photo by: City of Lawrence

The bright green rectangle shows an area on the northeast corner of Sixth Street and George Williams Way. Aldi is considering a store on this site. Immediately to the west across George Williams Way is the Mercato development, where Costco is planning to locate.

Costco isn’t the only grocery store eyeing the far west end of Sixth Street — there are now signs that Aldi is considering a site just a couple thousand feet away.

On Wednesday, the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission voted unanimously to recommend approval of a rezoning request for just over four acres on the northeast corner of Sixth Street and George Williams Way. City staff’s report on the request said the business being proposed for the site was a grocery store, and on Wednesday Corby Rust of Landplan Engineering confirmed that that grocery store was Aldi.

“Aldi is looking at the southern portion of the property,” Rust told the Planning Commission. “They have a roughly 20,000-square-foot building,” and the rezoning was necessary to allow for a building of that size.

Much remains to be done before an Aldi could actually locate there. In addition to the City Commission still needing to approve the rezoning, the property has not even been platted yet. Rust said his company was handling the plat and that it was forthcoming.

Aldi is not a new grocery store chain in Lawrence, of course. The German-based retailer with a reputation for frugality already has a location in the city at 3025 Iowa St.

If a new Aldi does come to west Lawrence, it will be just across the street from the Mercato development, in which the discount retailer Costco is planning a 166,000-square-foot store. The Costco, Lawrence’s first store from the chain, could spur much more development in the area, and Mercato alone has more than a dozen other lots where businesses could locate, as the Journal-World has reported.