Dick’s Sporting Goods - a retailer that posted $4.4 billion in U.S. sales in 2009 - may be closer to building a new store in Pittsfield Township.

RSM Development of Bloomfield Hills received site plan approvals in 2009 for a 50,000 store at 3060 Lohr Circle, southeast of the I-94 interchange at Ann Arbor-Saline Road.

However, those plans were set to expire after 6 months, said township planner Paul Montagno.

Now a one-year extension is in place as of this spring, and activity on the property is picking up, Montagno said.

“It appears there’s a little more activity surrounding that project,” Montagno said.

“We’ve had some phone calls recently about what they need to do (to move it forward),” he said.

Dick’s officials would not comment on the Pittsfield Township plans. A recent SEC filing indicated that stores typically open 6 to 18 months after a new store site is chosen.

According to its public filings, Dick’s leases all of its stores. The company [NYSE: DKS] has 14 leases signed for store openings in 2010 and 4 signed leases for stores planned for 2011 openings. Dick’s opened 24 stores in 2009.

Meanwhile, the company generated a 7 percent increase in sales in 2009, despite a 1.90 percent drop in same-store sales.

Most new stores fit a 50,000-square-foot prototype, and nearby tenants typically include high-traffic big box stores like Best Buy, which is located south of the store site.

Dick’s operated 419 stores in 40 states under that brand as of early this year, with another 91 stores in 30 states under the Golf Galaxy brand. Fifteen Dick’s are in Michigan.

Dick's first sought an Ann Arbor area location at Briarwood Mall, then shifted gears to the Pittsfield Township site. The 6.84-acre property is now home to a self-storage company. The real estate was sold in 2007 for $2.75 million, according to township records.

Site plans for the store were submitted in 2007, Montagno said.

"The planning commission took quite a while working through the site plan with them," Montagno said. "It's going to be a nice development when all said and done."

Dick's, based in Pennsylvania, has 10,000 full-time employees. It's stock traded Wednesday at $28.72, giving it a market cap of $3.3 billion.

Paula Gardner is Business News Director of AnnArbor.com. Contact her at 734-623-2586 or by email. Sign up for the weekly Business Review newsletter, distributed every Thursday, here.