Related Content
-
Lost clothes found: Happy reunion for spurned dry cleaning customers
Chances are you've never waited quite this long to pick up your dry cleaning. A local dry cleaning store owner who opened a new shop at the Colonnade shopping center on Eisenhower Parkway in Ann ...
- Boy Scout troop party
- Ypsilanti Courier: Ypsilanti charter school's contract won't be renewed
The ALDI supermarket on Dexter Road near the intersection of North Maple Road will open Nov. 20. | Photo by Dan Meisler
The chain offers deep discounts on food staples by purchasing products straight from manufacturers and cutting costs on everything from grocery carts to shopping bags.
Its first Washtenaw County store will be on Dexter Road near Maple Road, on a site that was previously contaminated with pollution from a gas station and auto repair shop.
The store will be close to Plum Market, Kmart and Arbor Farms, but David Kapusansky, ALDI's director of real estate in Michigan, said ALDI chose the location because it is in a corridor where people do their everyday shopping.
"We wanted to be within a retail strip," he said.
Kapusansky also said the relatively low cost of the real estate -- for Ann Arbor, that is -- contributed to the site location.
"When we're trying to provide value for our customers, the real estate affordability drove a lot of it," he said.
City records show the one-acre plot of land was purchased by ALDI for $750,000 in November 2008. According to the CPIX commercial real estate database, there are only two similarly sized properties for sale in the city of Ann Arbor: the old Ann Arbor News building, which contains a 54,000-square-foot, Albert Kahn-designed building on 1.47 acres and carries an asking price of $9.3 million, and an office complex on South Industrial.
ALDI, which is run by an independent American subsidiary of a German company, uses a variety of methods to keep costs low, including charging a 25-cent refundable deposit for use of a shopping cart, and a 6-cent charge for shopping bags. Customers also bag their own groceries.
Kapusansky said the shopping cart deposit cuts down on the need for staff to collect them from the parking lot. The bag charge encourages customers to bring their own, he added.
ALDI is opening four other stores in Michigan this year: Howell, Waterford, Redford and Canton. The Ann Arbor store will be its 50th in the state.
One retail analyst said last year that ALDI tends to locate in low- to middle-income areas.
Freelance reporter Dan Meisler can be reached at danmeisler@gmail.com.
Get the Ann Arbor RSS Feed
AnnArbor.com