By BENNETT HALL
Gazette-Times business editor | Posted: Friday, January 19, 2007 12:00 am
Developer acquires land for Ninth Street center
It's official: Regency Centers will proceed with plans to build a 90,000-square-foot shopping center on Northwest Ninth Street.
The national shopping center developer filed site plans with the city last month - before it had actually acquired the land, currently occupied by The Corvallis Inn and the former Laidlaw bus barn.
That hurdle has now been cleared.
"We closed on the properties (Tuesday)," said Craig Ramey, a senior vice president in Regency's Oregon office.
According to records on file with the county recorder, Regency paid $3.7 million for both properties. The land, which totals about 6.5 acres, is on the west side of Ninth between Garfield and Hayes avenues.
Plans for Corvallis Market Center show a line of five large retail stores facing Ninth Street along the back of the property: a 25,000-square-foot anchor tenant, secondary anchors of 18,300 and 17,500 square feet, and subanchors of 7,700 and 7,150 square feet, with a parking lot in front.
Ramey said it's still too early to identify any of the prospective tenants, but he previously announced the lineup would include three national clothing retailers.
The complex also is slated to have two outbuildings along the Ninth Street frontage, an 11,600-square-foot structure near Garfield that would house five or six retail, restaurant or service businesses, and a 3,100-square-foot building near Hayes that could house a restaurant, bank or other free-standing business, possibly with a drive-through window.
The Corvallis Inn closed last week. The four-story, 120-room hotel had been for sale since 2004, when mortgage holder Merrill Lynch Credit Corp. bought the former Ramada Inn out of foreclosure for $1.5 million.
Laidlaw Transit, the company that provides public transit and school bus service in Corvallis, leased the Ninth Street space next door for years. In 2004, after learning the property was being put up for sale, Laidlaw moved to an industrial site east of town on Highway 34. A cleaning service called Clean Endings continued to lease offices in the building, and Rice's Antiques leased storage space there.
Both buildings will need to be demolished before the new shopping center can be built.
"We've got some work to do on the existing properties, and then we'll move forward on the project," Ramey said. "We'll start construction sometime this summer."
Because the property is zoned linear commercial, which includes shopping centers, no public hearing will be required for the project. The developers have asked for a plan compatibility review to allow a drive-through window on the smaller outbuilding and a lot development option to allow smaller setbacks from the street. Both are staff-level decisions.
Bennett Hall is the business editor for the Gazette-Times. He can be reached at 758-9529 or bennett.hall@lee.net.