Business First - June 10, 2003, by Toya Richards Hill
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is making preliminary plans to open a Louisville store on Outer Loop at Interstate 65.
“It will be the supercenter format,” which includes a grocery and retail component, said Keith Morris, community affairs manager for Bentonville, AK-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc. The store will be about 200,000 square feet, he said.
Morris said site developer Shadow Wood Towne Plaza LLC would build the new Wal-Mart and that the company is still going through the approval process regarding the site.
“We have not yet fully committed to signing the contracts and going forward with it,” he said. “Once the developer gets all the state and local approvals, we would have a better timeline” as to when the store might be built, Morris said. “It’s probably 18 months away.”
Shadow wood Towne Plaza is an entity formed by J. Scott Hagan and Benton Seay of Louisville development firm Hagan Seay Properties, as well as R.D. Thurman and J.A. Patterson, according to records filed with the Kentucky Secretary of State.
Seay, president of Hagan Seay, said Wal-Mart “will likely be the anchor” of the more than 400,000 square feet, open-air development. He said additional retailers also are being line up for the property.
Seay said the total property is 60 acres and that about 50 of that will be developed. He said “High-quality wetlands” will be created in the remaining space.
“We have been working on this project since 1996,” he said, adding that the plan for the plaza has gone through a number of technical changes and modifications over the years. Currently, “we are in the process of receiving all necessary approvals from all the necessary agencies.”