Lidl Pays $145M for PA Warehouse Site

Grocery store. Image by Elastic Compute Farm via pixabay.com

Lidl is expanding its East Coast presence with the acquisition of a warehouse development site in Bucks County, Pa. According to public records, the German grocer purchased 69 acres from NorthPoint Development for $144.6 million.

NorthPoint Development had been planning to build a more than 1 million-square-foot warehouse at the site, as part of its Keystone Trade Center master plan. Lidl hasn’t yet disclosed the project’s completion date nor its hiring plans.

The future warehouse will be a part of NorthPoint Development’s $1.5 billion, 1,800-acre campus that will total 15 million square feet of distribution and warehouse space when fully built out. NorthPoint Development completed the first phase of its massive Keystone Trade Center development and is already working on its second phase that will encompass more than 4 million square feet. The overall project will total 20 buildings, which will range from 160,000 to 1.2 million square feet.

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Lidl will join an unnamed “major transportation company” that became the first tenant for Keystone Trade Center in September, as reported by LevittownNow.com. NorthPoint Development has designed its campus for global industrial occupiers since it provides an ideal location to serve the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and Midwestern U.S. markets.

Expanding the East Coast footprint

For Lidl, this site acquisition could be a part its plans to expand further into the East Coast. In 2015, the company established its U.S. headquarters in Arlington, Va., and has since expanded its East Coast presence to more than 150 stores. In Pennsylvania, Lidl has several locations in and around Philadelphia but also in cities including Lancaster, Reading and Easton.

Overall, Lidl has been eager to expand its U.S. presence, starting in 2017 when it unveiled its first 20 stores in North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia. Lidl’s locations across the U.S. include the San Antonio outpost, which was its first supermarket in Texas.