Lidl wants massive warehouse/distribution center in East Fishkill

A new warehouse and distribution center for the international supermarket chain Lidl, which currently has about 171 stores in 10 states along the U.S. East Coast is being planned for National Resources’ iPark campus in East Fishkill. The warehouse and distribution center would have approximately 889,000 square feet of space. The height would vary from 65 to 80 feet in various sections of the building.

Although final plans and a formal application with the Village of East Fishkill still were being prepared, a preliminary layout showed that the sprawling facility would have loading docks to handle 148 trucks at one time, parking for another 137 trucks and parking spaces for 335 cars.

Bohler Engineering has been working on plans for the project. Bohler has more than 30 offices in the U.S. and has about 800 on its staff.

Lidl opened its first grocery store location in 1973 in Ludwigshafen, Germany. It was a small store with only three employees and stocked around 500 products. Lidl now operates 11,550 stores in 32 countries and employs more than 341,000 people. In June 2015, Lidl established U.S. headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. Lidl recently announced plans to open stores in Yonkers in Westchester and Orangetown in Rockland County.

According to Steve Wilson of Bohler, an updated traffic study was being prepared along with a study to determine whether a protected species, the bog turtle, is found in wetlands on the property. He said they don’t believe bog turtles live there and will be submitting a report to the state Department of Environmental Conservation. Wilson said that the building would encroach slightly into a wetland buffer. The State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) process was expected to be set in motion when a formal application for the project is filed.

Wilson said that building height, the number of parking spaces and lot coverage would be three items that they expect the Town Board as well as the Planning Board would have to approve. He said he was aware that a series of monitoring wells on the property that had been created some years ago to help deal with a cleanup of pollution. He said that if the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) determines monitoring wells still are needed some would be moved into the parking areas on the property. iPark has sent a proposal to DEC regarding the monitoring wells.

“We really don’t want to really have any in the building footprint,” Wilson said. “We’ll move them out into the parking lot.”

He also said that the warehouse and distribution center would have its own water tank that would hold a supply of water to be used for firefighting if ever needed. Wilson said that he didn’t yet know how many gallons the water tank would hold but added that routine water usage each day at the proposed facility was expected to be about 40,000 gallons.

The warehouse and distribution center would have about 200 to 250 employees spread over three shifts with about half of the workers on the 5 a.m. to 2 p.m. shift.