Harter House adds east Springfield store

The company broke ground June 28 for a new store at 1625 S. Eastgate in Springfield, near the Highway 65 and Sunshine Street interchange.

Randy Richards will co-own the store with wife Kathy and her mother, Barbara Bettlach. Bettlach and her late husband, Jerry, bought Harter House Old Fashioned Butcher Shop on West Sunshine from the Harter family in November 1973 and have turned it into a small chain, with stores in Strafford and Kimberling City.

Richards said the east Springfield store is expected to ease customer traffic at Harter House Quality Meats on East Republic Road.

“We were pulling from that area anyway, and our customers were requesting that we build there,” he said. “This location (on Republic Road) is doing a lot of business, and we needed to take some of the pressure off of this one.”

He declined to give exact revenue figures but said store sales have increased in each of the last 11 years.

Springfield real estate holdings company ICT LLC will own the 24,000-square-foot building and lease it to newly formed Harter House/Eastgate Inc. A building permit filed in May with the city of Springfield lists the construction cost at $1.14 million.

MoDoCo Inc. is the general contractor and Bates & Associates Inc. is architect.

A second new location is in the works in south Taney County at Hollister Town Plaza, now under construction. Bettlach’s son, Butch, and his wife, Lisa, will own and operate the Hollister store.

Both the Springfield and Hollister stores are expected to open in the spring.

Hot corner

The new Springfield Harter House store comes at a time when the area at Sunshine Street and Highway 65 is hopping with development.

Reliable Superstore, which sells BMW, Toyota, Lexus and Scion vehicles, is nearing completion of a $3.5 million expansion that began in April 2004. Managing Partner Tony Stubblefield said the multiphase project includes an expansion and redesign of the Toyota building, as well as a complete overhaul of the Toyota truck center and a remodeling on the BMW dealership.

Stubblefield said his company’s location acts as a blessing but also requires a lot of work.

“Being at the corner of Sunshine and 65, we’re at a very visible point in the city of Springfield,” Stubblefield said. “Everybody coming in to go to Branson, Silver Dollar City, Table Rock Lake, goes by the dealership. So we wanted a dealership that represented the community well and was more of a showcase.”

The construction work also allows for expected growth in the company, both in inventory and employment numbers. The project is expected to be complete in November.

Rapid Robert’s, which currently has six convenience stores in Springfield, is adding a new store and gas station on the northwest corner of the interchange. Springfield building permits value the construction at more than $500,000 It will be the Springfield chain’s 23rd location and includes eight fuel dispenser islands, accommodating 16 cars. As with the other Rapid Robert’s stores, the new location will carry Conoco fuel.