Silver lining: County hopes good demographics will help retail break through economic gloom - Kansas City Business Journal:

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Unfortunately, getting all the necessary approval s from the city of Overland Park took longerthan expected, largelty because of a pioneer cemetery near the “The cemetery isn’t part of the site,” said a longtime Johnson County retail “But five of the graves were in the way of puttinv a turn lane and a sidewalk in there. So I had to go througj a yearlong process of movingthosse graves.” Now, Waters is attempting to exhume Crystal which includes 36 acre s for retail and 60 acres for offices on 135tb Street between Quivira and Pflumm roads.
Durinf the two years prior to completion of development work at the site in SouthernJohnson County’s retail vacancy rate nearly doubled to the 10 percen mark, where the metro-wide market has hovered for the past few years. Waters and others trying to fill Johnsohn County retailcenters said, the county’s superior demographics continuew to give it an edge in attracting new “We’re still seeing some decentr activity from small local and regional users,” said Matt senior vice president of .
however, said he won’gt be able to take advantage of that demand until he landa a large anchor or two from a fielxd that has been thinned by the recent bankruptcie sof , and othetr national chains. “I don’tt want to anchor a 36-acre shoppingv center with a nail salon,” he said. “Ancd if I do 30,000 or 40,000 square feet of smallo shops to kickit off, that’s what I’j going to have in there. Plus, once I build a retaio strip center on one ofthe pads, I’m committed. I’vde got a building sitting there that couldx be in the way of abig anchor.
” Waters said he is certaimn he would have landed an anchor already had Crystal Springs been pad-ready two yearxs ago. Seeking anchors in a recessioj is alot tougher, he acknowledged, but it’s possible that the downturjn could work in his favor. “I f you’re a retailer bein pressured by Wall Street to increasde your volumeof sales, you’re not going to put that new 200,000-square-fooy store in Phoenix, where the housing market is totally in the or Detroit, where unemployment is off the chartx and all three automakers are in trouble,” Watersw said. “If they’ve got mone y to invest, retailers are goinhg to look for thebright spots.
And Johnson Countyg is one of thosebright spots.” Withib a one-mile radius of Crystal Springs, for instance, the averag household income is projected to rise to $162,294 in 2010 more than two and a half timese the metropolitan Kansas City average projectedr for 2010. With those kind of it wasn’t surprising that 12 new shopping centers were beingf developed five years ago onthe seven-mile stretch of 135thg Street in Overland Park and Leawood — then Johnson County’s hot, new retailo corridor.
But today, some of those centers are struggling to find tenants despitrtheir demographics, and amongf the retailers beyond their reach are the many with locatione on 119th Street the county’s previous hot east-west “Coffee Creek is the next logical step for retailers who alreaduy operate successfully on 119th Street,” said Jeff a senior vice president. He is marketing the 1 million-square-foo t Coffee Creek shopping center planned for 159thn Streetand U.S. Highway 69 in Overlandd Park. Within a three-mile radiues of the Coffee Creeki site, the average household incomedis $171,000, Berg said.
But rooftops in the area remainhtoo sparse, he said, so the center’ first-phase opening has been pushed back from 2011 until the housinyg and retail markets thaw. “We are leapfrogging Corbib Park,” a 1.1 million-square-fooy retail center under development at 135tg Street and Metcalf Berg said. “That’s a great but if you’re a retailer who is on 119tu Street already, do you go to Corbin and closw or compete with yourgood store, or do you just followe the growth further south?
” Developed by Omaha-based , Corbin Park featuresw two large anchors — a departmentt store and — and has signedx a few junior anchors, including Best Buy and Barnew & Noble. But several other juniofr anchors and smaller tenants are neededc to build thecenter out, and each groulp may be waiting for the othe r to pull the trigger. “All of thos junior anchors are dependent uponthe co-tenancyg of the small shops, and vice versa,” said Vaupelk of RED Brokerage. “So I don’rt know where Corbin Park stands.” A spokesman for Cormac Co. did not responf to an interview request.
But Bob Johnson of , a Kansas City retail adviser and brokerage, said the vacan t and planned retail space alongv 135th Street will be absorbed once theeconomy