Document text
Photo by Jim Craven Workers level off the middle of Barnett Road Friday after removing islands in front of McDonald's, part of plans to improve access into the former Kmart parking lot. Waremart lease expected within 10 days BY DAVID PRESZLER Waremart Inc. is on the verge of leasing the former Kmart building, more than two years after the grocery chain first expressed interest in the property. While a lease hasn't been finalized, a deal is expected to be reached within the next 10 days, according to Gordon Davis, a Portland consultant working for the company. "We're moving forward," he said. "They are just working out the details." Waremart Inc. and the property owner are sharing the cost of a $750,000 traffic project that began Monday, Davis said. The project will reconfigure several driveways and median islands along Barnett Road and eventually add a stoplight on Barnett for the plaza entrance between Jack-in-the-Box and LibertyBank . Most of the work will be done within the next 90 days, though the light may not be up and operating until late this year. "They're working hard to make sure there's a minimum disruption to traffic and to business owners," Davis said of Ledford Construction, the company doing the road work. Davis declined to say when the store itself could open, since no lease agreement is in place. The chain has said it plans to renovate the old Kmart store, vacant since 1996, into an 80,000-square-foot grocery store. Once finished, the store would contain a florist, bakery and take-out pizza. It would be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The company, based in Boise, Idaho, now uses the name WinCo for its stores to avoid confusion with Wal-Mart, Bi-Mart, Kmart and the the like. It has about 30 WinCo stores, including locations in Eugene and Redding, Calif. Employees own a sizeable portion of the company, which employed about 4,500 at the end of 1998 and did about $800 million in sales last year. The start of the road project and pending lease agreement could signal the end of lengthy and complex debate on Waremart's plan to take the former Kmart space. All along, the grocery chain has asked for a traffic light on Barnett to make access to the plaza easier for customers -- an idea Kmart discussed before leaving the plaza in 1996. But Oregon Department of Transportation and city officials were concerned that the signal would add more traffic problems for the already congested area. The Medford City Council voted against the traffic light in 1997 but reversed course in 1998, approving it on the condition that the light could be taken out after two years if traffic problems worsened in the area. Waremart officials were initially jittery about committing to such a stipulation but appear to have overcome their concerns. City planner Mark Gallagher confirmed Friday that the two-year provision is still in place. Earlier this year, Waremart filed a lawsuit against the property owner, TSMC -- an Oregon subsidiary of New York-based RD Management. The suit alleged that TSMC used Waremart's traffic study to win approval for the light and reneged on a leasing offer. Davis said Friday that he was unsure whether the lawsuit had been dropped but that it was "no longer relevant." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA