Garfield Township planning commissioners hit the brakes Wednesday on an application from Ollie’s Bargain Outlet to take over the former T.J. Maxx space at the Grand Traverse Mall, citing concerns over Ollie’s plans to wall off the store’s interior mall entrance and only have an outside entrance. Doing so could start a “domino of changes” in how the mall functions, said Chair Chris DeGood, with the board tabling the application and asking staff to push Ollie’s toward a different design.

Planning commissioners don’t typically review changes in retail businesses at the Grand Traverse Mall, said Township Planning Director John Sych. However, as when Dunham’s Sports came to the mall in 2015, plans for Ollie’s to create a new exterior customer entrance triggered a site plan review. Ollie’s, which describes itself as “America’s largest retailer of closeout merchandise and excess inventory,” has hundreds of stores across the country selling overstock goods at bargain prices. The Ticker first reported in December that the company hopes to open its first Traverse City location in the former T.J. Maxx space – with the goal of sealing off the interior mall entrance so customers can only access the store from the outside.

Township staff asked Brookfield Properties – which owns the majority of the Grand Traverse Mall – to weigh in on that proposed approach. In documents submitted with Ollie’s site plan application, Brookfield Properties expressed support for the move. The company noted that all Ollie’s locations “typically have one entrance and one exit, requiring the removal of the mall concourse entrance.” Closing off the interior entrance will allow Ollie’s to maximize display space, minimize the risk of “grab-and-run thefts,” and prevent “shopping carts from littering the interior of the (mall) center,” Brookfield Properties wrote.

Planning Commission Chair Chris DeGood was skeptical of those arguments, calling them “weak excuses.” Other mall tenants also have shopping carts and shoplifting risks and still operate with both exterior and interior entrances, he said. “I personally don’t think they’ve tried hard enough to come up with a plan that allows them to have both (entrances),” said DeGood. He said his main concern was that the plan offers a “back door way to start to turn this mall into an exterior strip mall and eliminate the use of the connectivity on the interior.”

Sych also previously worried about that outcome, noting that the Grand Traverse Mall was developed as a cohesive enclosed shopping center. Individual components within it should “function in a way that makes sure that those uses are productive and are not negatively impacting other uses or the operation of that site,” he previously told commissioners. When Cherryland Center was converted from an enclosed mall to an outdoor shopping center in the late 1990s, that change occurred across the property all at once, he noted.

The rapid redevelopment of the Cherryland Center the last few years led planning commissioners to recently require an updated comprehensive development plan for that property. Sych said Ollie’s site plan alone wasn’t enough to trigger an updated plan for the Grand Traverse Mall. However, he also previously indicated the property should continue functioning as an enclosed mall unless a plan was submitted to completely redo it.

DeGood said that even with assurances from Brookfield Properties the rest of the mall is planned to continue to operate as-is, letting Ollie’s seal off its interior entrance could set a “precedent” that would force the township to approve future similar requests. He worried it could become the “first in a domino of changes that we won’t have any influence over.” Planning commissioners also weren’t thrilled about the proposed location of Ollie’s new exterior entrance near an old T.J. Maxx loading dock area, pointing to other mall entrances nearby they thought were safer and could better serve visitors.

Despite their concerns, planning commissioners didn’t indicate they were dead set against approving Ollie’s site plan. Sych also cautioned that the township may be limited in how much say it has over the interior entrance. Still, the board agreed to table the application to give staff time to go back and ask Ollie’s to reconsider its design. Staff will provide an update at the board’s next meeting in March. Planning Commissioner Cara Eule said it could be possible that Ollie’s isn’t the best fit for the proposed site long-term.

“It may be that their business model isn't suitable for this type of mall, and there are other locations around town that do have a single front entrance that might be workable for them as well,” she said.