Achieving their goals took much longer than originally anticipated but the developers of Loren Plaza did reach them to make 2011 a year of relief at long last. The project began back in 2003 when entrusted family property that once was the home of Lyle's Boats & Motors would ultimately realize its higher potential as a retail development property. In general the property was situated fairly well for such a project, spanning the distance between Wenatchee Ave. & Mission St. just north of 9th St., in an area I like to call the North End retail (or commercial) core of Wenatchee. With enough traffic on Mission St. to attract a steady flow of customers the development process kicked off in 2003 with a built to suit "drive thru" concept for Subway, a very unique facility for them and one that ultimately has worked well.
The Subway building utilized about half of the property and with the other half remaining undeveloped for four years the decision was made to build a small, retail or professional services building to house between one & four tenants. The market gave good indications that tenants for such a building would not be hard to find and they ultimately decided on the "Field of Dreams" scenario, build it & they will come. Unfortunately at the tail end of 2007 when the building was completed the "great recession" hit our country and put most industries and businesses in to a very long holding pattern.
As the story of hard times spread, so went Loren Plaza for a couple years a beautiful, brand new, empty building sat. Then in 2009 Center Investments, Inc. (CII) was called on to help procure tenants, a challenge we accepted with reluctance and a firm understanding that the asset required proper valuation. The market had changed and Loren Plaza needed to expect, reflect & project market competitiveness. The other challenge was to devise a strategy that could remain adaptable to a variety of use categories and focus on those that best suited the building atributes and avoid those that punctuated its defects (such as limited parking & co-tenancy) as well as satisfying the economic expectations of the ownership.
Loren Plaza had a lot to offer as a 5,200 SF building with presence on N. Wenatchee Ave. it was well built and quite attractive. We fielded lots of interest initially from many small tenants only wanting a portion of the building which was ill advised unless we could assemble a group of two or three small tenants at once. Coordinating smaller users is a tricky task in any climate but through that time period there were few business owners willing to take on additional risk of improving a space, the general atmosphere was encouraging short term leases and low rents which equates to seeking out space with existing interior improvements. While Loren Plaza was completed on the exterior its interior was in a "raw shell" condition, meaning it had yet to be improved at all. To complete improvements owners generally need a long term commitment on at least half of the available space to provide a direction for its tenancy and to offset the risk of investing additional capital to finish the interior.
In the spring of 2011 not having been able to net either a single 5,200 SF. user or appropriately coordinate enough small tenants, the ownership decided on an aggressive strategy, pursue small users. A notion that would commit them to investing more capital and take the possibility of a large single user off the table, a gamble with a significant increase to risk in an already risky project. The benefit of this strategy was an increase to the odds of landing a paying tenant & establishing the building as ready & available to small users which would create some positive momentum in leasing the remaining available spaces. We began to collectively determine the best space to separate for a small users and proceed with initiating the interior improvements but as most developers have noticed time & again once you commit to a direction a path opens in another.
It just so happened the very next tenant with whom we prospectively found a deal was a 5,000 SF. national fitness franchise, Anytime Fitness and Loren Plaza was a perfect fit for them. November we completed a lease with Anytime Fitness and early in 2012 they opened for business. I recently had the opportunity to go back and look a the finished interior buildout & I was stunned, it was absolutely gorgeous, first rate design & decor as well as state of the art equipment, well worth the wait.
It was truly a test of endurance for the owners of Loren Plaza the project took almost a decade to complete from start to finish but today the property is a strong commercial asset which should serve its owners well for years to come and it was a great pleasure to help them realize that goal.
- Chaun