Yorkville poised to see growth in retail stores

A new retail corridor is taking root in far west suburban Yorkville, where developers are jockeying for tracts of farmland to convert to shopping centers.

Yorkville, 10 miles southwest of Aurora, has a population of 10,000. It's surrounded by upwards of 40,000 acres of farms, many of them already sold to speculators.

In the past year developers have acquired at least a half-dozen sizeable parcels clustered north of downtown Yorkville on and near state Route 47 that are planned as future shopping centers. They are marketing them to potential tenants. City officials say there is enough land to accommodate at least 3 million and possible 5 million square feet of retail. That's the equivalent of two or three enclosed regional malls.

Relatively cheap land, a location at the busy intersection of state Route 47 and U.S. Highway 34, and Yorkville's pro-growth stance are luring the developers.

"If we do our planning right we'll become a shopping hub for the entire region," declared Lynn Dubajic, executive director of the Yorkville Economic Development Corporation, a public-private partnership that works to foster local development. "Every leading retailer with a presence in the Midwest has approached us to talk about the future."

One of those retailers is Wal-Mart Stores Inc. The nation's biggest merchant has an agreement to build a 200,000-square-foot Supercenter on a 34-acre site owned by Rosemont-based Opus North Corp. just east of the intersection of Route 47 and U.S. 34. The deal was confirmed by people familiar with the matter. A Wal-Mart spokesman did not return phone calls.

Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart already has a Supercenter just seven miles east on U.S. 34. And there are Wal-Mart Supercenters in nearby DeKalb and Morris, with another planned in Oswego to the east. Wal-Mart Supercenters sell both general merchandise and a full line of groceries.

Retail experts say Wal-Mart and others are clearly banking on continued residential growth. The U.S. Census Bureau recently ranked Kendall County as the nation's 10th-fastest-growing county, with a 22% population increase between 2000 and 2003 to 67,000. Yorkville currently has 14,000 lots approved for construction or on the drawing boards, with national homebuilders such as Centex Corp. of Dallas and Pulte Homes Inc. of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., planning subdivisions on tracts of 300 acres or more.

For now, Yorkville remains a small town hardly capable of supporting big shopping malls. "This frequently happens," says John C. Melaniphy, president of retail consultancy Melaniphy & Associates Inc. in Chicago. "In growing population areas, retail frequently gets overbuilt before there are enough people to support it."

Who are the players so far? Oakbrook Terrace-based Mid-America Real Estate Corp. has acquired two parcels, one of 34 acres at the northeast corner of state Route 47 and Galena Road and another of 26 acres at the southwest corner of state Route 47 and U.S. 30. Centex has 20 acres planned for retail adjacent to Mid-America's Galena Road site, and Pulte is in the process of acquiring a 600-acre tract across the street, with 50 acres slated to go retail. On another corner at the same intersection, residential developer Ocean Atlantic Cos. Of Alexandria, Va., has 20 acres slated for retail.

To the north, at the intersection of Route 47 and Corneils Road, Minneapolis developer North Lake Properties Inc. is in final negotiations to acquire 38 acres for retail, primed for a 400,000-square-foot shopping center, according to Wayne Johnson, president and CEO of North Lake. He professes concern about the marketplace. "There appear to be plenty of competing locations also trying to attract retail tenants, and that's a worry for us," Mr. Johnson says. "Some of these projects will get delayed while retailers wait for more population to fill in. That will be a burden on developers, of course, because time costs developers money and profits."