If all goes well, Interstate Commercial Real Estate Services will have all the zoning and land use permits it needs before the end of the year to begin construction on a retail development in Huntington’s Highlawn neighborhood to be anchored by a Kroger Marketplace.
The new retail center is to be built along 24th Street between 3rd and 5th avenues. The site is about 12 acres, and the Kroger store will take up about two acres of it.
A Kroger Marketplace is a larger-format Kroger store offering a wider variety of merchandise, which includes expanded food selections, home goods, apparel and toys, in addition to a full-service grocery and pharmacy. Marketplaces aim for a “one-stop shopping” experience, with amenities like full-service delis, bakeries and sometimes in-store coffee shops. In short, it competes with a Walmart Supercenter like the one on U.S. 60 just outside Huntington city limits.
This is not a promise by a fly-by-night operation. Among Interstate’s other developments in this region are Merritt Creek Farm and Tanyard Station, both in Barboursville, and the shopping area between Chesapeake and South Point, Ohio, that has the Aldi grocery store and a Starbucks. It also built the Stadium Center on 5th Avenue near Marshall’s campus, which includes Starbucks, Qdoba, Papa Johns and Smoothie King.
Marcus Nidiffer, retail consultant and project manager of Interstate, told The Herald-Dispatch reporter Destiny Dingess that Interstate expects to have 10,000 square feet of retail shops and two restaurants. Nidiffer said there are no finalized tenants as of yet.
“One of the mainstays for community is having a good grocery store,” Nidiffer said. “This will be state-of-the-art, and it’ll be brand new. I think it’ll just be a positive for every aspect in that, so having a good grocery store is one of the main foundations of communities.”
Across 3rd Avenue from the site of the new retail center, work continues on redeveloping the former ACF rail car manufacturing operation into a workforce training center for the Marshall Advanced Manufacturing Center.
The only building left from ACF is the former machine shop. It’s been stripped down to its frame and walls. Even the roof is gone. Soon it will be converted into a space where welders and others can be trained for 21st-century jobs.
Highlawn has had its up and downs since the Rust Belt era began. Mostly downs. ACF, the former Flint Group plant and several other familiar employers, large and small, whose wages built Highlawn are gone. Some remain, but they are fewer now. As they left, retail left also. Replacing them has been a slow process.
The work going on between 5th Avenue and the Ohio River there at 24th Street is a sign that Highlawn’s recovery has begun.