The Promise of Farmers Park

A handful of center city business owners have eyed the south side of town, and now they are beginning to take a leap of faith. Not abandoning their downtown digs, the entrepreneurs are branching out.

The draw is the $22 million, environmentally friendly, mixed-use Farmers Park.

First steps
For Aviary Cafe and Creperie LLC, the expansion started with a food truck.

After months of routinely setting up at Farmers Market of the Ozarks, the centerpiece of the residential, office and retail complex, Aviary owners Mark and Debbie Burgess on Feb. 1 opened their second location at 2144 E. Republic Road, Ste. E120. With a roughly $700,000 investment, they’ve brought their restaurant and a French bakery to a 3,600-square-foot corner retail space at Farmers Park.

“We’ve been looking around for a new opportunity for about a year, mainly because we are maxed out with what we can do downtown based on our space,” Mark Burgess said of the 1,400-square-foot restaurant they’ve operated at 400 E. Walnut St., Ste. 100, since April 2011. “We had looked at a couple of locations, but we were already pretty deeply involved with the farmers market out there.

“We knew it was a good draw, and thought it was a good project,” he added, projecting the new location would generate $2 million in first-year revenue, roughly double what the downtown restaurant recorded in 2013.

Paul and Hannah Catlett, who own Studio 417 at 444 W. McDaniel St. and Hudson Hawk Barber & Shop next door, are opening their second salon and barber shop at Farmers Park, and they are including a blow-dry bar concept. Together, the businesses will be connected under a combined 4,500 square feet, with the new blow-dry bar taking the most space, 2,100 square feet.

“We were busting at the seams,” Hannah Catlett said of business downtown, declining to disclose revenue.

Though Studio 417 has operated downtown for more than 13 years, the barbershop opened in April. Two months later, the couple decided there was enough demand from clients living on the south end of town to support an expansion. The salon and barbershop are projected to open March 3, with the blow-dry and styling bar coming on line in April.

When the Catletts realized designer Matthew Hufft of Kansas City-based Hufft Projects was the architect for Farmers Park, Hannah Catlett said they knew where they’d be going.

“My husband and I are design junkies, and Matthew Hufft designed our home, as well,” she said. “We’ve been hearing for years that people wanted us to come to the south side, and with the recent growth of our company, we just felt it was the right place for us to be at the right time.”

Bryan Simpson, co-owner of Five Pound Apparel LLC, said he’s targeting an April opening for the company’s second store.

Simpson said the owners have known for some time a majority of their customers reside in the 65807 and 65804 south-side ZIP codes. While up to 25 percent of customers have reported living in the downtown ZIP of 65806, Simpson said he’d like to tap further into the south-side market.

The philanthropic retailer, which donates 5 pounds of food to NepalNutrition with every purchase, said the new location should pull in $750,000 in first-year revenue, which would more than double the tally in 2013.

The new tenants for Farmers Park aren’t the only downtown businesses with winter plans to fly south.

Chicago Cheesesteak Co., at 319 E. Walnut St., also is expanding to reach south-side customers with a planned April 1 opening in Battlefield Plaza, 303 E. Battlefield Road. On Dec. 30, Farmers Gastropub, which had operated out of the Wilhoit Plaza for four years, vacated its downtown presence altogether when it opened at the north end of the Brentwood Center, 2620 S. Glenstone Ave.

Key urban core
At Farmers Park, the door isn’t wide open to any downtown business owner.

Lead developer and sustainability advocate Matt O’Reilly of Green Circle Projects LLC said he has turned away three businesses interested in relocating from downtown.

“There is no development that is more important than keeping a strong, central core to the city,” said O’Reilly, who served on the Strategic Planning Committee for the city’s Field Guide 2030 long-range planning initiative. “Every tenant that we do have coming to open a second location, we screened them and said, ‘We won’t do this if you are looking to relocate.’”

Green Circle Projects has developed Farmers Park with office space to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design-Silver standards, and community gardens and apartments designed to meet Environmental Protection Agency Energy Star/AirPlus designation. O’Reilly said the development is shaping up as an anchor for the southeast part of town, with Farmers Market of the Ozarks already drawing consumers into Springfield from Ozark, Nixa and Rogersville.

He said the new development is likely attractive to downtown businesses because it mimics the center city environment.

“Without a healthy, vital core, the city rots from the inside out, and nobody wants to do business in a situation like that,” he said.

Metropolitan Farmer, a farm-to-table restaurant concept, was the first tenant at Farmer Park in late November, and Ellecor Design and Gifts’ opening last week represents its first retailer.

O’Reilly said three quarters of the development’s retail space has been leased or preleased and another 10 percent is under contract with terms being negotiated. Half of a 13,000-square-foot floor has been set aside for a shared-office model, and six companies in the technical and medical industries are being considered for another 20,000 square feet of office space. O’Reilly declined to disclose the possible tenants.

Commercial lease rates at Farmers Park are $17.50 per square foot, triple net, he said.

According to market tracker Xceligent, both retail and office rates are cheaper on the southeast side of town. In its fourth-quarter Market Trends Report, Xceligent found average retail rates in southeast Springfield were $5.25 per square foot, compared to $7.50 in the central business district. Office rates in southeast Springfield averaged $13.93 per square foot versus $17.16 in center city.

Farmers Park’s 58 apartment units should be available for residents to move in by May 1, he said. Listed at $1.20 per square foot per month, O’Reilly said a waiting list for the apartments exceeds the number of units available.

O’Reilly said recent construction delays at Farmers Park were a result of exterior elements of the upscale community not meeting design standards, and he has asked general contractor Killian Construction Co. to rework parts of the center. The project was originally slated for completion last fall.

Simpson said he hasn’t minded the delays, so far. But if Five Pound Apparel can’t move in until summer, that would impact the selection of seasonal clothes offered.

Catlett said she’s anxious to open and feels the trending blow-dry concept will be a hit with south-side clientele.

“Our customers travel and they hear about these places, and so we wanted to be able to bring that here,” she said.[[In-content Ad]]