If You Build a 240,000-Square-Foot Grocery, They Will Come (But Put Up Traffic Signals First!)

A large retailer is coming to town, building on a highly visible plot of vacant land. What do you do to get the customers there?

That’s the question officials in the City of Altoona, Wisconsin, needed to answer this summer. The new retailer is Woodman’s Market, a grocery superstore of 240,000 square feet – more than 2.5 times the size of any other supermarket in the Eau Claire/Altoona area. The market, which just opened its doors, is visible around 1:36 on the above video. The store and its accompanying gas station are expected to add $15 million in tax base to Altoona.

And shoppers aren’t coming just from within the city limits; Woodman’s expects to draw shoppers from a 50-mile radius. Most of those shoppers are coming in cars, and that means the roads had to be ready to move that traffic in and out of the parking lot. The store also needs to accommodate delivery truck traffic to keep all those shelves stocked.

Although Ayres Associates was not involved with the Woodman’s site development, we are hard at work just across River Prairie Drive on the Altoona River Prairie Development, an 80-acre mixed-use development that will be Altoona’s new “front porch.” Both developments are highly visible from the US 53 bypass, and both are accessed by ramps off the four-lane bypass.

The City of Altoona hired Ayres to design additional turning lanes and traffic signals on River Prairie Drive, and Ayres also worked with the Wisconsin Department of Transportation to modify the ramps from the bypass.

According to project manager Lisa Fleming, the eastbound lanes on River Prairie Drive were moved south to allow dual left-turn lanes into Woodman’s. Three out of the four ramps on the River Prairie/US 53 interchange were widened to accommodate two lanes. There are now dual right-turn lanes on the southbound off-ramp headed west and dual left-turn lanes on the northbound off-ramp headed east.

New signals were added at the two entrances to Woodman’s, and all signals at the ramps and along River Prairie Drive are interconnected to work smoothly and efficiently.

The needs of pedestrians and bicyclists were also accommodated. The entire Northwest Quadrant is designed to be pedestrian- and bike-friendly, as is the Woodman’s lot. Pedestrian crossing signals improve safety for shoppers on bike and foot now, and the future Northwest Quadrant bike trail will unite the north and south quadrants.

The video from the City of Altoona shows the work going on in the Northwest Quadrant and was shot by the Altoona Police Department as a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle, or drone) training exercise.

For those of you who have been to the new Woodman’s already – how was your trip? We’d love to hear about it.