Residents of Provo’s west side have long yearned for a grocery store to call their own.

And after years of the city officials trying to convince a retailer to build one in the area, a plan appears to be in place.

Walmart has entered into a final agreement with a private landowner for the purchase of roughly 20 acres of land on the west side of the Interstate 15 interchange and the north side of Lakeview Parkway, according to Provo City Economic Development Director Keith Morey.

The global retail company plans to build a “Supercenter” that includes a grocery section, general department store and a gas station.

Though terms have been agreed upon, Walmart is still doing some final due diligence before making things official, including finalizing the site plan, Morey said. A timetable for construction has not been announced.

“I’ve been working on this, personally, almost every day for the four years that I’ve been here, and it’s been more than 20 years that we’ve been trying to solve this problem,” Morey told the Daily Herald. “It is an incredible opportunity for us, and it will bring an incredible lift to the west side and into the rest of Provo.

The city views a Walmart in the area as a prime opportunity to accommodate not only the west-side neighborhoods but also the increased traffic that will come through Lakeview Parkway thanks to the new 100-acre Epic Sports Park and people coming to and from the Provo Airport.

If completed, it will be the first Walmart Supercenter in Provo, joining Provo’s Walmart Neighborhood Market on University Parkway.

“It definitely satisfies the demand for the west-side residents for a grocery opportunity, but it also will bring tax dollars in from the people that are driving up and down I-15 that don’t live in Provo that will support our local economy, too. And that’s just the best of both worlds,” Morey said.

When Morey became the city’s economic development director in 2020, Mayor Michelle Kaufusi made it clear to him getting a grocery store on the west side was a top priority.

“Her comment to me was that even campaigning before she was the mayor, all over Provo — not just the west side, but north, south, east and west — she heard from residents that there was a need for grocery services on the west side and that that should be something that she focused on,” he said.

Morey and Kaufusi set up a weekly meeting to work toward getting the project finished.

One area that made sense was a piece of property Kroger had owned on Center Street near Geneva Road for over 20 years with the prospect of building a Smith’s store.

But the project never came to fruition.

Morey explained how Kroger — along with other major corporations — had specific criteria that needed to be met to build a store, including a certain number of homes in a specific radius of the site and the amount of car traffic on the street.

“Some of those boxes just didn’t check, and so we continued to work with them,” Morey said. “We talked. The city actually put aside an incentive to try to bridge the gap, and we were making good headway.”

However, there was another issue. Some of the land Kroger owned on the property was leased out to other companies. To build the grocery store, they would have to buy out the leased land, which, according to Morey, still had several years left on a deal.

“The price of the land that they would need was just too much, and they couldn’t make the deal work, and so they walked away,” Morey said.

So the city pivoted to another plot of land off of Lakeview Parkway, which was rezoned by the city from agricultural use to commercial a handful of years ago. Then the process began to look for prospective buyers.

“Walmart started to express interest in that location, and we’ve done a lot of work with them, and they’ve done a lot of due diligence on that site. They’re still trying to finalize all their plans, but they are heavily invested. They’ve already spent a significant amount of money on their plans and designs, and so we’re very confident it’s going to move forward. It’s a great announcement.”

Morey acknowledged that Walmart may not be the preference for certain consumers, but he believes it’s a great fit for the city.

“I don’t think there’s any argument from anybody that Center Street and Geneva is a wonderful location, because it’s so central to the west side,” he said. “But this Walmart at this location checks every box, plus some that a location on Center Street in Geneva wouldn’t have, and it’s just a huge win for all of us.”