FARMED OUT: FARMLAND AROUND CAPE DISAPPEARING

Where once there were shimmering fields of wheat there is a shopping mall. Where once cows grazed lazily on rolling hills, shoppers browse anxiously in super stores.

The face of Cape Girardeau has been rapidly changing as farmland has been sold to development companies over the last 30 years.

West Park Mall and St. Francis Medical Center sit on land off William Street that 25 years ago produced wheat and corn.

Walmart Supercenter, a little farther west on William Street, represents the outpost of Cape Girardeau's advancement. Constructed in 1992, it is bordered on its north side by a dairy farm.

As farmland that land has a market value of about $385 an acre. It's worth much more than that to developers.

"Joe Kirchdoerfer is sitting there, and I think he still owns that tract of land in the northwest corner of Interstate 55 and Route K," Cape Girardeau County Assessor Jerry Reynolds said. "He still has that dairy farm there and it's probably not even good farmland. If he was to go sell that land I wouldn't be surprised if he could get $50,000 an acre. That wouldn't surprise me a bit."

Kirchendoerfer declined to be interviewed for this story.

In the 1960s, Albert Spalding sold 90 acres of farmland that had been in his family for three generations to developers to construct St. Francis Medical Center and West Park Mall. His nephew, Edward Spalding, said his uncle probably sold the land "for peanuts."

"I don't know for sure, see, but the way I understood it a lot of the ground my uncle sold was maybe $5,000 an acre," Spalding said. "But Drury Development sold some to the city out where the fire department sits on Mount Auburn for $50,000 an acre. So he's the one that made the money."

Walmart was built on land owned by Drury Cape West Business Park, which was developed by Drury Development Co., Cape Girardeau City Planner Kent Bratton said.

Developers began buying much of the land west of town in small parcels around the time construction began on Interstate 55 in the early 1970s. The interstate was finished in 1972 and St. Francis was completed in 1973. West Park Mall opened its doors in 1981.

"My uncle never was married and I guess as he got older he just decided he didn't want to farm anymore. So he just sold it out to Drury's just a little at a time," Spalding said.

"There wasn't anything but farmland, that's all there was. Then the Interstate come through and Drury started buying up the ground. That's when they started building up St. Francis."

The expansion has not been strictly to the west though. Farmland to the north of Cape Girardeau has been swallowed up as new homes are constructed.

Cape Girardeau expanded to nearly its current size of 24.2 square miles in 1967 when it annexed land out to I-55 and northwest to the intersection of I-55 and Highway 61. Much of the area annexed was farm and pasture land.

Emil Meyer's family once farmed 176 acres near the intersection of Lexington Avenue and Perryville Road. The home his father built in 1920 was torn down 72 years later to make way for Lexington Avenue.

"That's where I was born and we lived down there until about 1920," Meyer, who now lives with his sister Helen on Perryville Road, said. "I lived there from 1920 until 1992 when I moved out and moved up here. There used to only be two houses on Perryville Road until you got up here to this big brick house. It was all farmland."

Meyer said the city's expansion made it too costly to keep the farm. He sold the land in small pieces until just 2 1/2 acres remained. He was planning to build another home and retire with his wife.

"But I lost my dear wife on Dec. 22 1992, and she was buried Dec. 24," he said. "That really hurt me and they took my home right after that. While she was living we had plans to build a new home with garden areas, but she died real suddenly. After that I wasn't about to build a new home somewhere."

Meyer said he'll keep the last few acres of the family land he still owns.

"Why should I sell it? It gives me a little something to piddle around on," he said. "I'm not able to do much but I do pass a little time away out there working in the garden.

"I haven't had any offers, just people saying they'd like to have it."