harwood, Lidl’s spokesman, confirmed plans for the store Wednesday, but had no additional details, including when it might open. The chain obtained a permit last week to demolish buildings at the site.
Lidl (rhymes with needle) opened its first stores in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina in June 2017, with shelves filled with merchandise from in-house labels priced to dramatically undercut competing grocers, a model pioneered in the United States by rival German supermarket chain Aldi.
Earlier this year, Lidl announced that it planned to open 25 new locations from South Carolina to New York by spring 2020, including one on East Butler Street near Aramingo Avenue in Port Richmond that would be its first in Philadelphia, with the aim of having more than 100 stores operating by the end of 2020.
Plans for the Northeast Philadelphia store were disclosed in March in an application for a state redevelopment grant, but the filing did not specify where that store would be.
Lidl has also acknowledged plans for a market on part of the South Philadelphia site along the Delaware River where a Foxwoods Casino was once proposed.
Among its roughly 70 currently operating stores, those closest to Philadelphia are in Ridley Township in Delaware County, Vineland, N.J., and Middletown, Del.
A location at Ridge Pike and Trooper Road in Lower Providence Township, Montgomery County, is also on its list of stores scheduled to open by next spring.