NASHUA – An Aldi supermarket will be the anchor store at an estimated $8 million shopping plaza that will be built at 270 Amherst St. and will feature retail stores and a drive-through restaurant.

Aldi is a leading international grocery retail chain co-founded by the late Karl Albrecht and his younger brother, Theo, in Germany. The company’s holdings include the Trader Joe’s grocery chain and stores across Europe and the U.S., according to published sources.

The supermarket known for quality, discount-priced foods will be built in a plaza across from Turnpike Plaza where Whole Foods Market is located.

The owner of the new plaza, 270 Amherst St. LLC of Plymouth, Mass., should begin construction of the 17,000-square-foot supermarket this summer, said Brian Leahy, director of acquisitions for Saxon Partners LLC of Hingham, Mass., which owns 270 Amherst Street LLC.

The plaza will comprise a total of 35,545 square feet of retail space when built out, including a 4,500-square foot restaurant. It will be located on the site of the former Nashua Motor Express.

The project will create an estimated 150 full- and part-time jobs when finished, which is expected to happen next year, Leahy said.

In addition, 270 Amherst Street LLC is helping fund traffic engineering designs and improvements to expand the width of Amherst Street and create left-hand turn lanes that will increase the road’s traffic capacity, Leahy said.

The company was one of three private property owners in the area that contributed a total $550,000 to the city that will be used for engineering and traffic improvements along on Amherst Street from Charron Avenue to Diesel Road; 270 Amherst Street LLC’s donation is $300,000.

The $550,000 in private donations will pay half the $1.1 million cost of reconstructing Amherst Street. The city proposes to borrow money to fund its share. Aldermen must approve the final plan.

The Amherst Street reconstruction would eliminate the southern jughandle situated in front of the new plaza. It also will allow left-hand turns from Charron Avenue onto Amherst Street and from Turnpike Plaza onto Amherst Street.

In addition, the intersection at Turnpike Plaza will be fully signalized and have one dedicated left-hand turn lane for each direction and two through lanes in each direction, increasing the lanes from the current four to six at that point, Leahy said.

Plans initially called for Papa Gino’s restaurant to be located in the plaza, but that fell through and Saxon Partners is looking for another eatery, Leahy said. Saxon Partners also is in negotiations with other retail tenants who will occupy the plaza, he said.

Saxon Partners is a real estate and development company. Its major holding is Colony Place, an 850,000-square-foot shopping center in Plymouth, Mass. Locally, it owns Burger King and Old Navy on Daniel Webster Highway, he said.

Aldi Inc. announced last November that it was embarking on an accelerated strategic growth plan in the U.S. It said in a statement that it planned to open 650 new stores across the U.S. and intended to bring the total number of U.S. stores to nearly 2,000 by the end of 2018. Aldi said it currently operates more than 1,300 stores in 32 states.

Aldi now has supermarkets in several New Hampshire communities, including Salem, Leahy said.

Ward 2 Alderman Richard Dowd said he is pleased the city and private property owners were able to work together to develop a traffic improvement plan for Amherst Street with such broad-ranged benefits.

“This area of Amherst Street has been the real pinching point that causes traffic to back up all the way to the shopping mall where Market Basket is,” Dowd said.

“We developed the plans that are going forward now to alleviate more of the traffic problems on Amherst Street. That is the reason the businesses contributed all this money to do all this work,” he added.

Kathryn Marchocki can be reached at 594-6589, kmarchocki@nashuatelegraph.com or @Telegraph_KMar.