Town & Country Markets bows out of 2nd proposed Pierce County shopping center project
One grocery store’s long, continuing flirtation with Gig Harbor appears to have cooled off yet again.
Town & Country Markets this week told The News Tribune it’s no longer moving forward with plans for a proposed Peninsula Shopping Center store on Judson Street downtown.
“Town & Country Markets has been working to locate a new store in the Gig Harbor community for many years, working with two different developer groups, the latest of which was to establish a downtown location,” Town & Country said in an emailed statement.
“At this time, a combination of factors, including general slowing in the broader economy, continued supply chain issues, and rapid cost escalation, led to the realization that this wasn’t the right time and circumstances to move forward with a new location in Gig Harbor.”
The site was the second one to fall to the wayside for the grocer, after earlier initial plans for a site at Village at Harbor Hill collapsed from that development’s delays in its court fight over traffic impact fees, later settled between the developer and city of Gig Harbor.
The Village at Harbor HIll talks were first confirmed by The News Tribune in 2015. At the time, plans called for the grocer to anchor the 18-acre retail center then planned at Borgen Boulevard and Harbor Hill Drive.
“We worked hard on that (project) and it just got complicated and then with the questions about traffic mitigation, it was time for us to go our separate ways,” Town & Country CEO Bill Weymer told The News Tribune about the scuttled Harbor Hill plans in summer of 2020.
Rush Development bought a partial stake in the Peninsula Shopping Center Feb. 25, 2020, and had been in talks with Town & Country since then.
QFC was the last grocer at the shopping center, leaving in 2011 for its Point Fosdick location. QFC eventually closed and later became Main & Vine, a two-year experimental grocery venture run by its parent company Kroger.
Gig Harbor’s grocery scene continued to evolve, with the addition of Metropolitan Market in the former Main & Vine location in October 2021. That grocer joined an already established Fred Meyer, Harbor Greens and Safeway operating mere blocks from one another.
Chris DeWald, vice president of Rush Development, told The News Tribune on Wednesday via email that despite the setback: “There are no plans to redevelop the site as something other than a shopping center.”
As reported in March, plans to overhaul the shopping center filed in November included removing a portion to expand parking, along with façade and aesthetic enhancements to the site and tenant improvements, all “with a major purpose to reintroduce a regional grocery store use to the site,” according to the submitted documents.
For now it’s back to the drawing board and the social media guesses of what’s coming next, along with the always-persistent wish from some residents for Trader Joe’s, which the city tried to entice to come to that same location in 2011.
“We are preparing to go out to market offering the vacant space for lease and see who might be interested. We are still hoping to find a grocer for the site, but we shall see,” DeWald wrote Wednesday.
This story was originally published July 7, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
