If it is up to Alderman Reinier van Dantzig (Spatial Planning), it will soon be over with the dark stores in Amsterdam residential areas. Plans for regulating the location of flash delivery drivers, who use the dark stores as their home base, have just been presented by Van Dantzig. According to the alderman, dozens of branches will have to close their doors if the proposal is adopted.
Van Dantzig now reports that in the meantime work has been done on a policy that should permanently ban dark stores from residential areas. The proposal, which has been submitted to the city districts and the Weesp urban area in the past six weeks, still has to be voted on in the city council.
Nuisance
“If the city council also supports this proposal, residents can finally provide clarity about the establishment of dark stores,” says Van Dantzig. “This activity must not lead to nuisance in residential areas.”
According to Van Dantzig, with the rapid rise of grocery delivery companies during the lockdown, the nuisance in the residential areas increased. The municipality therefore carried out a stop on new darkstores in, after which it filed a lawsuit against existing stores.
Lawsuits
The flash delivery drivers initially tried to challenge this in court, but none of them were found in the right. The deliverers then handled it differently. For example, Zapp decided to leave the Netherlands permanently in July to leave and Getir tried to comply with the zoning plan by converting a number of darkstores into ‘stores‘.
To prevent flash delivery companies from continuing to try to do so in the future, the plans specifically describe dark stores as business operations that are mainly focused on ‘delivery within a very short period of time’.
term’, even if they are simply accessible to the general public.
All in all, the first measures taken by the municipality have resulted in 10 of the 32 dark stores now disappearing. With the new plans, speed delivery drivers must permanently move to places intended for distribution centers.
Of the remaining 22 darkstores, 5 may remain in place. These are locations on Admiraal de Ruyterweg, Analogue Street, Generaal Vetterstraat, Pieter Calandlaan and Koningin Wilhelminaplein.