Business First - by Cynthia Eagles - 12/31/2001
Some new additions are coming to the 44-acre Middletown Station shopping center by next summer, although the former bigg’s Hypermarket site remains largely vacant.
Hagan Seay Properties LLC plans to build a $2 million, 15,200 square foot, single-story strip shopping center on an outparcel at the center at 12975 Shelbyville Road, according to Ron McGehee, director of leasing for Hagan Seay. The building is scheduled to be completed by next summer.
Space in the strip center will lease for $17 per square foot, McGehee said.
McGehee said he is marketing the strip center to neighborhood-style retailers. One potential tenant may be a regional bank interested in building a branch with a three-car drive-through, McGehee said, although he declined to provide further details.
The strip center is a speculative project, McGehee said. But because other similar retail centers farther west on Shelbyville Road appear to be nearly full, McGehee said he expects to have few problems getting it leased.
Hagan Seay has plans for a second building that could be used for office space, McGehee said. The second building, which would be located behind the planned strip center, will be funded after the first is fully leased, he said.
A second project planned for Middletown Station is a Fazoli’s Italian Restaurant planned by UP Properties of Kentucky LLC. The firm, led by Mike Stevens and two silent partners based in Milwaukee, WI, bought the Louisville market for Fazoli’s last summer, according to Stevens.
UP Properties plans to add three Fazoli’s to the market’s existing six restaurants in 2002, he said. (See related story on this page.)
Stevens said he is leasing just over an acre of land from Wendy’s franchisee Ulysses “Junior” Bridgeman Jr., through Bridgeman’s UB Properties, a firm that specializes in building and leasing restaurants.
Stevens said his company hasn’t decided yet whether Bridgeman’s firm also will build the store.
Terms of the lease were not disclosed.
The 3,200 square foot restaurant, which would front on Shelbyville Road but be entered from a Middletown Station access road, is scheduled to open around April 2002, Stevens said.
McGehee also said a deal with a Schlotzsky’s Deli franchisee is close to being finalized for the sale of 1.2 acres behind an existing Applebee’s restaurant. He declined to provide further details.
Hagan Seay Properties also moved its offices this month to Middletown Station from 2,500 square feet of space it leases at 11901 Brinley Ave. in Middletown.
McGehee said the company will take 7,200 square feet on the western side behind the former Lerner women’s clothing store location. The extra space will accommodate the addition of two employees after the first of the year, plus allow room for future growth, he said.
While things are happening on some of Middletown Center’s outparcels, Hagan Seay still is looking for major tenants for the 321,000 plus square foot shopping center itself.
Nearly two years after the closing of bigg’s Hypermarket and the resulting exodus of other retailers from Middletown Station shopping center, the center remains largely empty.
Efforts to lure Jefferson County’s East Government Center to the property drew headlines recently when The Courier-Journal reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was looking into efforts by Jefferson County Commissioner Russ Maple to negotiate a new lease that would relocate the government center, now on Juneau Drive in Middletown, to Middletown Station.
McGehee said he understood any decision about the future location of the government center would be up to a city-county merger committee. He declined to say where in Middletown Station the center might go because that would depend on the needs of the different elements of the government center.
Currently, the center houses branch offices for the Jefferson County Clerk, Jefferson County police, Louisville Free Public Library and other agencies.
The nearly vacant center has faced competition from the opening of Springhurst Towne Center and The Summit shopping centers a few miles north of it, as well as a major downturn in the economy, according McGehee.
Yet this week, as a steady stream of shoppers entered the center to shop at the lone retailer there, Burlington Coat Factory, McGehee sounded optimistic about the main building’s chances in 2002.
Burlington, which moved to 64,000 square feet in the center in 2000, reportedly is happy with sales at its new location, McGehee said. Its former location was demolished to make way for the renovation of Shelbyville Road Plaza, another property owned by Hagan Seay.
Plans have been drawn to allow Burlington to expand into more that 15,000 square feet on the west side of its existing space if the company chooses, McGehee said.
Whether that’s an option Burlington Coat Factory officials want to pursue could not be determined, though. Al Ungar, district manager for Burlington Coat Factory, could not be reached for comment.
In August 2000, Ungar told Business First that Burlington signed a three-year lease for the Middletown Station site with THP Development Co., a company also operated by Hagan Seay principals Scott Hagan and Benton Seay. The short-term lease, Ungar said at the time, reflected Burlington’s willingness to see what THP (or now Hagan Seay Properties) could do with the center.
For now, a temporary wall divides Burlington from the remaining 155,000 square feet of the old bigg’s space.
It remains empty, except for some warehouse space in back, which has been temporarily leased by The Data Vault records storage and management company while The Data Vault constructs a new building.
The retail space surrounding the former bigg’s space and now Burlington also remains empty.
Leasing the bigg’s space is critical for the center, McGehee said. He has been talking with numerous “big-box” retailers, both national and local companies, but said the current economic climate has cooled a number of companies’ interest in expanding in Louisville for now.
McGehee said he touts Middletown Station as a bargain because it has space available for “single-digit rent” per square foot. He declined to provide a more specific leasing figure.
The search for tenants for Middletown Station also may expand to companies looking for office space, or even a call center, McGehee said. Companies looking to locate call centers have contacted him already.
Middletown Station is owned by Middletown partners LLC, another related Hagan Seay company. Member of Middletown Partners include Frost Brown Todd LLC co-managing partner Ed Glasscock and venture capitalist James Patterson.
Middletown Partners bought the 44-acre development, which includes the former bigg’s center and roughly 15 undeveloped acres, for $7 million in April 2000, according to records at the Jefferson County clerk’s office.
The new owners have not attempted any renovation since buying the property because it is basically in good shape, McGehee said.