STRICTLY BUSINESS: JANUARY-JUNE TOTALS FOR CONSTRUCTION PERMITS UP

Along an inside street-level wall of a building at Broadway and Lorimier hangs an old sign:

"Harris Motor Car Co."

The structure at that location, once owned by the late Cape Girardeau businessman Charlie Harris, has served as many businesses -- Townsend Furniture, Charmin Industries offices, a plastic fabrication company, a wholesale hardware company, and of course Harris Motor Car Co.

Vernon Rhodes, president of Plaza Tire Co., a 39-year-old business which has 39 stores in four states, plans to turn it into an apartment complex. He bought the building two years ago.

Downtown living has made an impressive comeback in Cape Girardeau, and Rhodes is familiar with the downtown apartment scene. He previously owned the building at 1 S. Main, intersection of Main and Independence Streets, where he remodeled the top floor of the building into three luxury 1,200-square-foot apartments.

He later sold the building, which now houses offices of Capaha Bank.

Plaza Tire, which recently completed it 39th Plaza Tire facility at Rolla, has 39 tire locations throughout the four-state area of Missouri, Kentucky, Illinois and Arkansas, recently completed Phase I of a six-building apartment complex on N. Kingshighway said Scott Rhodes, of Plaza Tire.

"We're in Phase II of that apartment complex," he said. "That will include two more buildings. Phase III of the complex will round out the six-building complex."

Work started last week on the transformation of the building into an apartment complex which will feature four two-bedrooms apartments and three one-bedroom apartments.

The ground level will be used as a parking garage.

"We're looking at a September opening for the apartments," said Rhodes.

The Harris sign will remain intact.

The apartment complex is one of many permits which have been issued at the Cape Girardeau Division of Inspection Services offices during the first six months of 2001.

Thirty-one permits, including a $1.2 million permit for an addition to Lynnwood Baptist Church, 2935 Lynnwood Hills, were issued during month of June.

Another nine permits, for a total of $600,000, were also issued for commercial projects, along with five one-family home permits, in the amount of $989,000, or an average of $198,000.

Construction in Cape Girardeau is up from the midyear point last year. As of June 30, a total of 192 permits had been issued worth $30,922,187. A year ago, a few more permits, about 200, had been issued, in the amount of $20.5 million.

One valued at $17.5 million

Included in the totals this year, however, was one permit in the amount of $17.5 million for the new Cape Central High School, under construction at 1000 Silver Springs Road.

One-family home permits are down for 2001, with a total of 26 permits for the six-month period, in the amount $3.6 million, an average of about $149,000. At the same point in 2000, 32 one-family home permits had been issued. Two years ago, 44 single-family home permits were issued the first six months of 1999, in the amount of $8.9 million.

Included in the permits have been a number of improvements for medical facilities.

St. Francis Medical Center has started construction of a new obstetrics ward what will feature state-of-the-art labor, delivery, recovery and postpartum (LDRP) suites. Southeast Missouri Hospital is expanding its existing obstetrics ward, which will feature LDRP suites.

Latest permits at Southeast Hospital were for expansions and improvements to the employee cafe and the gift shop.

Work on the hospital's cafeteria started earlier this month, and will be completed in four stages. The first phase, renovation of the Private Dining Room, will take six to eight weeks. Main room renovations, redesign of the main serving area and new design of the cafeteria entrance will follow, with the complete project to be completed in January. The cafeteria serves about 225,000 employees and visitor meals a year, or about 600 a day.

Work is also under way on the gift shop project. A fall completion date is expected on a 900-square-foot expansion. The Gift Shop is operated through the Southeast Missouri Hospital Auxiliary.

Street Talk: We hear that El Chico's Restaurant, which closed at 202 S. Mt. Auburn Road recently, will become a an El Acapulco Mexican restaurant.

Construction figures

Statewide, construction figures were down 4 percent through May.

Construction through May was valued at $3.1 billion, down from $3.3 billion through May last year, according to the F.W. Dodge Division of The McGraw-Hill Cos., an authority on the construction market.

Nonresidential construction during the first five months was down 21 percent, $844 million this year, compared to just over a billion dollars a year ago. This includes commercial, manufacturing and other buildings not designed for shelter.

Residential construction statewide through May was $1.3 billion, down 4 percent from the $1.4 billion totals of a year ago.

Nonbuilding -- streets, highways, bridges, river and harbor developments, airports and a few other projects -- was up 20 percent, at $954 million, from the $796 million through May of 2000.

Nationally, overall construction held steady with the same period a year ago. Nonbuilding construction was up 9 percent, but nonresidential building was down 6 percent. Residential was about the same.

Geographically, the Dodge Report said total construction was up 3 percent in the West and 5 percent in the South Central. It was down 3 percent in the Midwest, down 2 percent in the South Atlantic and down 1 percent in the Northeast.