Self storage approved for former Big Lots/Wegmans property in Greece

The owner of the former Big Lots/Wegmans Food Markets property in Greece will be allowed to proceed with plans to operate a climate-controlled, indoor self storage facility.

The town of Greece Board of Zoning Appeals on Tuesday evening granted a variance that will enable Morgan Brittan LLC to create a Stor-It self storage operation with up to 500 units at 3640-3660 Dewey Ave.

Morgan Brittan LLC, an entity controlled by developer Frank Imburgia, requested the variance after efforts to find another tenant or tenants for more than 60,000 square feet of vacant space proved to be futile.

Self storage is an approved use in Greece only within districts that are zoned industrial or, under certain circumstances, within flex/office zoning. The property at 3640-3660 Dewey is within the Dewey Mixed Use District.

But because the property owner was able to meet the state-mandated four criteria of an unnecessary hardship, the variance was approved. The Board of Zoning Appeals determined:

• There is an ongoing financial hardship (documents submitted to the board showed a loss of $387,500 over the past five years);

• The hardship is unique to the property (largely because of the depth and configuration of the building);

• The variance will not alter the characteristics of the neighborhood;

• The hardship was not self-created (another grocery is not permitted on the property based on the sales covenant, and there is little market interest in large retail properties along the Dewey Avenue corridor).

CSL Plasma is the only remaining tenant, with just over four years remaining on its lease of 13,868 square feet.

The vast majority of the property has been empty since Big Lots shuttered operations and vacated 32,800 square feet in 2025. Another 19,080 square feet has been empty since Goodwill relocated to an outparcel, while a tenant was never found for a 9,700-square-foot portion of the building.

The property had been home to Wegmans’ Britton Road store until July of 2011, when the grocer consolidated operations into its Mt. Read store less than two miles away.

Morgan Britton bought the property from Wegmans in March of 2012 for $2,250,000 and agreed to a restrictive covenant that prohibits any grocery or pharmacy from operating in the building, as well as any business that generates more than 25 percent of revenue from the sales of food meant to be consumed elsewhere.

Those limitations, as well as the location and the depth of the building, made it difficult to find tenants, real estate broker Michael Palumbo told the board back in June. Palumbo, of Flaum Management, had been marketing the property.

“The only neighborhood-appropriate use to materialize … is the current proposal for Stor-It climate-controlled self storage,” Betsy Brugg, an attorney with Woods Oviatt Gilman representing the owner, told the board.

[email protected]/(585) 653-4020