Northern Metro Updates
Once-stalled Station Park development moving ahead with yet another store
Updated Plans
CenterCal Properties
By Leslie Mitchell
The Salt Lake Tribune
Farmington • For a project stalled for nearly two years, a lot is going on these days at the Station Park shopping center development in Davis County.
Sporting goods store Sports Authority recently took out a building permit for a 42,000-square-foot store, joining a nearly 70,000-square-foot Harmons grocery store and a 55,000-square-foot Cinemark theater complex already under construction and set to open in early summer.
A fourth tenant, home furnishings store HomeGoods, has a 25,000-square-foot store in the works, and nearly two dozen other smaller specialty retailers are signing leases for another 150,000 square feet of space, developer CenterCal said. The developer said those leases will be announced in the coming months.
After years of delays, the stores now in development at Station Park could be open for business by summer on the 67-acre site at the intersection of Interstate 15, Legacy Parkway and Frontrunner commuter-rail station.
CenterCal credits family-owned Utah grocery chain Harmons for breaking a logjam created by the nation’s economic downturn. Bad economic times have hurt the retail sector nationwide. That caused scores of business failures and put numerous plans for new stores, shopping centers and other retail developments on indefinite hold. Other projects like Station Park, that weren’t started before the downturn, were canceled altogether.
But the Utah-based Harmons chain elected to move forward on its new store late last year, breaking ground in September. Completion is scheduled for May 2011.
“Harmons really got everybody else moving,” said Craig Trottier, vice president of development at Los Angeles-based CenterCal Properties, which owns and operates seven shopping centers in the West. “It was a matter of getting that first major anchor [store].”
Trottier said CenterCal is finalizing plans to construct a half-dozen new buildings on site to house the smaller retailers. Construction is set to begin on those buildings early next year, with the goal of tenants moving into their spaces during the summer.
All told, between the large anchor tenants and the specialty retailers, the center could have a total of 250,000 to 300,000 square feet of retail space occupied by summer, Trottier said.
Already, the Harmons store is nearly walled off, the first step toward starting on the store’s interior, which will be more elaborately fashioned than a typical grocery store. It is designed to be a major anchor of the 1-million-square-foot Station Park project.
“We’re bringing something that we think is unique to the area,” said Bob Harmon, an owner of Harmons City Inc., which operates 13 grocery stores in Utah.
The new Farmington store will include a large deli with chef-prepared entrees as well as a floral department, pharmacy, credit union and even a gourmet-cooking accessories section. The store also includes classrooms for cooking schools and an upscale seating area with a fireplace, dining area, couches and Wi-Fi access.
Harmon said his store hopes to capitalize on the commuters who travel daily between the Ogden area and Sandy via Frontrunner, buses, and light rail.
“The new store is only a few hundred yards from the Frontrunner station,” he said.
The Station Park store is one of several projects that Harmons, which has stores in Roy, Ogden, the Salt Lake area, Orem and St. George, is working on. The company also is building a new store in the City Creek development in downtown Salt Lake City that is scheduled for completion in late 2011. Harmons also is remodeling Emigration Market in Salt Lake City and is set to reopen that store early next year.
“We definitely have our hands full,” Harmon said.
Like the Harmons store, the theater project being developed by Cinemark Holdings is sizeable, with 14 movie screens.
Sports Authority has not yet formally announced the new store, and a spokesman did not immediately return comment. But its size indicated on the building permit signals the company likely will build one of the larger-store designs, not one of the smaller types of stores the chain has been experimenting with elsewhere.
For his part, Trottier is happy to be moving forward on Salt Lake City's Station Park at a time when “there’s not a whole lot else going on nationally,” he says. “To be able to do this project in this economic environment, we feel very fortunate.”
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Originally Posted by Orlando
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Station Park by CenterCal
STATION PARK - Station Park will be one of the preeminent lifestyle shopping centers in the Salt Lake City region. The project will consist of approximately eight hundred thousand square feet of retail, entertainment, restaurant, office and hotel space. Located at the intersection of Interstate 15, Highway 89, the new Legacy Parkway and the new Utah Transit Authority Commuter Rail, Station Park will enjoy the highest daily traffic counts to be found in the State of Utah. At this intersection Station Park will be well positioned to serve some of the strongest household demographics from Salt Lake City to the suburbs to the north.
Station Park will be home to a broad selection of apparel, home goods, entertainment and restaurant opportunities.
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