Street could be reborn

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March 18, 2007

Anonymous The Joplin Globe Sun Mar 18, 2007, 11:05 PM CDT

By Melissa Dunson

mdunson@joplinglobe.com

When David Glenn, a longtime commercial real-estate developer in Joplin, gets a call from an out-of-town buyer, he always hears the same two streets named: Range Line Road and 32nd Street.

But once he gets the prospect in a car, Glenn said, he takes a detour, insisting that the potential buyer see at least part of Seventh Street. He acknowledges that the area has some problems, but says that with some vision and hard work, it could be the next hot spot.

A commercial boom wouldn’t be a new thing for the Seventh Street corridor. Ron Coffey, currently with Charles Burt Realtors, has been a commercial real-estate agent in Joplin for 34 years. He said he has seen the street’s popularity rise and fall over the years.

Years ago, Coffey said, West Seventh Street was Joplin’s real-estate hot spot, with a plethora of clubs and restaurants. But as time passed and Seventh Street became more crowded and expensive, businesses began to look elsewhere, particularly Range Line Road and 32nd Street.

But Coffey and Glenn think the tide may be turning for Seventh Street.

In the past three years, the city has issued 38 commercial building permits for work on Seventh Street — for a total of more than $6 million in new construction and renovation of existing structures.

‘It’s going to get better’

Sandra Robertson, owner of the new business Three Turtles: An Eclectic Marketplace, chose to start her venture on Seventh Street, just east of Maiden Lane, because she saw the location’s potential.

“It really was taking a chance,” Robertson said. “This building looked pretty rough, but it was a Route 66 building with good bones.”

The building that houses Three Turtles was constructed in the 1940s. During Seventh Street’s glory years, it served as a gas station, a barbershop, a liquor store, a used furniture shop and a used appliance store. Regardless of how the building looked when she bought it, Robertson said all she had to do was stand in the doorway and count the number of cars that passed by each hour to remind herself why it was worth a shot.

Glenn said the heavy traffic flow is one of Seventh Street’s greatest assets, especially because it is the direct route from Northeast Oklahoma and Southeast Kansas into Joplin and through town to Northpark Mall.

“It’s going to get better,” Glenn said of Seventh Street’s future. “That’s because the traffic count isn’t going to go down.”

Lucila Huaracha, manager of the new Acambaro restaurant near Seventh Street and Maiden Lane, said the owners of the Mexican restaurant chain with locations in Webb City, Monett, Springfield and Northwest Arkansas saw the vacated Mazzio’s building as a perfect option for expanding their business. The big factors were the traffic and the price.

The restaurant opened Feb. 21, and Huaracha said business has been good. Glenn isn’t surprised at Acambaro’s success at the Seventh Street location. He said West Seventh Street took a hard hit years ago when Wal-Mart moved out of the Joplin West Plaza and farther west to Schifferdecker Avenue, but Systems & Services Technologies Inc. moved into the vacated building in 2004, bringing hundreds of employees with it.

“Now these people have to eat lunch in that area and shop there, and that’s a huge thing,” he said.

The expansion of West Seventh Street continues, with a new Liberty Bank location going in just east of the Wal-Mart Supercenter.

Glenn said portions of Seventh Street from Maiden Lane to Main Street will continue to progress, but at a slower pace than the stretch farther west because there are many residential properties right against the street, along with an abundance of used-car lots. Closer to Main Street, he said, several of the old residential properties have been torn down in the past few years, replaced by offices for upscale law firms and other businesses.

Many of the same factors come into play for Seventh Street from Main Street to Range Line road, with vacated businesses being filled not with other retailers, but industrial types of businesses that cannot take advantage of the heavy traffic flow.

“Every town has to have those kind of businesses,” Glenn said. “They just don’t make people stop.”

A fresh start

While much of the recent commercial focus has been on 32nd Street, Glenn said the area near Seventh Street and Range Line Road is probably still the busiest and most expensive commercial real estate in all of Joplin.

The retail attraction of Seventh Street and Range Line Road is expanding east with the completion of North Park Crossing — which offers a diverse group of clothing stores, craft shops and restaurants — the expansion of Target, and the Missouri Department of Transportation’s recent announcement that the Range Line bypass will be completed in 2010.

While there are still many “For Sale” or “For Lease” signs in the windows of properties all along Seventh Street, Glenn said a little foresight can get businesses a prime piece of land at second-tier prices.

Coffey said Seventh Street often is underrated, but it still is considered the No. 3 choice for businesses to locate.

“I think Seventh Street can come back — maybe not to the way it was in the very beginning, but it all comes down to the number of cars that travel down it every day,” he said.

Face-lifts for existing businesses also can help propel Seventh Street’s popularity, Coffey said. Sometimes people are just looking for a sense of freshness, he said, like the remodeling of longtime Joplin nightclub Red Lion that is under way.

Glenn compared Seventh Street’s position with that of East 32nd Street 15 years ago, when he built the Creekside shopping mall next to what used to be a car auction business.

He said he sensed the momentum on 32nd Street, and knew that the property would be a commercial hot spot someday and that the auto auction would be no more. He said it took a little longer than he expected, but 15 years later, the shopping center now sits next to the recently completed Hilton Garden Inn.

“In 15 years, it will change,” he said of Seventh Street’s unoccupied or blighted areas. “And then people will ask what used to be in that spot and won’t remember. And that’s the whole point.”

Melissa Dunson is the business writer for The Joplin Globe.

Building permits

Of the 38 commercial building permits the city has issued for work on Seventh Street in the past three years, 20 of them came within the past year.