Commercial hot spots spark sales, leasing

Regionally, Republic is strong in retail development, Branson land is a hot commodity, and Rogersville continues to be a source of largely untapped commercial potential.

City hot spots

West Bypass and Chestnut Expressway is a hot spot, said Mark Kerivan, spokesperson for Murney Associates’ commercial sales department.

“The widening of the bypass made that one of the demand locations in Springfield,” he said.

At Chestnut Crossing, a 37-acre planned general retail development at Chestnut and West Bypass, nine of 17 available lots have been sold – and two of those are available for resale – said real estate broker Todd Chambers of Chambers Real Estate Services LLC. Chambers represents Chestnut Crossing developer Larino Properties.

“Particularly (for) the frontage lots on Chestnut and West Bypass, the inquiries are more from restaurants at this time,” Chambers said.

Taco Bueno, a KFC/Long John Silver’s combo restaurant and Liberty Bank already are in operation at Chestnut Crossing, Chambers said, and Liberty Bank’s Tech Center/Office Building and an Ace Hardware store are under construction.

On the other side of town, a burgeoning hotbed of activity is the intersection of Chestnut Expressway and U.S. Highway 65, said Mike Mellinger, owner of Mellinger Commercial.

The relocation of Hickory Hills Elementary School there will open up substantial acreage to commercial development, said Mellinger, who represented Springfield R-XII Schools in the sale of the school property, which will close later this year. The buyer, which Mellinger declined to name, is assembling a 40-acre tract for commercial development.

Even though the Hickory Hills school relocation is two years out, interest is already high, he added, “because it’s an area of the city where there’s a ton of homes, there’s a lot of higher end homes, the demographics are real strong, but there’s not a lot of retail in that area.”

And according to Barbara Beyer, owner of Beyer Commercial Realtors, demand for retail property along Highway 65 is just strong, period.

Ozarks hot spots

Republic is an up-and-coming area, said Murney’s Kerivan, and Ron Tappan, broker/manager at CJR Commercial Group, agreed.

“We’ve done a lot of leases in Republic, and we’ve had a pretty good number of land sales over the last couple of years in Republic,” Tappan said. “It’s moving along.”

The U.S. Highway 60 corridor is “going to be building up east of Republic here fairly soon. And with all the homes being built down there, the demographics are improving, which means retail and office and other types of businesses will be attracted to it,” Tappan said.

Mellinger agreed that Republic has a great deal of potential for future commercial growth, having long been a strong bedroom community for Springfield.

Strong retailers, such as Lowe’s, Wal-Mart and Walgreens, add to Republic’s sales tax base, build more infrastructure and attract more users – “kind of like Nixa was 10 years ago,” Mellinger said.

Commercial activity continues to be strong in Nixa and Ozark.

“You’ve got a lot of smaller but newer development going on at the north end of Ozark, and it’s kind of feeding and bleeding into where it’s kind of hard to tell where Springfield stops and Ozark starts anymore,” Mellinger said.

Further south, “Branson is going very strong. We’ve had a couple of great years down in Branson, particularly selling land,” Tappan said, as well as plenty of leasing activity. “I expect it’ll stay strong certainly for the next few years,” he added.

While Branson Landing is driving business growth as well as consumer traffic, there’s a lot of major development – both commercial and residential – in that area, “particularly north of Branson and down around Hollister,” Tappan said.

On the horizon

An area that commercial brokers and agents see as having tremendous untapped potential is Rogersville.

“Without a doubt, Rogersville is a sleeper,” Kerivan said.

A plethora of planned development activity, combining residential and commercial, has been slow.

“We had high hopes for that area,” Kerivan said, but those hopes remain largely unrealized.

“There is demand; we’ve sold quite a few multifamily tracts for duplexes, patio homes and apartments, but the combination commercial/residential developments, two of them never really materialized,” he said.

One example is the Jamestown master development.

“The infrastructure took so long to get going that the interest level cooled substantially,” Kerivan said. “Although some parts of it have started construction, the major thrust is not going to be as high demand as we thought it was going to be.”

Another example is a planned development that stalled at State Highway 125 and U.S. Highway 60. “Plans were drawn, but the wheels didn’t turn on that project. That’s on the market as we speak,” he said of the unnamed development.

But according to Tappan, it’s just a matter of time. “I think that … within 10 years Rogersville will start to move pretty well. They have good infrastructure, they have a great school system that’s attracting a lot of families, attracting new homes and apartments, and I think the other commercial activities will come along,” Tappan said. “But not yet.”