Major financing decisions remain for Menards development in Glen Carbon

Key financing decisions remain for a planned mega development in Glen Carbon that will include a Menards and several other potential businesses.

The Orchard Town Center Planned Development ordinance was approved by the Glen Carbon Village Board 4-2 at its Tuesday, June 22, meeting. It included a preliminary plat and a zoning change from agricultural to general commercial. The property is the former Foucek nursery bounded by Plum Street, Troy Road, Center Grove Road and Governors’ Parkway.

The next step will be for the board to take action on the financing package, including the TIF and business district, and the developer’s agreement, which are anticipated sometime in July.

The village does not own the property that will be developed and is not a party to the private contract between the developer and the owner.

Menards plans to build a 290,000-square-foot store that will anchor the center. There will be 12 outparcel locations for building smaller individual businesses and restaurants. South of Menard’s would be a small retail development. All will be on a wedge-shaped piece of property south of Governors Parkway.

“We think the project is really a complement to the area,” said Tim Lowe, senior vice president of development for Staenberg Group, developer for the project. “It doesn’t necessarily draw away or take away from what exists today. It brings in new uses that aren’t in this market that are looking to get involved but can’t find a location.

“And I will tell you the interest today has been fairly strong,” he said at the June meeting. “We’ve got a really good list of outparcel tenants looking to locate at this property.”

He said he saw the timing of this property will be in two phases mostly driven by the amount of traffic improvements that are required.

“Menards would like to open by next summer or next fall  of 2022. And with that we’d like to open with a small grouping of outparcels,” Lowe said. The project will go on to Phase II after some of the traffic improvements have been made, according to Lowe.

He said the traffic improvements would be finished within the next year and the development would be fully stabilized and fully open by summer/fall of 2023.

“We’ve included greenspace, we’ve included sidewalks, we’ve included connectivity and we also want to take advantage of the bike trail,” Lowe said. “The bike trail is a great asset for projects like this.

“We want to create a bike path, we want to park. That park’s about half an acre. It’d be all greenspace with trees and amenities. We’d like to include some seating, some bike racks and things like that.”

He said that people could park their bikes in the racks and walk on the new sidewalks to the different restaurants and businesses. Such as the really big store.

“As you know, Menards is our anchor for the project,” he said. “Hopefully, what we would like to do is develop the 50 acres into what we call three components. And those three components are: One, Menards. Menards will build a 290,000-square-foot location there on the north end of the property with parking and that’ll be the anchor of the development. In addition to that we have twelve outparcel locations.”

Those locations, he said, were all along Governors Parkway and Troy Road and will be individual businesses like fast food (the board limited the number to four), casual sit-down restaurants, service providers, banks and legal offices. “That’s where you get a lot of the variety,” he added..

“To the south of Menards, we have a retail development,” Lowe said. He said it would most likely include three junior anchor stores and a multi-tenant building for smaller businesses.

After presentations on sidewalks and stormwater drainage from engineer Marsha Mallard of TWM, Inc. and planned traffic improvements from Lee Cannon of CBD, board members proposed and voted on amendments regarding signage, types of businesses to be allowed, etc.

At the June meeting, Glen Carbon Trustees Mike Sonderegger and Nikisha Omotola were the only no votes against the development ordinance.

Charlie Feldman of the Times Tribune News provided the bulk of the reporting for this story.

BELOW: The preliminary site plan released last fall by the Village of Glen Carbon for the Orchard Town Center. Center Grove Road is to the right (running east-west) in this view. Troy Road, which runs north-south, is shown at the top. Governors’ Parkway is to the left (running east-west).