Drury talks about county land deal

For Dan Drury, the offer Midamerica Hotels made to Cape Girardeau County for a 70-foot-wide strip of County Park North is just a business deal.

While he's not ready to announce exactly what will be built on the land adjacent to Interstate 55 on the north side of U.S. 61, Drury promised that it would burnish rather than tarnish the image of both the Cape Girardeau-Jackson community and his company.

"We live here. We are going to live here, unless someone runs us out of town," he said. "Our third and fourth generations are here. We care how things look, we care how things are presented. Look at what we have done over here with Midamerica plaza, the Holiday Inn Express, Popeyes and Olive Garden. What we are going to do, we are going to make it look nice and make it last for a long time."

But in our conversation, I could hear the agitation in Drury's voice. The undercurrent of what he said was that the Cape Girardeau County Commission had handled the whole thing poorly. The land deal has become one of the prime exhibits in the near meltdown of civility among commissioners and a case study in how to make people angry.

The Board of Park Commissioners, the advisory board that the commission all but ignored when it pressed forward with a decision to sell the land in an April 3 closed meeting, wants answers. A board meeting is set for 2 p.m. today at the county park superintendent's office; commissioners have invited Presiding Commissioner Gerald Jones to attend.

Jones was recently made supervising commissioner for the parks in a 2-1 vote to strip that power from Associate Commissioner Jay Purcell, who was the lone vote against the sale because the park board had not considered it in a formal setting.

Drury said a formal discussion by the park board was what his company intended all along. Such a discussion could legally have been held in closed session.

"It was a proposal we made through the county commission," Drury said of the offer to buy the 1.24 acres. "We recommended that the county park board be a part of the review."

The offer for the land — $300,000, sources have said — was three times the appraised value. And the proposal also included a provision that the money be set aside for park purposes with no strings attached — no Dan Drury Pavilion, no Midamerica Hotels playground — Drury said.

"The proposal we put out was good for the parks and it was good for us," he said. "There was nothing under the table."

Midamerica Hotels won't consider the deal done until the paperwork is signed and the check handed over, Drury said. And while it may impair the company's flexibility to develop the other land it owns at that location, Drury said that if the deal dies, it won't keep him awake at night.

"We just feel like we put together a proposal and forwarded it," he said. "If it is not accepted, we are big boys. We will continue to go on. But we felt it was good for the county and good for Midamerica."

* Midas gone: Speaking of Midamerica Hotels, last week the old Midas Muffler Shop on Kingshighway near Broadway came down. Midamerica owns the property, along with the office building immediately to the south and the Burger King at the northeast corner.

Bob Hahn of the company said there are no specific plans to redevelop the land. But the muffler shop building wasn't in good enough shape to save. "Basically it was just to clean up that corner," he said. "We bought that property with the intent of having the option for future development of that whole corner. We just wanted to clean it up and get rid of an eyesore, so to speak."

* Looking good, feeling fine: If you're reading this online, look closely at our Web site. Looks good, doesn't it? Well, we think so, and the Southeast Missourian received some notable recognition that validates our view.

During a meeting in Las Vegas last week for companies that use the SaxoTech system for creating and publishing both print and online products, the Southeast Missourian took Best of Web among all SaxoTech properties. And there are some big boys in the sandbox with us and we beat them all — The New York Times regional, the Washington Times, La Presse, Crain's Business and others.

The award is voted on by our peers, and special recognition was given to James Baughn for his templates and coding, and to online products manager Matt Sanders for pushing regular updates and strong local content on the site.

And it wasn't just the in-house SaxoTech recognition that has our chests puffed out a bit: The Suburban Newspapers of America awarded us second place among dailies for user-generated content. "This user-friendly, clean site has created a strong presence for user-generated content in its market," the citation reads in part.

* Family Video open: More than a month behind schedule, the Family Video store on the northeast corner of Broadway and West End Boulevard is open.

The last of the concrete for the parking lot was poured early in the week and that was the last piece needed to open the doors, said Roy Williams, vice president and regional director for Family Video stores in Southern Illinois and Eastern Missouri.

In fact, the store officially opened at 3 p.m. Thursday, he said.

The interior was ready and waiting only for the cement to dry sufficiently to allow traffic. "We finished the inside ahead of the outside," Williams said. "The rain kept us from doing a lot of work."

The construction project was plagued by delays from the mid-February ice storm to the mid-March deluge and repeated smaller storms in between that kept the lot churned and muddy. In fact, to put the parking lot in, Williams said the entire lot had to be dug out by two feet, and a new layer of dirt and rock put down to overcome the mud.

In addition to the video outlet, the building has a 1,200 square-foot storefront available for lease for any enterprising business that thinks the traffic from a video store would provide a good base of customers.

"We typically do that with our buildings," Williams said. "Sometimes we rent to national accounts, like Starbucks or Papa Murphy."

Other stores have self-service gyms and doctors offices adjacent, he said.

Family Video is the third-largest video outlet by market share and the largest privately held video outlet. The company prefers to keep its stores corporate-owned, all 550 of them, to have better control over growth and the quality of the service, Williams said.

And don't despair of the video store as an anachronism in the age of Internet-based video rentals. The video store is there when customers are on their way home from work and think about seeing a movie, he said, and the business thrives on customers browsing the aisles and picking up extra titles that catch their eye.

"You can't get a movie from Netflix while you are thinking about it on the way home," he said. "And if you watch people, they love reading the ad boxes."

* Coffee competition: Move over Grace Cafe and Broadway Books & Roasting Co., there's a third coffee shop coming to Broadway. The Mississippi Mud House will be opening at 813 Broadway this summer, hopefully in July, said Daniel Seabaugh, the 21-year-old son of the building's owners. The shop will offer the coffees and menu of the original Mississippi Mud House in St. Louis, along with musical offerings that were being presented in the Enchanted Forest in the same building. The Enchanted Forest was a alcohol-free venue where teens could see bands.

"About a year and a half ago I did a little touring of coffee shops," Seabaugh said. "I liked the environment, and wanted to do something like that where you can bring open-minded individuals in and just talk. In St. Louis, I stopped at Mississippi Mud House and was just blown away."

The Mississippi Mud House will feature the exotic coffees that are roasted in St. Louis by the parent company. The idea for the coffee house grew out of plans to add espresso and other coffee drinks to the Enchanted Forest's concessions, Seabaugh said.

The projected opening date is the first of July, Seabaugh said.

The news release file: There's only one item this week — Chateau Girardeau received a five-year accreditation from the Continuing Care Accreditation Foundation-Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities, or CCAC-CARF. The accreditation marks 20 consecutive years of such recognition for Chateau Girardeau and it is the only assisted-living retirement community with the accreditation between St. Louis and Memphis. The accreditation process reviews 762 standards that must be achieved.

Rudi Keller is the business editor for the Southeast Missourian. Contact him at rkeller@semissourian.com or call 335-6611, extension 126.