A new effort is underway to build a grocery store in Walden as part of a larger project that would include retail and commercial space along with housing.
The site is the 25-acre Lines Orchids Greenhouse property at Taft Highway and Timesville Road, where a previous effort to construct a grocery store drew fire from residents and the town.
A website seeking support for the project said the grocer wants to keep the brand name anonymous for now, but it's not Food City, Walmart, Ingles, Save A Lot, Fresh Market, Aldi or Trader Joe's.
Publix, which already has seven stores in the Chattanooga area with another under development in East Brainerd, is noticably absent from the list. The website said the store would be "high end" and "full service."
Rudy Walldorf of the Chattanooga real estate firm Herman Walldorf Commercial said in a telephone interview that the proposed site is under contract to an out-of-town development group.
He said the grocery store would be less than 30,000 square feet in size but serve as the anchor for other development.
"There won't be a lot of demand for small space without an anchor tenant," Walldorf said.
He said the size of the store is smaller than a 43,000-square-foot building proposed earlier by another development group on the site. That store had been identified in earlier filings as a Food City.
Colin Johnson, branch manager of the land planning and engineering firm RaganSmith in Chattanooga, said in a phone interview that the possible new project is preliminary at this point, and the tract will require rezoning. The Chattanooga-Hamilton County Regional Planning Agency staff is slated to review the project, he said.
According to the application filed with the Regional Planning Agency, rezoning is being sought from agricultural, commercial and residential zone to village center.
Johnson said the development group is working closely with the store brand, but contractually the name can't be used until there is formal approval.
"This grocery store brand does a significant amount of due diligence," he said. "Site selection is going favorably."
Johnson said plans are to collaborate closely with the town and "try to piece together a plan everyone is happy with."
The website about the proposed grocery store said it would provide alternative shopping, offer lower prices and help offset future tax increases. It cited a 2019 study that there is potential retail leakage from $22 million to $32 million annually on Walden's Ridge.
A new grocery store would generate average annual revenue of $273,000 in Walden sales and property taxes, the website said. That's in addition to $355,000 in annual Hamilton County sales and property taxes, according to the website.
A rendering of the proposed site shows a 29,356-square-foot store along with retail space coupled with housing. The rendering shows connections to potential future development on an adjacent tract.
Walldorf said the intent of the developer is to follow the proposed Walden Town Plan "very closely and hope that the adjacent property will follow a similar path."
He said the development would be on a private sewer treatment plant, but the system has to be approved by the state. Once completed, the system would be operated by the Hamilton County Wastewater Treatment Authority and not the developer, Walldorf said.
Earlier this year, the existing owner of the Walden tract, LOP LLC, moved past the previous controversial proposal for the grocery store project.
That move came after a Bradley County Circuit Court judge last summer ruled against the landowner, saying an ordinance passed earlier by the town to permit the grocery store project on the tract was illegal.
Walden town attorney Sam Elliott said at the time that there was an appeal of the ruling. But Chattanooga attorney John Anderson, who was a major stakeholder in the property, later died, and the appeal was dropped, he said.
Early this year, a Walden land-use plan was developed that could include the Lines Orchids land into a possible town center.
"The town recognizes something will be developed there," Elliott said in his earlier comments.
Anderson and LOP had won approval for the original $15 million grocery store project in late 2019 from the town board after contentious public meetings. But in early 2020, some Walden and Hamilton County citizens filed the lawsuit against the town and the developer to stop the project.
Earlier, another developer and Food City tried unsuccessfully to put a grocery store in the nearby town of Signal Mountain.
Contact Mike Pare at mpare@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6318. Follow him on Twitter @MikePareTFP.