Hilldale Mall development plan

File this under be careful what you wish for...

Earlier this year the owner of the Sentry store at Hilldale Mall voiced objections to a Whole Foods coming into the Hilldale Mall development because the Whole Foods store would have a lot of surface parking spaces. Much like, well Sentry.

The owner, Tim Metcalfe, was really trying to use the liberals on the city council to reject the plan by playing to their development desires to get rid of large surface parking lots. His real goal it to try to keep a new Whole Foods store from taking business away from his store. And they did reject the plan for a 50,000 square foot Whole Foods store with 240 surface parking spaces.

Now the Hilldale developer has come back with a new plan that includes a parking ramp instead of a large surface lot. Sounds good so far. But here is the rub for Metcalfe. The new proposal contains a 65,000 square foot Whole Foods store.