Fred Meyer modifies plans for its Palmer store

EOWYN LeMAY IVEY-Frontiersman reporter

PALMER -- Fred Meyer's latest plans for Palmer are getting mixed reviews, and city officials say at the least the company needs to go back to the drawing board on traffic.

Last week Fred Meyer and the city of Palmer held a second public forum at the Palmer railroad depot, where the chain presented new architectural and landscaping design sketches for a nearly 70,000-square-foot grocery store to be built near the Palmer post office. Fred Meyer is expected to break ground later this summer and open its doors as soon as next summer.

The most current plans clearly address the concerns voiced by local residents and business owners during the past month, according to Tom Gibbons with Fred Meyer. In addition to a public forum last month, the company also collected comment cards from people.

"We did it to find out what the city of Palmer -- you -- wanted from us," Gibbons told a crowd of more than 50 people last week. After reviewing those comments and concerns, Gibbons said, "we have addressed every one of them … and made the changes."

Gibbons pointed to architectural embellishments such as cornices and varied brick texture and color, as well as additional glass along the front, designed to make the building more unique to Palmer. At the same time, Gibbons said, the company has responded to concerns about landscaping and pedestrian-friendly access by adding more trees, shrubs and sidewalks. Gibbons said they will build a buffer fence between the new proposed access road and the adjacent Everglenn Hotel. Lights will be designed to illuminate only the store and its parking lot, and signs will be small and understated, Gibbons said.

Some at the meeting said they appreciated the effort put into the changes, and that they were glad the store would be a smaller, nicer version of Wasilla's.

The majority of those at the meeting, however, seemed unimpressed with Fred Meyer's concessions.

"I don't see a difference in the building architecturally … it's been a month and I see the exact same plans," said Lisa Upperman of Palmer 1 Hour Photo. Others agreed, saying the new design is still a box surrounded by an asphalt parking lot.

Some at the meeting said Fred Meyer shouldn't just complement Palmer's existing buildings, but should go above and beyond.

"Architecturally, I think they should be held to a higher standard," said Chris Whittington-Evans after the meeting. Because it will be a large, dominating building, he said its design will be critical for the town. Instead of setting the bar higher, however, he said Fred Meyer has simply added a few trees and embellishments to their basic box store.

"We just want to be the model for every other Fred Meyer," one woman told Gibbons during the meeting. "That's all we want."

But beyond shrubs and cornices, traffic remained the main sticking point at last week's meeting. Fred Meyer contends its plan to change the lanes on Evergreen Avenue and add a new access road near Burger King is enough to handle the vehicles its store will attract. After conducting a separate traffic analysis, however, the City of Palmer disagrees.

According to a study recently commissioned by Palmer, Evergreen bears 12,000 cars a day in mid-May, even more than city officials expected. At the same time, the study concluded, Fred Meyer miscalculated some of its numbers and made some unreasonable assumptions, and so could have underestimated the store's impact on an already problematic section of road.

"The bottom line on traffic is we're not agreeing to the plan yet … we want more information," City Manger Tom Healy said.

Fred Meyer officials have conceded that they made mistakes in their traffic analysis, and Palmer has asked them to reconsider it based on the new, revised numbers.

In the meantime, Healy said DOT is planning to reconfigure the lights at Evergreen and the Glenn as soon as next week in hopes of easing the existing traffic congestion.

Palmer is also continuing to pursue a new Glenn Highway access and signaled intersection from an extension of Dogwood that would run between Fred Meyer and the Palmer Post Office. In addition to helping with Fred Meyer's traffic, Healy said such an intersection could make the access to Carrs safer.