A proposal to build a 184,900-square-foot Walmart Supercenter at the former Kmart site on Northampton Street in Holyoke hit a snag Tuesday, as the city's Planning Board declined to act and pushed its decision to next month following pointed objections from neighbors worried about traffic flooding into the Elmwood neighborhood.
Hearing Continued Without a Vote
The board held a public hearing on the project via Zoom but took no action, instead continuing the discussion to Dec. 1 at 5:30 p.m. in Room 6 at City Hall, according to MassLive. The proposal calls for demolishing the vacant, 211,000-square-foot Kmart building and replacing it with a new store featuring grocery sales, a garden center and a drive-thru pharmacy, the outlet reports.
Plans also call for online ordering with vehicle-side pickup, per the same account. On parking, the figures diverge depending on the source: the City of Holyoke states the plan includes 699 total spaces, with 27 accessible spots, 10 EV chargers and 60 designated online-pickup spaces, while The Reminder puts the total closer to 705 spaces, with the same accessible and EV counts but only 30 online-pickup spaces. The city's site-plan materials also describe a dedicated pedestrian walkway along the main access drive and pedestrian connections linking parking areas to the store entrance.
A Longtime Resident's Warning
Helen Norris, a former Ward 4 city councilor who has lived on Northampton Street for 56 years, told the board the traffic study submitted for the project failed to adequately evaluate impacts on streets north of the site, including those in Elmwood, the MassLive report states. She said the study itself estimates that half of the traffic generated by the proposed store would travel through Elmwood, and she warned that weekday traffic could rise 35% in the neighborhood, with Saturday traffic climbing 53%.
Norris questioned why the study omitted air-quality effects and didn't examine conditions farther north on Northampton Street, and she said the city engineer did not attend the hearing. She argued that past studies and roadway improvements were meant to reduce congestion and air pollution in the area, but that some of those traffic-reduction efforts were never fully implemented after anticipated state funding failed to materialize.
Neighborhood Already Feels the Strain
According to Norris, existing traffic already pushes drivers to cut through neighborhood side streets, which she said include three stoplights and substantial stop-and-go congestion. She told the board that Elmwood street traffic was significantly worse while the former Kmart was still operating, and that half of the traffic to the site comes from the north with no adequate alternative route available.
Norris called for a more comprehensive traffic study — one that examines neighborhood traffic, air quality and alternative routes — before the Planning Board moves toward a decision. She said the neighborhood is well-established, pays its taxes and sits at the city's gateway, and warned that residents would bear the consequences for years if the proposal is approved without further review. She also said the board should not let the neighborhood deteriorate while city leaders celebrate future tax revenues.
Consultants Defend Mitigation Plans
The project's traffic consultants offered a different picture during the hearing, according to the Reminder's report. They said the development is expected to generate roughly one to two vehicle trips per minute during peak hours compared with what the property could generate under its existing zoning rights, and that with proposed mitigation measures, all the intersections they studied would operate at acceptable levels of service during all peak periods.
The consultants also flagged an existing problem unrelated to the new store: an estimated 10 to 20 vehicles per hour are currently making an unpermitted left turn from Whiting Farms Road into the site. Proposed fixes include optimizing signal timing and adding a small median island at the Whiting Farms entrance to block that prohibited inbound turn, the outlet notes.
City Councilor Signals Confidence in the Board
City Councilor Mimi Panitch, who Norris said was the only councilor participating in the review, thanked Planning Board members for raising concerns about landscaping, traffic and dark-sky lighting compliance. Panitch said she had asked her own traffic questions and was awaiting further information after consulting with the city engineer.
“I was very happy to keep it short, because the board's totally got this,” Panitch wrote, per MassLive's account of the hearing. Planning Board member Paul Burns-Johnson referred questions to Chairperson Lauren Niles, though contact information for Niles was not listed on the city website; the Holyoke Planning Department declined to comment and referred questions to Niles, and had been expected to provide a response by the Monday following MassLive's publication.
A Site With a Long Redevelopment History
The Kmart plaza itself dates back to the 1980s, and the property's path to a possible Walmart has moved quickly over the past several months. Cypress Equity finalized its purchase of the 2201 Northampton St. property in June 2026, when MassLive reported that the firm had not yet publicly identified an anchor tenant for its planned big-box redevelopment.
At that time, the redevelopment plan called for demolishing both the former Kmart and ShopRite buildings and rebuilding that section of the plaza with a new parking lot, with demolition expected to begin in late fall following required approvals and construction of a new store targeted for early 2027. Separately, a Jan. 6, 2026 City Council order had asked the City Engineer to review parking and visibility where West Glen Street meets Northampton Street, citing narrow roadway conditions when cars are parked on both sides and limited sight lines for turns onto Northampton from West Glen.
With no decision reached, Elmwood's traffic questions — and the dueling parking figures from the city and the Reminder — remain unresolved heading into the Planning Board's continued hearing on Dec. 1.
