Mixed-use development to be built near PIC West

The new frontier in commercial development appears to be the Great Northwest.

Northwest Springfield, that is.

The Partnership Industrial Center West will have a new neighbor in the form of the Springfield Gateway Center, a 70-acre mixed-use development to be built at West Bypass and Kearney Avenue by Greater Missouri Builders of St. Charles. Chris Maples, CCIM, of Follman Properties/ONCOR International, is sales-leasing agent for the project.

Maples said the real estate deal "is due to close about the end of July." Right now, the two properties that comprise the site are under contract with the sellers, the Gott family and the Jack Cole family.

"We are just in the early stages of marketing," Maples said. So far, she added, interest has been expressed by a hotel, a couple of restaurants, a convenience store and a local bank.

According to Greater Missouri Project Manager Bill Pauley, "Greater Missouri knew immediately that it wanted to be a part of the Springfield market, and the Springfield Gateway Center is the perfect way to enter this area with a large first-class project."

And the Gateway Center is not Pauley's first experience in the local market.

"I used to do the real estate for Wehrenberg Theaters and have been going back and forth to Springfield for eight or nine years." During that time, he said, he was favorably impressed with the city's growth and with the good experience he had working with city officials.

He said the northwest site was appealing for a number of reasons.

"We believe it's a very untapped market that has just been waiting for the infrastructure to be in place," Pauley said, adding that "the fact that Mr. Hammons now has his new facilities open and the city's commitment to the industrial park" were also factors in the decision.

John Q. Hammons' new Courtyard by Marriott property is located at 3527 W. Kearney. The Caf, an adjacent themed restaurant, is at 3521 W. Kearney.

The development site is already zoned for highway commercial use, and the developer's design team plans on several different end users to take advantage of traffic exposure from Interstate 44 and the airport.

With the highway commercial zoning, "There's not a whole lot that we can't do," Pauley said. "We can't do anything residential or industrial, but there's a great deal of latitude probably 70 or 80 permitted uses in that zoning category."

As far as prospective tenants, he said, there's been quite a bit of interest. "We have not consummated any individual deals yet, but we're real close to a few real good ones."

Ideally, he said, the development will have a small amount of retail and some large commercial users. "I'd like to have an end user that needs 10 or 15 acres," he said.

The project will "probably be let for bid this summer," Pauley said. "We're about 45 days from having all the civil engineering complete. Another 30 to 45 days of planning it'll probably be August before we're soliciting bids."

He added, "We hope to begin putting in all the infrastructure this fall. We might be a little bit optimistic but we'd like to plan for spring 2001" for occupancy. Utilities are already in place for the site. Wilson Engineering in Springfield is the engineering firm for the project.

The project is bounded by I-44 on the north and the West Bypass and Kearney Avenue on the south, with several hundred feet of exposure along all three major roadways, according to information from Follman Properties.

Greater Missouri Builders was started in 1966 by Bruce and Scott Campbell. Since then, the firm has completed more than $400 million in mixed-use developments.

The firm is now building six residential projects in Missouri and Kansas, and it has 300 acres of commercial development under way in the St. Charles and St. Louis metro areas.