Midwest retail chain Blain’s Farm & Fleet is making its first foray into Michigan – with a massive Traverse City store serving as one of the company’s first three planned locations in the state.

Blain’s finalized a purchase agreement with the Grand Traverse Land Bank Authority last week to buy 18 acres on the corner of US-31 and Rennie School Road in Blair Township. Blain’s Owner and President Jane Blain Gilbertson tells The Ticker the company plans to build an at least 100,000 square-foot new store on the vacant parcel near Wuerfel Park.

“We’ve talked about (expanding into Michigan) for years…we spent the last two years gathering data, and that helped us zero in on specific locations,” says Gilbertson, who adds Blain’s is also opening stores in Portage and Jackson. “What spoke to us about northern Michigan is that there’s a lot of agriculture in that area, you have the whole outdoor lifestyle, there’s year-round outdoor activity. When we visited with different teams, we kept saying that it just felt like (Traverse City) would get us once we opened there.”

Traverse City will be the 41st store for Blain’s, which first opened in 1955 and operates stores in Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa. The company offers a broad selection of agricultural, sporting, automotive, hardware, outdoor, household, pet, clothing, and other goods. Brands carried by the retailer include Carhartt, Dickies, Under Armour, Columbia, Levi’s, Sorel, Keen, Stanley, Craftsman, Benjamin Moore, Pennzoil, Michelin, KitchenAid, King Kutter, Scotts, and Troy-Bilt, among others.

“We describe ourselves as a modern general store: a one-stop shop for all the things you need, whether it’s batteries or jeans or pet food or tools,” says Gilbertson. “That is our appeal. We carry high-quality brands at a great price.”

While other department store chains across the country have struggled amid growing competition from online retailers, Gilbertson says Blain’s is expanding and has “never left a community we’ve opened in” during the company’s 63-year history. She attributes the chain’s stability to being a privately held, family-owned business that emphasizes employee retention and “neighborhood” customer service.

Blain’s also offers services designed to compete with both brick-and-mortar and online retailers, says Gilbertson. As with other Blain’s stores, the Traverse City location will have an auto service center, as well as an online order option that allows customers to place orders online and pick them up in-store within two hours. Blain’s also offers a drive-thru service – which the company compares to a fast-food drive-thru – where customers can pull up and order products, pay and have the items loaded into their cars without leaving their vehicles. Gilbertson says the service is popular during cold-weather months, as well as with parents who don’t want to load and unload children from their cars.

As part of the property purchase agreement, Blain’s has four months to complete due diligence on the Blair Township site. Gilbertson says the company is hoping for an “early summer groundbreaking,” with a planned spring 2019 grand opening. The store will likely bring 100 jobs to Traverse City, according to Gilbertson.

Grand Traverse County Interim Administrator Jean Derenzy – who serves as the staff point person for the Land Bank Authority – says the $1.6 million property sale will allow Blair Township to completely pay off a $1.3 million sewer bond on the parcel. The township has been saddled with the debt after taking out bonds nearly a decade ago to pay for sewer hookups on the property for a planned water park that never materialized. County commissioners will decide how to spend the remaining proceeds from the property sale; Derenzy says one option already discussed is establishing a housing rehab fund to assist Blair Township homeowners.

In addition to paying off the township’s bond and generating new jobs and tax base, Derenzy says the construction of Blain’s could help spur the sale and development of the remaining adjacent 60 acres of vacant property on Rennie School Road, which is also owned by the Land Bank Authority. “It sets the stage for what Blair Township is looking for in terms of redevelopment there: commercial in the front, some kind of warehouse or light industrial in the middle, and then residential in the back,” says Derenzy. “(Blain’s) is a great opportunity for that whole area. It’s going to fit very well into that corridor.”

Blair Township officials, who have toured the property and met with Blain’s representatives, are enthusiastic about the company’s plans for the site. Township Supervisor Nicole Blonshine says the property sale will relieve “a large financial burden” on Blair Township, calling the deal with Blain’s a “collaborative effort” between the company, township, county and real estate firm Three West, which marketed the parcel.

“(Blain’s) will definitely draw people in from other areas of northern Michigan, which will ultimately have a positive impact on all of our local businesses and I believe will help create a positive stimulant for future developments in our area,” says Blonshine. “I am beyond excited. This is huge for Blair Township and our surrounding communities."

Photo credit: Blain's Farm & Fleet