LANE 4 president offers updates on Tippin’s building, grocery stores, restaurants at Village, Corinth

A few more notes from Wednesday night’s Prairie Village Environmental Committee meeting presentation from LANE 4 president Owen Buckley.

Owen Buckley

• Buckley said  after long consideration he was “convinced that the Tippin’s building (at Corinth Square) has to go.” LANE 4 has brought a number of potential restaurant owners through the site, and based on their feedback, the company doesn’t view the site as a viable restaurant location any longer. “They say there’s just too much you’d have to do to it. I think you’ve got to take the building down and rebuild.”
• Speaking of restaurants, Buckley said the company is hoping to bring more to the Village Shops and Corinth Square. Restaurants, like the recently announced Story, he said, attract repeat visits and high foot traffic that benefit other merchants in the centers.
• Buckley told the committee LANE 4 was working with Hen House at the Village Shops on ideas  for expanding the store’s square footage. At present, Hen House occupies about 18,000 square feet. The ideal size for an anchor grocery store, he said, is about 30,000 square feet. The Hen House market at Corinth Square, by comparison, is about 40,000 square feet.
• One committee member asked Buckley if he thought the Village Shops and Corinth Square could become shopping destinations for the entire metro. “Frankly, our main priority is to make sure people in the area won’t want to go anywhere else,” Buckley said. “Our goal is to make these the kinds of places that you’d want to live near.”
• Buckley also told the committee the company had made a strategic decision to focus on “infill” real estate projects, as opposed to new developments on the outskirts of the metro area. “You can’t keep leapfrogging good existing infrastructure and building further and further out,” he said. “You see that along 135th Street today. People ask why 135th isn’t doing too well. It’s because they didn’t have a guy like J.C. Nichols planning that area.”