El Paso County might be in for retail overdose

El Paso County residents who live west of Interstate 25 and south of Platte Avenue will soon have options to the 40-minute commute to North Powers Boulevard big-box and mid-box retail, restaurant and entertainment venues.

Continental Properties Co. Inc of Menomonee Falls, Wis., has submitted preliminary development plans to El Paso County for South Academy Station, a 360,000-square-foot retail and mixed-use center.

The 162-acre site is on the northwest corner of I-25 and South Academy Boulevard. It will be anchored by a Lowe's, more than 200,000-square-feet of inline shops, services or restaurants, and 12,000 square feet of freestanding pad sites.

The center is scheduled to open by mid-2009, and Mike Garrett of the El Paso County planning department said that barring any last- minute issues, the project should move ahead as planned.

"All that really has to be done to get the site ready is to cut through a 'small mountain' of land adjacent to the intersection and to construct road access," said Chad Ellington, land development project manager said.

But despite a growing south-side population and a current lack of services, the new center already is facing stiff competition.

The $89 million Fort Carson Lifestyle Village, a 250,000-square- foot project anchored by an enlarged post exchange and an existing commissary could be moving dirt just as South Academy Station comes online.

"The soonest we could break ground would be spring of 2009 -- to be completed by fall of 2010, depending on your Colorado weather," said Joe Giufredda, vice president of strategic partnerships for Army and Air Force Exchange Services, which is developing the project with Service Star Development Co. LLC of Greenwood Village.

He said the goal of the project is to provide soldiers and their families with "all the shops and extras typically found, 'outside the gate.'"

"What we hope to do is to provide a more attractive, modern shopping experience," Giufredda said. "The existing mini-mall between the PX and the commissary was built in the 1950s and is in bad need of replacement."

At Fort Carson, annual revenue during 2007 generated by the AAFES post exchange was more than $34 million; commissary-grocery revenue was more than $47 million. Those totals are on par with average sales generated by a Colorado Springs Target store ($37.9 million) and nearly double the annual sales of a typical Safeway grocery store ($21.4 million) or a Whole Foods store ($27.4 million), Giufredda said.

The impetus for both projects was population growth.

The area surrounding the South Academy Station site has grown by at least 10 percent since the last census. Security-Widefield and Fountain have grown even faster.

Fort Carson has added several thousand troops, and more are on the way.

Within a 3-mile radius of South Academy Station, developers estimate the population to be about 58,000 people in 21,333 households -- not counting soldiers and their families who live on post.

Jason Madsen, director of leasing for Kratt Commercial Real Estate, which developed and leased most of the retail space at the Cheyenne Mountain and Broadmoor Towne shopping centers, said residents have a legitimate complaint about limited retail options.

"South El Paso County is definitely underserved," he said, adding that a lack of land has forced many developers to look north and east for sites to support big-box retailers. "There's plenty of business to be had down here. We've had other national tenants want to locate there, but there just isn't room."

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