Meijer Opens Ohio Shopping Centers

The ribbon-cutting at the new Warren store. Image courtesy of Meijer

Meijer has opened a pair of retail supercenters in northeast Ohio. The properties, located in Warren and Wooster, each total 159,000 square feet.

Located at 2120 Niles Cortland Road SE at the Eastwood Mall Complex in Warren and 4845 Burbank Road in Wooster, the stores offer digital shopping solutions, like the ability to scan barcodes through an app on the way to checking out. The stores allow customers to utilize the Flashfood app, which offers significant discounts on surplus food products, the company said in a statement. The company’s mPerks rewards program offers additional discounts.

Both stores feature pharmacies and offer general merchandise, as well as baby, apparel, beauty and floral departments. Expanded areas to manage orders for Meijer Home Delivery and Pickup, the company’s preordering and distribution apparatus, are also included.

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The Warren location includes an underground stormwater detention system to retain and filter water. The Wooster store has a designated hitching shed for customers with horses and buggies. Many Amish farmers frequent the city for commercial purposes.

Height-adjustable changing tables are available in restrooms, while the stores will offer free access to Aira, an app-based service providing live navigation assistance to blind and low-vision customers that can be used via the camera of a smartphone.

Focus on communities

Meijer, which opened its first store in Ohio in 1981, has 52 stores throughout the Buckeye State and more than 240 in total. The Grand Rapids, Mich.-based company also operates stores in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan and Wisconsin.

The company is dedicated to investing in the communities it does business in, President & CEO Rick Keyes said in the statement, noting that Meijer donated $25,000 to various local organizations in each city before opening the new stores in the third week of May.

Grocery stores and supermarket-anchored shopping centers have been relatively resilient in the retail space, with the subsector being the least impacted by online shopping. In the past month, grocery-anchored properties have traded in Atlanta, Sarasota, Fla., and La Habra, Calif., while another in Porter Ranch, Calif., was refinanced.