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The former Barrier's building is now available for lease. If it isn't leased within a few months, the Barrier family could sell it.
"That building was in their family for over 70 years," says Adam Clements of Grubb & Ellis/Martens Commercial Group . "They'd like to keep it in the family."
Clements and Patrick Ritchie of J.P. Weigand & Sons are sharing the listing.
The building is owned by Big River LLC , whose sole member is the late Jay Barrier's probate estate.
Barrier died in 2008 and Barrier's filed bankruptcy last fall and later closed.
"There's just a lot of emotional ties to it," Clements says of the building. The family would "really like to see a group go in there that complements the area."
The building at the northeast corner of Douglas and Oliver has 8,500 square feet, 5,100 of which is the sales floor.
"It's an open area," Clements says. "It's still very nicely finished out."
Ritchie says there's room for multiple tenants.
That means there could be retail in the front and the back.
The building has 123 feet of frontage on Oliver and 60 feet on Douglas.
There's a building behind the former Barrier's space that could be torn down for additional parking. Currently, there are 14 spaces.
"We'd love to see some sort of restaurant-bar in there," Ritchie says. "We think we can make something happen."
Clements says the area has great demographics, and the intersection sees 27,000 cars a day.
"For a neighborhood intersection that has retail, that's pretty solid," he says. "I think somebody will find a happy home there."
Back to Plan A
The Garage has closed its site at 810 N. Tyler Road and is moving equipment from there to its site at 610 N. Maize Road over the next month.
Owners Mike and Lisa Pennella have had the Tyler site for five years and the Maize site since November.
"The actual original plan was to open this (and) close down the other one," Mike Pennella says. "Then, as we got closer to it, we decided to try to run them both."
The Pennellas were already thinking of future potential sites.
"Originally that was our intent," Mike Pennella says. "We were possibly going to start looking into franchising and things like that. This was kind of a stepping stone.
"It didn't take long to figure out we couldn't give the customers the kind of attention Lisa and I were used to giving."
They're keeping the Maize site because it's more ideal for service work they provide for automobiles.
There's a five-bay self-service car wash and a single bay touch-free automatic car wash. There's also an express lube center, among other things.
John Pennella says he's "able to do a lot more services a lot quicker out of this location than my other one."
Blossoming deals
Dillons has two new vendors for spring flower and plant sales at 16 area stores.
The Wichita Eagle last month reported that Manhattan's Kaw Valley Greenhouses ended a 42-year vendor relationship with Dillons to start its own "parking lot stores" locally around April 1.
Spokeswoman Sheila Lowrie says Dillons now has "a couple of companies that we're working with based on their areas of expertise."
Perennials will come from Oklahoma-based Berry Family of Nurseries .
Arkansas-based Pleasant Valley Farm will provide annuals, vegetables and small berries.
"Overall, the entire program that we're offering with our garden centers has changed," Lowrie says.
Dillons will sell trees, bushes and grapevines for the first time. There also will be an expanded vegetable selection that also offers recipes on the care cards.
Lowrie says its "the best program we've had ever."
Tweet of the week
"Must have heard how good they are : -)"
—A Twitter post by Jon Rolph (@jonrolph) of Carlos O'Kelly's on how Billy Joel requested one of the restaurant's burritos during a break in his concert Wednesday night at Intrust Bank Arena
