The project expected to create about 200 jobs, would have been the retailer’s 14th distribution center in Poland.
Opponents organized demonstrations in Gietrzwałd and staged brief, nationwide store blockades, arguing that a large industrial site three kilometers from the shrine would undermine the area’s sacred character.
Some protesters also claimed the facility would be a trash-sorting plant, a description Lidl repeatedly rejected as false.
Company statements emphasized that its logistics hubs do not produce odors and are designed to be quiet and clean, and municipal officials said that references to "waste" in paperwork concerned standard rules for handling routine refuse at any workplace rather than a landfill or recycling plant.
Pilgrims marked the collapse of the project with a thanksgiving procession, public broadcaster Polish Radio reported.
"People rebelled, they did not want this construction and finally they won,” said Genowefa Zienkiewicz, 65, from the nearby village of Bogaczewo.
"It was unacceptable to build a trash-sorting plant next to the place where the Virgin Mary appeared," she told the tabloid Fakt.
Lidl said it dropped the Gietrzwałd plan due to "organizational and logistical obstacles."
The site chosen for the warehouse lay on the grounds of a communist-era collective farm, at Łajsy, some three kilometers from Gietrzwałd, and some residents supported the project for its potential tax revenue, jobs and infrastructure.
The local parish priest asked protest organizers to demonstrate away from the shrine to avoid disturbing worshippers.
The Catholic Church did not take an official position.
Lidl will instead build what it describes as its largest Polish distribution center in Skawina, near the southern city of Kraków.
The facility, with a planned area of about 74,500 square meters, is slated to open in spring 2027 and employ around 200 people.
Gietrzwałd has been one of Poland’s best-known pilgrimage destinations for generations. The faithful believe that between June 27 and September 16, 1877, two local girls, aged 12 and 13, reported more than 160 sightings of the Virgin Mary, who, they said, spoke to them in the local dialect of Polish, which is significant to the believers as the village was then part of Prussia.
(rt/gs)
Source: polskieradio24.pl