Retail Tenants Sought For Parking Garage
Real Estate Firm Hired To Market Future Space
Continuous lines of concrete mixing trucks delivered material Wednesday to the construction site of the new $12.3 million Market Street Parking Garage that is being built at the corner of 11th and Market streets in downtown Wheeling. City officials are taking steps to market the 10,000-square-feet of street-level retail space that will be available as early as this fall.
Photo by Eric Ayres
Continuous lines of concrete mixing trucks delivered material Wednesday to the construction site of the new $12.3 million Market Street Parking Garage that is being built at the corner of 11th and Market streets in downtown Wheeling. City officials are taking steps to market the 10,000-square-feet of street-level retail space that will be available as early as this fall.
Photo by Eric Ayres
Continuous lines of concrete mixing trucks delivered material Wednesday to the construction site of the new $12.3 million Market Street Parking Garage that is being built at the corner of 11th and Market streets in downtown Wheeling. City officials are taking steps to market the 10,000-square-feet of street-level retail space that will be available as early as this fall.
Photo by Eric Ayres
Continuous lines of concrete mixing trucks delivered material Wednesday to the construction site of the new $12.3 million Market Street Parking Garage that is being built at the corner of 11th and Market streets in downtown Wheeling. City officials are taking steps to market the 10,000-square-feet of street-level retail space that will be available as early as this fall.
Photo by Eric Ayres
Continuous lines of concrete mixing trucks delivered material Wednesday to the construction site of the new $12.3 million Market Street Parking Garage that is being built at the corner of 11th and Market streets in downtown Wheeling. City officials are taking steps to market the 10,000-square-feet of street-level retail space that will be available as early as this fall.
Photo by Eric Ayres
Continuous lines of concrete mixing trucks delivered material Wednesday to the construction site of the new $12.3 million Market Street Parking Garage that is being built at the corner of 11th and Market streets in downtown Wheeling. City officials are taking steps to market the 10,000-square-feet of street-level retail space that will be available as early as this fall.
Photo by Eric Ayres
Continuous lines of concrete mixing trucks delivered material Wednesday to the construction site of the new $12.3 million Market Street Parking Garage that is being built at the corner of 11th and Market streets in downtown Wheeling. City officials are taking steps to market the 10,000-square-feet of street-level retail space that will be available as early as this fall.
Photo by Eric Ayres
Continuous lines of concrete mixing trucks delivered material Wednesday to the construction site of the new $12.3 million Market Street Parking Garage that is being built at the corner of 11th and Market streets in downtown Wheeling. City officials are taking steps to market the 10,000-square-feet of street-level retail space that will be available as early as this fall.
Photo by Eric Ayres
Continuous lines of concrete mixing trucks delivered material Wednesday to the construction site of the new $12.3 million Market Street Parking Garage that is being built at the corner of 11th and Market streets in downtown Wheeling. City officials are taking steps to market the 10,000-square-feet of street-level retail space that will be available as early as this fall.
Photo by Eric Ayres
Continuous lines of concrete mixing trucks delivered material Wednesday to the construction site of the new $12.3 million Market Street Parking Garage that is being built at the corner of 11th and Market streets in downtown Wheeling. City officials are taking steps to market the 10,000-square-feet of street-level retail space that will be available as early as this fall.
Photo by Eric Ayres
Continuous lines of concrete mixing trucks delivered material Wednesday to the construction site of the new $12.3 million Market Street Parking Garage that is being built at the corner of 11th and Market streets in downtown Wheeling. City officials are taking steps to market the 10,000-square-feet of street-level retail space that will be available as early as this fall.
Photo by Eric Ayres
Continuous lines of concrete mixing trucks delivered material Wednesday to the construction site of the new $12.3 million Market Street Parking Garage that is being built at the corner of 11th and Market streets in downtown Wheeling. City officials are taking steps to market the 10,000-square-feet of street-level retail space that will be available as early as this fall.
Photo by Eric AyresTrending
WHEELING -- Construction of the new Market Street Parking Garage in downtown Wheeling is progressing to the point that officials are ready to look for a tenant or tenants to occupy the large street-level retail space that will be available there.
This week, members of the Development Committee of Wheeling City Council agreed to forward a recommendation to the full city council to hire Century Realty to represent the city in marketing the future space to a business or multiple businesses that will be the best fit for the development in this block of the downtown.
"Basically, this is an agreement with Century Realty to represent the city in finding future tenants for that space - it’s something that the city manager and I met with individuals to talk about," Wheeling Mayor Glenn Elliott said. "We think it’s a good idea to start marketing those spaces now as the parking structure is moving along."
The second major concrete pour took place Wednesday at the construction site for the new parking garage. Beginning at 4 a.m. Wednesday, a continuous line of concrete mixing trucks delivered material to a large concrete pumper with a boom arm that allowed crews from Carl Walker Construction - the general contractor of the parking garage project - to place the material on the second level of the structure.
This was the second continuous pour to take place - both of which took approximately 14 hours and involved up to 40 mixing trucks each time. Some shorter pours are expected to take place throughout the year as the six-story structure continues to rise out of the ground. Officials have noted that the recent spells of warm weather allows concrete to be poured without the use of insulating blankets that are needed when the work is done in colder conditions.
"The parking structure is on schedule to be completed by Oct. 1," City Manager Robert Herron said. "For the area of the commercial space, they’ll be above that to the point where it can be shown probably within the next four to six weeks. So we’re kind of in a good spot here to bring somebody on board to start marketing the space."
City council members expressed their intention to be able to pick and choose a specific tenant or tenants to occupy the new space.
"Ultimately, any lease would be subject to city council approval," Herron said. "We’ve met with Century Realty on a couple of occasions and tried to kind of guide them as to the type of businesses we would like to see. Ultimately they’re going to go out on the open market and try to meet those guidelines. Whether or not they’ll be successful in doing that, I don’t know. But clearly, a restaurant has been mentioned as a possibility for the space - particularly on the corner.
The company is expected to present the city with options for potential occupants in the street-level retail space. There are a variety of feasible uses to suit the overall concept of the area’s future - which involves supporting downtown commuters and future tenants of the nearby Historic Wheeling-Pitt Lofts, a project that city leaders expect to be moving forward soon.
"Just for clarification - the garage space is not pre-designed," Elliott said of the lower level retail space that will be available in the new $12.3 million parking structure. "It’s basically an open space about 10,000 square feet. It could be subdivided or it could be one space, depending on the particular needs of the future tenants."
The new parking structure has been designed not only to support the new loft apartment complex, but to complement the Wheeling Downtown Streetscape Project, which is now underway and is expected to continue for the next two years.
"If you look at the drawings at the proposed parking structure, on the north side - on the corner of 11th and Market streets - there are some outdoor seating areas under cover," Elliott said. "That would be an incredible spot for a restaurant or cafe of some sort. We have emphasized that."
However, the downtown retail market is still in transition right now, the mayor said.
"A lot of the retail demand I don’t think is going to kick in until we see more people living there," the mayor noted. "So there is a delay or a lag. The challenge is to find the types of tenants who are going to fit here long-term, but convince them to come now when maybe the foot traffic is not where it needs to be with the streets all torn up right now."
Elliott indicated that some of the city’s challenges with fitting the right tenant into the retail space - and seeing all of the moving pieces fall into place with other major developments downtown - may even fall into the laps of members of the next city council, who will take office in July 2024.
"To me, this is going to be some of the best space to be rented in the downtown here in about a year from now, and it’s important that we start actively marketing it," Elliott said.
Councilman Jerry Sklavounakis asked for an explanation as to why Century Realty was being hired for the job of seeking tenants for the space.
"Why do we need a third-party to market this?" Sklavounakis asked.
"There’s not a lot of local firms that focus on commercial real estate space," said Elliott. "Century Realty has a really good track record in that field. We could do it, but talking with them, it’s clear that they are regularly in contact with different retailers on a national level. City staff is not going to have access to that. I think they probably bring us the best chance to get a national-type tenant in there or some other local tenants that are going to have a better chance for success, and I think their expertise will be valuable here."