A new restaurant is under construction on the west side of Springfield, with additional space available for a second restaurant or retail use.
Rotary Center LLC, an entity partially owned by area developer Steve Zhao, is constructing a two-unit building at 3061 Wabash Ave., located in Southwest Plaza II along with the west-side Lowe’s. The property will be situated between Gordon Food Service and a retail center that includes JoAnn Fabrics and Bard Optical. A building permit on file with the city of Springfield lists “new restaurant construction” as the intended use.
Zhao is already involved in multiple Springfield restaurant ventures, including the recently opened Bowl Plus in the Chatham Square Shopping Center and Hibachi Madness locations on West Wabash Avenue and North Dirksen Parkway. In addition, Zhao is a managing partner for MacArthur Boulevard Place LLC. That entity is currently constructing The Feast Buffet and Funkiddo, a full-service restaurant and arcade, at the site of the former Show-Me’s Sports Bar & Grill at the corner of MacArthur Boulevard and Wabash Avenue.
Zhao often builds new shopping centers for his own restaurants and leases the additional space, which has been the case for several of his Springfield projects, plus centers in Decatur and Champaign.
“I was hired to market about 2,000 square feet for lease,” said Blake Pryor, a commercial broker with Coldwell Banker Commercial Devonshire Realty. He noted that the additional space in the building is being marketed as a vanilla shell. “We’re trying to pre-lease it before it’s built, and the idea is that it will be retail space or an additional restaurant,” Pryor said.
The available space is advertised on LoopNet.com, a commercial real estate website, at $20 a square foot triple net. “That’s a pretty good deal for new construction on the west side,” said Pryor, who told SBJ that the building is scheduled to be finished in September.
This article appears in Forty Under 40.