As it continues to add more stores, particularly in the Delaware Valley and New York Metro Markets, Lidl is planning for its distribution needs by acquiring a 69-acre parcel of land for $144.6 million in the massive NorthPoint Development industrial real estate complex in Falls Township, PA in Bucks County.
No specifics or timeline on when the future DC might open were provided but, based on Lidl’s rapid expansion in the Mid-Atlantic (particularly on Long Island), trade analysts expect the German-owned discount grocer, which opened its first U.S. store in June 2017, to continue to aggressively add more stores in the next three years.
Lidl, whose U.S. headquarters is in Arlington, VA, currently operates four distribution centers – Covington, GA; Perryville, MD; Graham, NC; and Fredericksburg, VA – to supply approximately 180 stores of which more than 100 are in the Mid-Atlantic region. It also has about 20 more stores in its real estate pipeline, many of which are scheduled to open in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.
The new Falls Township depot will be part of NorthPoint’s Keystone Trade Center which originally called for a 1 million square foot warehouse to be built on the site that Lidl acquired. Overall, when completed, the NorthPoint development will feature a 1,800-acre campus encompassing 15 million square feet of distribution and warehouse space at a cost of $1.5 billion.
