Glenstone’s Pay Dirt: Mobile-home park target of eager developers

In southeast Springfield, in the middle of the Queen City’s busiest retail corridor, sits a community unto itself that shares little in common with its neighbors beyond location, location, location.

Commercial real estate agents and brokers generally agree the most prized ground for retailers in Springfield runs south from Battlefield Mall along Glenstone Avenue to James River Freeway. From the mall to Barnes & Noble, Target, Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Kohl’s and numerous restaurants to smaller brands in strip-centers, a roughly two-mile stretch of shopping and dining serves as prime real estate.

Quietly tucked between all of the action is a long-standing mobile home park.

The Ozark Highlands Mobile Home Park occupies 38 acres with its tightly placed 296 lots – all largely beyond the view of the roughly 50,000 drivers who pass it daily.

But developers know it’s there. And so do retailers, commercial property agents and brokers.

Like a stubborn stone stuck in an Ozarks creek bed, though several hands have tried to pry it loose, the mobile home park remains.

“It’s in a prime area for redevelopment, for sure, and new development,” said R.B. Murray Co. Vice President Ross Murray. “It is by no means the highest and best use of the property.”

By all accounts, the mobile home park is a relatively nice complex with many well-kept homes. And no one argues who was there first.

Ozark Highlands, now over 60 years old, was established long before Jerry Jones and Blue Star Investments’ built the 700,000-square-foot James River Towne Center in 1995. And it was there before Primrose Marketplace’s 350,000 square feet dropped on the scene in 1990. Battlefield Mall, at 1.2 million square feet, was built in 1970 at what was then the southern edge of town.

Springfield Senior Planner Michael Sparlin said the city annexed the mobile home property in 1968, just before the mall began drawing shoppers away from downtown. According to Sparlin’s review of city records, a map from 1956 shows the mobile home park in place, though he said it appeared much smaller then.

According to Greene County Assessor records, the property holds an assessed value of $6.89 million. Its owner is Pasadena, Calif.-based Boggs Steele Investments, which in turn is owned by Tower Management Co. Company official Logan “Alex” Boggs Jr., listed in Missouri Secretary of State records, could not be reached by press time.

“It’s an area that should be generating retail sales tax revenue for the city,” Murray said, suspecting the mobile home park’s cash flow is satisfactory. “You’ve got an unmotivated seller.”

In the nine months Ozark Highlands Office Manager Lesa McDonald has worked there she’s received several inquiries about the property from potential buyers. McDonald said she forwards inquiries to a superior she declined to name. Declining to answer further questions, she said the property stays close to full.

For commercial broker and developer Tom Rankin of Sperry Van Ness/Rankin Co., the complex represents a case study in supply and demand.

He said retailers want to be near other stores, which is why business has built out around Battlefield Mall. With the extension of Glenstone Avenue and James River Freeway construction, access to the area also became easier for shoppers in the region.

But if the owners don’t need the money, the land becomes more valuable to them.

“It’s not a vacant piece of land. It is producing a good income stream currently, so that makes it difficult for them to probably part with it,” Rankin said. “If they were motivated and the deal was easy to be put together, it would’ve have been done by now.”

Given monthly rent at Ozark Highlands is $340, and a double-wide lot is $350, the park would be collecting over $1.2 million a year at capacity.  

Developer Curtis Jared, who manages over 100 commercial properties through Jared Enterprises Inc., said he’s never made a play for the mobile-home park. But he’s long thought moving the park would be a viable option for the owners if the purchase price was sufficient.

“I think you could come out way ahead by doing that,” said Jared, who’s working to develop 90 acres off of James River Freeway on the southwest side. “Like a lot of stuff, I would be shocked if there was a price they wouldn’t truly consider. Usually, most people do have a price.”

Rankin said with many stores already located near the mobile home park, it could be difficult to assemble enough new retailers to make it financially viable. That’s why he’s co-developing the $78.5 million Springfield Plaza retail and office complex six miles away near West Bypass Road and West Sunshine Street. He’s gambling retailers on South Glenstone would be interested in another location in an untapped market on the western edge of town.
 
“I don’t know that there’s enough retailers in Springfield that want to be in that South Glenstone corridor that are large enough to take down that 38-acre tract and develop it,” Rankin said. “You’d be spending a fortune on that 38 acres because it’s income producing, and then you’re getting rid of all that income you just bought. … Then, you have to put together a project to lure new tenants in, which all takes time. It’s very complicated.”

Generally, Rankin said 10,000 square feet of retail space fits on an acre, which means the site could be maxed out at around 380,000 square feet.

“That’s a lot of retail. That’s another Primrose Marketplace. Who’s going to fill it?” he said. “It’s a great location. Nobody is going to argue that, but the economics have to work.”