DERBY — The Walmart Superstore that Burlington developer Jeff Davis has been trying to bring to Derby just got one step closer. On Thursday, Davis filed an application for site plan approval with the town. Davis would like to see the store open by November 2015.
Davis’s Company, Shattuck Hill Investments, owns 17.64 acres between Route 5 and Shattuck Hill Road, the site of the proposed Walmart. An access road between Route 5 and Shattuck Hill would have to be built if the project goes forward.
The store is estimated to cost around $16.75 million to develop, with a footprint of 160,000-square-feet, and 75 feet tall. The parking lot is estimated to hold 657 vehicles.
Walmart Supercenters are hypermarkets that stock everything a Walmart discount store does, and also include a full-service supermarket, including meat and poultry. The Derby store would also have a garden center, pet shop, and pharmacy.
Hypermarkets, like other big-box stores, typically have business models focusing on high-volume, low-margin sales. They generally have more than 200,000 different brands of merchandise available at any one time.
It’s expected that the store would create 260 new jobs. The people of Derby and Newport in 2010 voted overwhelmingly in favor of the Walmart.
According to a traffic study submitted by Davis, on a regular weekday, the site would see an increase of about 6,000 vehicles. This would result in the need for traffic signals and turning lanes to be built at the Route 5 entrance to the parking lot.
Davis has said that he is willing to pay for this, as well as partially pay for traffic signals to be installed at the entrance onto Route 5, coming off of I-91
