Clarian Facility to Rise in Fishers

Indianapolis-based Clarian Health Partners has announced plans to bring health and wellness services to the Saxony community in northeast suburban Fishers.

Clarian has 95 acres under contract on the northwest corner of the Saxony
Development at Interstate 69 and Exit 10. In a preliminary agreement with The Fishers Town Council and Saxony, Clarian has laid out plans to develop health and wellness services in the integrated community.

Plans call for developing the 95-acre site in phases, initially bringing a fitness center, sports medicine services, a sleep center, occupational medicine services, imaging and urgent care. Additionally, Clarian will provide an ambulatory care center for outpatient medical services and medical staff offices.

Saxony is a 725-acre, mixed-use development in Hamilton County that includes housing, office districts and distinct retail opportunities within a pedestrian-friendly neighborhood. Saxony is planned to feature 1 million sq. ft. of retail, 3.5 million sq. ft. of office/industrial space and 1,300 residential housing units.

Study: 78 Million Sq. Ft. Of Retail Space Needed

Results of the Fourth Annual Retail Demand Study recently released reveal that demand for new or converted retail space in metropolitan Chicago continues unabated.

The study, compiled by Oak Brook-based Mid-America Real Estate Corp., a developer, suggests that major retailers are presently searching for more than 78 million sq. ft. of space to complete their respective local expansion efforts, a 16 percent increase over 2005 figures.

Chicagoland's healthy economic base and growing population continue to produce retail sales that meet or exceed most retailers' nationwide averages, thereby fueling demand. Of the 32 retail categories that Mid-America Real Estate Corp. tracks, the top five in 2006 are the following:

1. Grocery/discount combination stores; 2. home improvement stores; 3. traditional grocery stores; 4. restaurants, and 5. health, beauty and fitness stores, which narrowly edged out an invigorated traditional department/junior department stores sector for the fifth spot.

Reflecting Wal-Mart's commitment to its supercenter concept, traditional discount stores, last year's No. 1 seeker of space, dropped out of the top five and was replaced by grocery/discount combination stores in the top position from Mid-America's 2005 Retail Demand Study.

The aggregate demand for these five categories alone accounts for just under 47 percent of the region's overall retail demand, a figure unchanged from 2005. Mid-America's Study includes over 864 active retailers in the Greater Chicagoland Area.

Growing Missouri Town Gets Fourth High School

When the 2007-2008 school year arrives, high school students in the Fort Zumwalt School District in St. Peters, Mo., will attend classes in a new, 220,000-sq.-ft., five-story building, the fourth high school built in the growing school district.

The $37 million project will accommodate 1,500 students. Work started on the 44-acres site in April and is expected to last 15 months.

Fort Zumwalt East will feature a distance learning lab, giving teachers the ability to broadcast class work and conferences to other schools in the district. Sports will be played on synthetic turf in a new lighted stadium complete with tennis courts, ball fields and a state-of-the-art solid rubber surface track. To reduce light pollution from the athletic fields to the surrounding neighborhood, the stadium will be situated at a lower elevation than the surrounding grounds.

St. Louis-based McCarthy Building Cos. is the construction manager on the project, and Cannon Design, also in St. Louis, is the architect.

Chicago Students Step Into Developers' Shoes

Through coursework supported by the Real Estate Center of Chicago's DePaul University, students are meeting prominent real estate executives and community leaders and venturing into urban neighborhoods to explore sites that have the potential for development.

DePaul real estate students recently served as mock development consultants for a project that focused their attention on land in need of development in the Bronzeville, North Lawndale and Little Village neighborhoods of Chicago.

Under a scenario created for a 10-week winter course, the students joined architecture students from Chicago's Illinois Institute of Technology and graphic design students from Kent State University in Ohio to form six teams that produced competing affordable housing proposals for the three neighborhoods.

The scenario required that the mock proposals target some units to student teachers working in Chicago schools.

The neighborhoods chosen for the exercise represented unique challenges and opportunities that educated students about affordable housing in Chicago.

Rich in history, Bronzeville on Chicago's South Side is undergoing a transformation with the construction of the 36-acre mixed-income Park Boulevard development on the site of the demolished Chicago Housing Authority's Stateway Gardens public housing project.

The largely Mexican- American Little Village community on Chicago's Southwest Side has a proliferation of single family homes; in this community, students focused their projects on a 44-acre vacant lot at 26th Street and Kostner Avenue, which the City of Chicago would like to see developed.

On the West Side, the impoverished North Lawndale community is experiencing a rebirth with the opening of the Homan Square Community Center, a Dominick's grocery store and several housing facilities, and community leaders are seeking further development.

With this background, teams of students created sophisticated affordable housing proposals for each of the three neighborhoods. The proposals included marketing analyses and plans, architectural drawings, funding details and financial projections for the suggested developments. The plans were presented in February to a panel of real estate industry professionals who served as judges.

The winning student team, called North Point LLC, proposed building a facility called "New Point Lofts," a mixed-income development. Their plan for North Lawndale combined affordable rental units for student teachers, rental units at market rates and condo units for sale. The team consisted of DePaul MBA students Ernest Amponsah, Heidi Anderson, Sylvia Homenda and Shravan Thakkar; IIT students Reuben McCrory and Andrew Clark; and Kent State student Tony Lindemann.

Riverfront Redevelopment Planned for Aurora

The initial phase of a yet-to-be-named project to rejuvenate about 27 acres of riverfront property in the south end of Aurora's downtown district is under way with the demolition of the Baje Steere Industrial Building.

The site of the long dormant foundry and manufacturing plant-along with a nearby vacant 84-year-old Burlington Northern train depot-will be redeveloped to make way for several mid- to high-rise buildings housing 1,000-plus townhomes, condominiums and apartments.

Pending further approval by the city of Aurora, the project might also include a future hotel, restaurants, riverwalk, public parking, pedestrian bridge spanning both sides of the river and up to 125,000 sq. ft. of commercial, retail and office space.

First on the agenda is a $3 million to $4 million environmental cleanup and infrastructure improvement of the brownfield properties, paid for by the city and the developer and projected to be completed within two years.

The development falls within the Rivercity Project Area Tax Increment Financing district. Funds generated by the project within the TIF will be used to help offset TIF eligible expenses incurred by the developer and the city for items such as the environmental cleanup and infrastructure improvements.

The project is being developed by Geneva-based Sho-deen Inc.

Naperville to Get $35M Rec Center