Safeway plans new store

By Tania Martin
PLANS for a Safeway supermarket in Emerald are back on the agenda.
After more than two years of intense speculation that the multi-national company was going to open a store in town, it could soon become a reality.
Woolworths Limited unveiled plans for a supermarket in town at last month’s Emerald Village Committee (EVC) meeting.
EVC secretary Frank McGuire said the plans outlined intentions to redevelop the current AUR supermarket site on the corner of Emerald-Monbulk and Belgrave-Gembrook Roads
He said the proposed development would be a double storey building with 100 undergrounding parking spaces, plus the supermarket and several specialty shops.
This comes 17 months after the Mail reported in its story ‘Safeway Shelved’, that a proposed supermarket development would not be going ahead.
In May last year Woolworths told the Mail that it had no plans for a supermarket in Emerald.
It was also rumoured at the time that the reason the development had stalled was because of a lack of growth in the area.
But at the time Woolworths neither confirmed or denied the allegation but said that many factors were involved in choosing a site and that area growth was just one of them.
Woolworths spokeswoman Amy Robinson said the company was now looking at all its options for a store in Emerald.
“At the moment Woolworths is undertaking community consultation and is looking to purchase an existing supermarket in the town,” she said.
“But at this stage we are just talking to the community before putting a proposal to the local council.”
Mr McGuire said that recent reports that the town had given the supermarket proposal the green light had been misleading.
He said the meeting was only the beginning of what he hopes will involve community consultation.
“There was only two or three members of public at the meeting who didn’t raise any major objections to a new supermarket in the town but the meeting was no way considered community consultation,” Mr McGuire. Mr McGuire said the EVC had raised a number of concerns with the proposed development including parking and traffic issues, the amenity of the building and landscaping.
He said that Woolworths had agreed to look at all the issues raised by the committee when finalising their plans.
Mr McGuire said although there were no real objections to the proposed supermarket development at the meeting, it didn’t mean that the local community would agree with the plans.