Wednesday, February 21, 2007

ARENA LAND UP FOR GRABS

Four proposed developments for a vacant lot in Jordan Valley Park will face public scrutiny on Monday.

The 1.7-acre lot was to be an arena in JVP, but those plans fell through. Now the City of Springfield wants to sell the land.

Four requests for proposals to develop the lot were announced on Wednesday. There's at least one intriguing plan, and one proposal that should make Springfieldians cringe.

•The Springfield-Greene County Park Board and Springfield R-12 Public Schools want to build a "joint administrative center with shared conference rooms, including a large auditorium and central reception area." Hmmm. The plan sounds interesting.

•BKD, LLP would build a "new headquarters and Springfield practice operations building with additional commercial//retail space in Phase I and an additional future building for mixed-use development in Phase II." OK.

•Of course it wouldn't be a party if John Q. Hammons didn't have a scheme. The developer wants to construct a "five-story 'Class A' office building with first-floor retail space." Ho-hum.

•The most urp-worthy proposal comes from HCW Evergreen, LLC. It wants to build a "Hilton or Embassy Suites hotel with meeting space, residential condominiums, restaurant, swimming pool and office space."

You might remember HCW as the force behind Grandvista, the timeshare resorts, and Branson Landing. HCW Evergreen also wanted to build a 25-story skyscraper in Branson, but aldermen last year cut the project down to size, limiting the building to 12 stories.

Want to hear more about the proposals? Presentations are slated to begin at 1:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 26, at the Busch Building Fourth-Floor conference room. It's a public meeting.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

A fifth proposal involves the construction of "Wrighthund Stalag One," a barbed wire enclosure, ringed by machine gun nests and attractively terraced plots of Claymore mines, from which Sheila Wright and her Amazing Canines would never, ever escape.

I'm voting for that one.

Anonymous said...

HMMMM...for some wild reason, I betcha John Q. gets the deal.

Branson Missouri said...

Don't count the Wichita Mafia out. Huffman can be very convincing. Seriously.

Branson Missouri

Anonymous said...

Since John Q took the "Convention Center" to MSU, the city should tell him to shove it. If the ground wasn't worthy enough the first time, what has changed?

Anonymous said...

The obvious choice here is the Hilton or Embassy Hotel. The combination of condos and the hotel would undoubtedly raise Jordan Valley Parks caliber. I'm sure that JQH will try to come up with some reason why his office building is the one and only choice for this land. This town is not Hammonsville and he is not the only major developer in the area. I will go to this meeting to see what these proposals are all about and maybe tell John Q. to shove it!