Mel-O-Cream’s downtown shop at 215 S. Sixth St., which opened on Sept. 11, 2001, closed its doors last Friday. A lack of business was the reason, says manager Eric Green. While the store is closing, Green says Mel-O-Cream isn’t leaving downtown. He plans to offer a scaled-down menu at a nearby business. He wouldn’t name the vendor.
Green, who manages Springfield’s other Mel-O-Cream stores, says customers complained of limited parking. And with Mel-O-Cream locations throughout the city, most people bought donuts before arriving downtown, he says.
Mel-O-Cream experienced what Susan Mogerman, director of Downtown Springfield Inc., says is the “catch-22” of downtown economics.
“It’s difficult for stores and restaurants to be open at times when there aren’t currently apparent customers for them,” Mogerman says. “But there’s no reason for customers to be [downtown] when stores aren’t open.”
Mogerman says a lack of parking is a myth. “It isn’t hard to find parking. Most of it is pretty close to where you’re going.”
But it’s the perceived lack of parking that leads to another downtown paradox. The more commercial vacancies open up downtown, the harder it is to fill them.
Recently, the Department of Human Service’s rehabilitation division vacated its two downtown locations on Washington and Adams when it relocated to the renovated Hay Edwards school on Lawrence. The FBI and federal IRS offices are moving from downtown to the south and west sides of town. When the Department of Natural Resources left Lincoln Towers last year, 66,000 more square feet opened up.
“Downtown’s never been this vacant in the 18 years I’ve been doing this,” says RE/MAX’s Ed Mahoney, who’s been trying to lease a 33,000 square-foot downtown office vacated by DHS’s Office of Rehabilitation Services. “There’s at least 300,000 square feet of vacant real estate downtown.”
Downtown commercial space is still a hard sell. A couple of months ago, when the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts announced it was moving its five offices and 100 employees from just south of downtown to a proposed new 46,000-square-foot building on Old Jacksonville Road next year, downtown Realtors were wondering why the agency didn’t head downtown.
“There’s plenty of office space downtown,” says Steve Myers, of Myers Commercial Real Estate Inc. “Whole buildings are emptied out.” Myers’ seven downtown properties have a total of more than 200,000 square feet of available space, he says, with leases ranging from $13.50 to $17 a square foot. Mahoney’s property at 623 E. Adams St. was being leased to the state for $10 a square foot.
“With that much square footage, it was a little surprising [building out west] presented the best opportunity,” Myers says of the court office’s planned move.
Moving west was the best decision, which was made after years of property searching, says Joe Tybor, spokesman for the Illinois Courts. Unique requirements for training space and other needs made it difficult to find the right spot, he says.
Realtors say it would’ve been easy to accommodate the agency’s “unique” needs. “We can do that anywhere,” says Todd Smith, president of Garrison Group, which is seeking a tenant for the now-empty Lincoln Towers office building. Smith says owners of existing properties, especially downtown, are more willing to work and negotiate with prospective tenants than in years.
“Starting from scratch — I don’t know that in today’s market that’s a good incentive because owners of existing buildings are more willing to build to suit,” Smith says. Tybor says a lease for the new building hasn’t been finalized yet. He didn’t know whether his agency considered any downtown space.
According to the court building’s developer Sam Nichols, west side office space rents for something between $13.25 and $18.75, not too different from downtown prices. But he says that’s not the issue.
“A lot of facilities downtown don’t offer amenities that people require or expect,” Nichols says. “There’s not parking. I’m not saying you can’t get that kind of space together downtown, but there are a lot of logistical problems doing that. Things might be readily available, but then you discover the issues. That’s what leads to building something new.”
Downtown Realtors don’t buy that.
“Downtown space is more economical,” Mahoney says. “It’s cheaper than space out west. It’s a better deal. And there’s a ton of space to pick from.”
This article appears in Dec 11-17, 2003.
