One of the country’s largest home improvement store chains, third only behind Home Depot and Lowe’s, may not be making an expansion into Zanesville as previously planned.

Menards, a privately held and primarily Midwestern company, had a senior executive with the cooperation appear before city officials in late 2019 to discuss their plans and purchase of property, but no further action has since been taken.

As previously reported by Y-City News, company representative Tom O’Neil came before the City’s Community Development Committee in October 2019 for a re-zoning ordinance that would allow the company to create a stormwater retention pond south of the store’s intended location near Sam’s Club.

That meeting was the first indication that Menards was eyeing to open a store in the Zanesville area.

The location makes strategic sense for the company who has stores in Columbus, Lancaster, New Philadelphia, Mansfield, Athens and Wheeling, West Virginia, all sites nearly 40 plus miles away.

O’Neil said that following the Committee’s approval they would move forward with the land purchase.

In early 2020 the company made good on that promise and purchased a vacant lot between Lowe’s and Sam’s Club for a sum just shy of $5 million dollars.

Zanesville Community Development Director Matthew Schley said that initial plans had always been for a late 2020 or early 2021 groundbreaking but that the pandemic likely delayed that timeline.

The company has since publically stated that they have halted all future developments as they weather out the current economic climate and assess future growth decisions.

An email response to Schley from a representative with Menards in February of this year restated the company’s present situation.

“With the pandemic ongoing, the Menards Real Estate Committee is holding off on the construction of any new stores for the time being,” the email read. “It is not Zanesville related, that decision may be revisited a week or a month from now but it is true presently.

Muskingum County Auditor Records show that Menards still owns the property at 3742 Northpointe Drive.

A request for further comment to Menards was not returned.