Hill Supermarket Expansion Approved

A Kimberly Square supermarket won its final needed city approval to construct a roughly 3,300 square foot addition — as part of an expansion project that will also see a larger parking lot and a knocked-down house.

During Wednesday night’s latest monthly City Plan Commission meeting, local land-use commissioners voted unanimously to approve 482 Greenwich Realty LLC’s site plan application to construct a 3,300 square-foot addition to an existing supermarket and other related improvements at 482 Greenwich Ave. and 61 – 63 Kimberly Ave.

Those properties are currently home to the Key Food grocery store (which, up until earlier this year, was a C‑Town grocery store.)

Kelvin Lopez, one of the co-owners of the Kimberly Square Key Food, and attorney Danielle Bercury explained to the commissioners that this site plan will allow for a ​“modest expansion of the supermarket.” The grocery store owners have already won parking-related zoning relief from the Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA). During a December 2022 BZA hearing on the matter, Lopez said the supermarket expansion is intended ​“to provide better service as far as items and better variety for the community.” 

The new larger on-site parking spot will have 16 more parking spaces, bringing the lot to a total of 42 spaces, engineer Katy Gagnon said on Wednesday night. Also, an existing two-family house owned by Lopez at 63 Kimberly Ave. will be demolished. 

She said the improvements will also result in a new entrance-only driveway off of Kimberly Avenue that will be how trucks will access the property. That driveway and the expanded parking lot will allow trucks to park adjacent to the building to make it easier to unload goods without blocking too many other cars from getting in and out of the lot. She said all vehicles will continue to exit by turning right onto Plymouth. And, she said, the property owners will be adding two more bike parking spaces, bringing that number to a total of four.

Commission Chair Leslie Radcliffe noted that ​“there’s a high use [of bicycles] and a high pedestrian use” in that area of the Hill. ​“Any possibility of adding a few more bike racks?”

“That’s something we could look at and consider if there’s additional space,” Bercury said. She noted that the city’s planned streetscape improvements to Kimberly Square should also help with pedestrian and bike safety and access along that commercial corridor.

Asked by Commission Vice-Chair Ernest Pagan if the larger parking lot and truck access area will result in undue traffic jams, Lopez said that the planned new configuration of the lot is ​“certainly an improvement from what happens today, with the trucks having to park in the middle of the parking lot to load.” With this proposal, the trucks would have more space adjacent to the building and not in the middle of the lot. 

“By doing the addition, it will give us more space for the truck to stand without blocking the whole parking. That was one of the main ideas” for this expansion project.