Just For Feet, Dollar General to open Springfield locations

by Karen E. Culp

SBJ Staff

A store where customers can buy a pair of athletic shoes or play a game of pick-up basketball will open this summer on the south side of Springfield.

Just For Feet will be opening at the site of the former Bombay Bicycle Club. The building was sold to a group that was to have developed a Chevy's restaurant.

That group, in turn, sold the property to the Just For Feet developers. Tim Roth, a commercial sales agent with Rankin & Co., brokered the deal. Roth said the Chevy's people may continue to seek a suitable site for a restaurant in Springfield.

The Just For Feet store will be a 17,100-square-foot store that will sell athletic footwear and some athletic clothing, such as baseball caps and T-shirts, said Leslie Mayer, a representative from the Mayford Group, the company that is the exclusive developer of real estate for Just For Feet. Just For Feet has 150 stores, all but one of which are company-owned. The company's headquarters is in Birmingham, Ala.

The only other Just For Feet stores in Missouri are in Kansas City, though the company "is looking to expand into the St. Louis region," Mayer said.

Mayer said the company hopes to open the Springfield Just For Feet in July.

Meanwhile, Roth said, about 15 Dollar General stores are set to open in the Springfield and Joplin areas. The developer now has four sites under contract, two on the north side of Springfield and two on the west side, for development as Dollar General stores. One site is also under contract in Joplin.

The preferred developer on the project is a development company based in North Carolina, Roth said. The four sites under contract in Springfield are expected to be open by the end of the year.

"We may get a total of six or seven in the city limits," Roth said.

The stores will be free-standing, 10,000-square-foot operations. Roth said the free-standing stores have been shown to do about 15 percent more sales volume than stores in shopping centers.

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