By Neil Johnson njohnson@gazettextra.com - Jul 5, 2022

 

JANESVILLE

Janesville’s Center Avenue corridor on the south side has been described as a fresh grocery desert since the 2018 closure of the former Pick n’ Save supermarket along that spur.


The 130,000-square-foot former Pick ‘n Save store’s relaunch last year as Rock County’s new health and human services center is likely now a major factor in a developer’s plans to revamp and expand an adjacent defunct, former gas station.
 
If a plan goes forward as proposed, a developer plans to add about 5,200 square feet of floor space to the north and south ends of the vacant, former Clark gas station and convenience mart at 1747 Center Ave.

Under plans submitted by developer Saad Mustafa of Hamza Properties LLC, contractors would build out two extensions to the existing 2,800-square-foot building to create spaces for a grocery store, a sandwich restaurant with an outdoor patio and a drive-thru that could queue 15 to 20 vehicles, a barbershop and a fourth business that would be the property owner’s office, according to a memo released by the city of Janesville.


Those are the slated uses that Janesville’s Plan Commission gave a nod to on Tuesday, as part of a conditional use permit it voted unanimously to grant to Mustafa to redevelop and expand the former gas station into a four-business set of storefronts. The approval followed a public hearing, also Tuesday night, on the proposed permit issuance.

The project got a green light from the commission although the developer and the city of Janesville still must iron out the configuration of the planned drive-thru on the building’s south side.


The Clark station had been closed since sometime in 2018, after the closure of the adjacent Pick n’ Save. It has been shuttered long enough that an outdated Google maps image shows it as advertising gasoline for $2.79 a gallon—pre-pandemic, pre-inflationary pricing for fuel. The station’s owner already has removed the gas pumps and gas tanks, the city said in a memo.


It would be the second smaller-scale grocery to open on the south side in about a year. In March 2021, Roman’s, a Janesville-based, family owned gas station and convenience store chain, opened a small, standalone grocery store called Roman’s Market at 220 Liberty Avenue. It’s about a half-mile south of where Mustafa plans to re-make the former Clark site.

Roman’s Market lasted a little more than a year before the owner closed it as part of a plan to open a larger Roman’s Market in Beloit.


Rock County’s health and human services offices along with the county and state job placement centers is now located in the former Pick ‘n Save, leaving the former Rock County Job Center just a quarter-mile south mostly vacant.


A city of Janesville economic development office employee said late last year that one chain grocer had expressed interest in a smaller-scale grocery on the south side, although at that time the city was pursuing possible grant funding to help push such a project forward.


City economic development officials for years have said the south side has faced headwinds in landing a fresh grocery market in the wake of Pick ‘n Save leaving, in part because grocery chains have shifted toward building smaller-format stores.

Rock County’s Administrator Josh Smith said the county has been working with the developer on a transfer of some parking and traffic easements off Center Avenue and Lafayette Street to offer customers better access to the former Clark site.


Smith called the planned re-development of the old gas station “great news,” saying the county had hoped the 2019 purchase and buildout of the former Pick n’ Save, and the resulting daily influx of hundreds of county workers plus their clients, would create a catalyst for some new commercial development and redevelopment of nearby blighted properties.


Meanwhile Rock County continues to hold onto about 4 acres of unused outlot property that’s the westernmost section of the former Pick ‘n Save’s parking lot. That land is just north of the former Clark Station.

Smith said the county doesn’t currently have any plans for the unused section of parking lot, some of which he said now has been planted over with grass.


Smith said the county continues to hold onto the land in case a private developer becomes interested in commercial development of it.

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