Dumping-plagued former Aldi site could become new grocery store
The owner of another grocery store on Milwaukee’s north side filed a license application to open a new grocery store at the site at Sherman Boulevard and and Hopkins Street
MILWAUKEE —
There’s hope for a new grocery store at the former Aldi near Sherman Boulevard and Hopkins Street. Its closure this winter worsened a food desert crisis on Milwaukee’s north side.
The parking lot has since been used as an illegal dump site.
“Like the city dump. That’s what it looks like, the city dump,” Terrance Carter, who works nearby, said. “It’s ridiculous.”
People have dumped old furniture, clothes and trash, even filling the loading dock of the shuttered store.
“It’s just nasty,” Tityana Clements, who lives nearby, said.
The store shut down in January, widening a food desert on the city’s north side, where a handful of stores closed in recent years. Nearby residents are now forced to find fruits and vegetables elsewhere.
“How far do you have to go now to get fresh groceries?” WISN 12 News reporter Kendall Keys asked.
“Far,” Carter said. “You got people in wheelchairs, older people who can’t go that far, who can’t get on the bus, who probably don’t know how to ride the bus that good. This is probably the only thing they know.”
“I shop at Pick ‘n Save as well on the east side. So that’s probably like 15- to 20-minute drive,” Clements said.
There’s potentially good news posted on the boarded-up doors of the shuttered store. The owner of Fresh Foods Supermarket at 44th Street and Capitol Drive submitted a license application to open a grocery store called Hopkins Grocery at the old Aldi.
“It would mean a lot because there’s a lot of homeless people around here. It’s a lot of people that don’t have cars. None of that. And it’s very convenient,” Clements said.
The application for Hopkins Grocery still needs to be approved by the city licenses committee and full common council.
Milwaukee Department of Neighborhood Services said one of its inspectors visited the site Wednesday to determine if there was evidence to find out who illegally dumped items there.
“By ordinance, we write a cleanup order to the property owner. If it isn’t addressed, the City will hire a contractor and bill the property owner,” Jeremy McGovern, marketing and communications officer for DNS, said.
According to city property records, Aldi still owns the property at Sherman Boulevard and Hopkins Street. WISN 12 News reached out to Aldi, asking if it had a plan to address the illegal dumping on its property, but did not immediately hear back.