New restaurant could be first salvo in huge retail and shopping boom

By Joey Vaughan jvaughan@cdispatch.com Saturday, June 23, 2007 8:41 PM CDT Golden Triangle shoppers used to driving more than an hour to get to major retail destinations may soon find what they're looking for just a stone's throw away. Nothing has been finalized yet, but plans are under way for a major retail development near the intersection of Highway 82 and Highway 45 South - a so-called “lifestyle center” that could ultimately include big-box retailers, smaller shops, restaurants and hotels. The large development could be part of a wave of retail expansion following the wake of Lowndes County's recent industrial successes. With SeverCorr making steel and soon expanding and the Paccar truck engine plant soon to break ground, the resulting restaurant and shopping options may soon be here. One restaurant closed its real estate deal Friday, and dirt work has already begun behind Goody's adjacent to Leigh Mall on 18th Avenue. Santa Fe Cattle Company, the chain which owns Santa Fe Steakhouses, has finalized plans for a Columbus restaurant. Santa Fe Steakhouses are a chain of restaurants started in Nashville, Tenn. that have spread throughout Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Oklahoma. By year's end, the chain will have 20 total restaurants in operation. A Santa Fe Steakhouse is currently open in Tupelo. The restaurants are a bar and grill setup with meat carved on site by the restaurant's butcher. The fare ranges from chicken and seafood to Santa Fe's signature steak dishes. A premier dish is the Lynchburg steak, a nine-ounce sirloin marinated in a special Jack Daniel's sauce. The restaurants also offer affordable “lunch express” meals including salads, ribs, sandwiches and, of course, steak. “We're looking for an opening in Columbus around mid-to-late October. We're about to break ground and our usual construction time is 120 days,” said Don Clifford, a representative from Santa Fe Cattle Co. “We definitely like to harbor a family-friendly atmosphere, and we work hard to maintain that. We feel our restaurant will become a quick favorite among residents.” In other restaurant news, the site of the former Pump-N-Save gas station in Waverly Square has been cleared off and readied for an upcoming restaurant development. And dirt work has progressed steadily on the Highway 45 North site near Creekstone Chevron where Carl Hogan is building new car lots, with hopes to include other retail outlets. On the big development in the planning stages - nicknamed University Park - there remains much work to be done, including providing utilities. But plans are concrete enough that Columbus Mayor Robert Smith, Lowndes County Board of Supervisors President Harry Sanders and Columbus Light & Water General Manager Todd Gale will travel in July to look at a similar project or projects in the Southeast built by the same developer. The possibility of a retail development comprising hundreds of thousands of square feet less than 20 minutes from Columbus, Starkville and West Point is exciting news to shoppers used to traveling to Tupelo or Birmingham, Ala., to spend their dollars. It's not a traditional indoor mall - those are rarely built these days. It's much cheaper to avoid air conditioning and heating costs by building many stores in close proximity sharing the same parking lots, like The Summit in Birmingham or NorthRiver, which is under construction in Tuscaloosa, Ala. Columbus is in the midst of annexation talks, and the possibility exists the city would annex out to include the land where the project would be built. That would allow sales tax from the stores to go into city coffers and would also provide the impetus for city utilities to cross the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway, which could open up new avenues for development west of the river. For now, the project is hush-hush enough that people with knowledge of the deal are reluctant to comment publicly on it, but the wheels are in motion. According to a source who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the project has drawn interest from nearly all of the retailers who have been approached about it, and commitments have been made by several nationally recognized stores to open branches here. The developer is expected to know by the end of the summer whether the project will be green-lighted or not.