Commercial center locating on busy intersection in Perryville

PERRYVILLE, Mo. -- Near an intersection 14,000 vehicles pass through daily, a commercial center is under construction and ground soon will be broken for a Save-A-Lot grocery store.

Crossroads Village, which will have up to 17 businesses, is being built near the Highway 51 Bypass and St. Joseph Street, 1 mile east of Interstate 55. It will have more than 27,000 square feet of retail and office space for lease. Charles Brown, owner of Brown Ventures Inc., is handling the leasing for Crossroads Village, which is being developed by Perryville Investments LLC.

The commercial center and grocery store will be located on 9 acres in Progress Center, a development where a Sears store, Century 21 real estate agency and several other businesses are located. Progress Center and a residential area called Sycamore Hills cover about 44 acres that Brown bought from Saint Mary's of the Barrens Seminary in 1999.

Crossroads Village is scheduled to open in May. Save-A-Lot should open by late summer.

"We're talking to a variety of businesses like restaurants, hardware stores, clothing stores," Brown said. "There will be an anchor store that might be a Walgreen or something like that."

Current plans call for building the commercial center in three phases with lease sizes ranging from 1,080 square feet to almost 7,000 square feet. The first phase would have nine units for lease; the second phase would be the anchor store; and the third phase would be seven units.

If the leasing goes well it won't be built in three stages but all at once, Brown said.

"This is the busiest intersection in Perryville. It's a tremendous location near I-55 and north of the city center. We get a lot of traffic from Illinois that crosses the bridge at Chester."

Fourteen thousand vehicles go through the intersection every day. Eleven thousand people live within 5 miles of the development, and 80,000 people live within 30 miles.

Brown also is renovating a 7,000-square-foot building that came with the land he bought from Saint Mary's of the Barrens. Located along Sycamore Road, the building was used by the seminary as a repair shop for its farming operation. Brown is turning it into a daycare center called Little Wonders Learning Center. The center, which he hopes to open in March, is licensed for 100 children.

The developer said the facility will have video cameras parents can access via the Internet any time of the day.

Brown, who also owns a Century 21 real estate agency, has plans to build apartments on land he bought from the seminary. He has already built a residential subdivision called Dogwood Court.

jobert@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 251