Walmart is in the planning stages of renovating and slightly expanding its north Medford Supercenter located at 3615 Crater Lake Highway. Plans show that the exterior facade will remain the same with the store's signage and vestibules largely staying intact.

Walmart is in the planning stages of a sweeping remodel of its north Medford Supercenter that includes a slight expansion to boost online pickup and delivery services.

The store at 3615 Crater Lake Highway plans to expand its 149,323-square-foot building by a little more than 3% along with numerous interior changes “to provide our customers a more modern shopping experience,” Josh Havens, Walmart’s director of global communications and corporate affairs, said in an email to the Times.

The 5,368-square-foot addition to the store’s north end of the building will involve enclosing and repurposing a fenced open storage area currently used for outdoor goods. According to Havens, the new addition will be used to “support the store’s growing online pickup and delivery services.”

To describe what’s in store for shoppers, Havens pointed to an Oct. 30 post on the company’s blog by Walmart Realty Senior Vice President Hunter Hart about updated stores’ new more “friendly, welcoming atmosphere.”

Havens indicated that the renovations will be in line with the roughly 1,400 stores that Walmart remodeled across the country over the past two years. Priorities with updated stores include expanded pharmacies, updated “customer-centric” vision centers and a layout with more space for new corner displays where customers can “touch, feel and visualize” items such as clothing, bedding and decor.

“Every change is thoughtful,” Hart wrote about Walmart’s store renovations. “They all ladder up to a greater goal: to meet our customers wherever they are, leveraging our stores to welcome people to a more modern, highly-connected Walmart.”

North Medford’s updated pharmacy will include a new private screening room for pharmacist consultations and services, along with new partitions at the front counter that give pharmacy customers greater privacy.

Medford’s Site Plan and Architectural Commission will discuss the expansion portion of the proposal at their coming meeting scheduled for noon Friday. Planning Director Matt Brinkley said that the meeting solely centers around repurposing and enclosing the currently fenced outdoor area beside the store on the north end of the building.

“I imagine it’s going to be pretty non-controversial,” Brinkley said. “Our code allows for something like this to happen without review by SPAC, but only up to 2,500 square feet.”

“Honestly, we could probably have a much higher threshold and people would be OK with it,” Brinkley added.

Walmart included 58 pages of plans and blueprints in the SPAC meeting’s agenda packet. Although they detail everything from flooring to HVAC upgrades, the plans show that the exterior will look much the same as it has since 2013, with signage and vestibules largely staying intact.

Brinkley said the other planned interior renovations such as the pharmacy and vision center improvements and expanded pickup parking stalls won’t require public hearings.

“Assuming it (the expansion) gets approved, then it’s building permits,” Brinkley said. “Our staff will review the building permit process.”

Havens said that Walmart does not yet have a construction timeline for the renovations.

Typically, the only other part of so-called “big box” retail store renovations that would go through the public hearings process are exterior renovations to ensure they comply with Medford’s design standards, according to Brinkley.

Walmart has owned the Crater Lake Highway property since November 1994, according to Jackson County property records. The big-box retailer underwent improvements that included an expanded grocery area in 2013.