For a mother and a community, this center is ‘going to mean everything'

When is a new retail center not just another development?

When it’ll be the first of its kind in a community in almost three decades; when it will have that area’s first large-scale sit-down restaurant; and, most poignantly, when it will help a grieving mother commemorate her late son’s plans for the property.

That’s what the almost 20,000-square-foot Paradise Corner will be for the Goddard community and developer Linda Snook Davison, who named it after something her late son, Aaron, used to say.

Before his unexpected death a year and a half ago, Aaron Snook was known for an answer he’d give whenever anyone asked him how it was going.

“It’s just another day in paradise,” he’d say.

“He just had a unique disposition,” his mother said. “He had a lot going on always, but he always had time for everybody.”

She said his energy was boundless, too.

“He was a fearless. He was juggling a thousand balls, and all I tried to do was catch them after he died.”

Goddard City Manager Craig Crossette said Paradise Corner is important to Davison and to the city.

“Once it gets built, I think it’s going to mean everything to us.”

The center will be at the southeast corner of Kellogg and Main Street next to the existing Scooters, which Davison and her son sold the ground for around 2022.

This will be the first new mixed-use commercial building to be built in Goddard since 1998, said broker Stephanie Wise, who owns Commercial Collective in Wichita and is handling leasing at Paradise Corner.

“Our citizens have been very vocal about a desire for more retail and dining opportunities in our community,” Crossette said. “Our council and our staff have been working diligently to try to answer that call.”

The first two planned tenants at Paradise Corner are El Agave Mexican Restaurant, which has two locations in Wichita, and Legacy Bank.

There will be room for about a dozen tenants depending on how the building is divided.

“It’s going to be beautiful,” Wise said.

She first worked with Snook on the property and used to encourage him to take the leap and get started.

“Aaron,” Wise would say, “just build it, and I promise you I’ll fill it.”

Now, she said, that’s coming true.

“We have quite a bit of interest.”

Wise also is a Sedgwick County commissioner whose district includes Goddard.

“Goddard’s my stomping ground, so, of course, I feel a little bit of extra ownership over what tenants are needed and would thrive in that community.”

Wise said she’s been honored to work on the development with the family, from Snook to now Davison.

“The way that she’s really . . . keeping him a part of it . . . is just super special.”

For sale

Davison, who grew up in Cheney and the Garden Plain area, has owned another commercial property in Goddard for years.

Then in 2018, she and her son purchased almost three acres where the former Gerrard’s restaurant once had been. Initially, it was an investment.

“It was not really to develop it,” she said.

During 2019, they worked with the Kansas Department of Transportation, trading some ground for other ground.

“We just wanted to have it squared off, and so did they,” Davison said of their respective properties.

Except it was the first year of the pandemic, which slowed things.

There also had been an old gas station on part of the Davison property, and she and Snook had to work with the Kansas Department of Health and Environment to remove the station’s underground tanks.

“It’s been a process, believe me,” Davison said. “We just kept trying to sell it.”

In 2023, Snook saw some potential in the market, and he and his mother got some bids to build a retail center on the property.

However, Davison said, “It just didn’t make economic sense to build the building.”

About a year later, Crossette approached Snook to offer incentives to him and his mother if they could land a sit-down restaurant for the city, which mostly has a lot of fast-food restaurants.

“They had given us a proposal,” Davison said. “We didn’t get a chance to get it done.”

In December 2024, Snook was in a hunting accident.

“In an instant, he was gone,” his mother said.

“He was just so young, and he had so much potential.”

Back in business

In addition to being “in such emotional turmoil,” Davison said, she also had to return to Seeders Inc., a municipal and commercial seeding, landscaping and erosion-control business she started in 1980.

She had sold it to her son, but when Snook died, Davison and another son, Chris Snook, bought the business back from Aaron Snook’s estate.

Davison said she had to come out of retirement, explaining that businesses like Seeders need owners involved.

“They don’t run themselves.”

Initially, Davison said she didn’t have the “time or emotional capacity” to do anything with the Goddard property.

Eventually, though, she decided, “I’m tired of paying interest here.”

A couple of things have been on her side.

One is that Chris Snook has been doing well at Seeders, and the employees “have really stepped up and taken a lot more responsibility,” Davison said.

Also, Goddard has been growing substantially and has become a regional tourism hub, Crossette said, with Tanganyika Wildlife Park, the Genesis Sports Complex and its sister business, Blast Off Bay.

“They’re generating over a million annual visitors,” Crossette said.

He said the population is growing, too, with about 2,000 new residents since 2020 for a total of just over 7,000, based on the 2020 census and new building permits.

“We’ve just been on a torrid pace since 2020.”

Keeping up

Estimates are Goddard’s population will grow to about 13,000 in the next five years or so.

“Economic factors can drive the pace of that growth,” Crossette said.

He said there are about 17 active development projects in the city currently.

“We’re growing about as fast as I can keep up.”

Being 10 minutes from the Wichita airport is a bonus, Crossette said, and he said Goddard has other great quality-of-life amenities, too.

“The school district in a lot of ways is the lifeblood of Goddard.”

Still, Crossette said, “It’s a constant pursuit for a city of our size to be recruiting commercial, industrial and residential development.”

It’s getting easier in some ways.

“We’ve really put in a ton of time and effort trying to tell our community story,” Crossette said.

With local brokers and developers, all they have to do is pull over to a parking lot along Kellogg, and they can “see the vehicles that are just churning in and out of there, packing the restaurants that we do have. Packing the Walmart.”

Tens of thousands of cars pass daily along Kellogg, which bisects the community, Crossette said.

“Goddard is . . . in a keen position to really ascend.”

Development incentive

At about five square miles, Goddard has a lot of land it can grow into.

“I think that’s why we’re getting these calls,” Crossette said of lots of talks going on with developers.

City incentives likely are helping, too.

Goddard is offering industrial revenue bonds with 10-year property tax abatement and sales tax abatement on the cost of construction.

That’s what Paradise Corner will receive, and Crossette said, “Anyone who wants to make a similar investment in our community — for the time being — has the same ability to receive those incentives.”

He said that’s what’s going to bring the dining and services people want and need.

“Our leadership is very serious about addressing this need.”

Crossette said Snook was, too, before his death.

The two began meeting in early 2024.

“He was keen to work with the city to bring (development) to fruition and willing to take the risk to make that happen,” Crossette said. “He was a driven individual.”

Now, Crossette has been working with Davison.

“She’s already an investor in our community. She is just such a pleasure to work with.”

He said he’s excited to see the tenants that Davison and Wise are able to attract to the center.

“Right now, it’s just kind of wide open,” Davison said.

Possibilities include other retail or professional services, such as a dry cleaner, an insurance agency or a doctor’s office.

“Of course,” Davison said, “there’s a mandatory nail salon in every one, it seems like.”

Banking on it

Legacy Bank is something of a natural fit at Paradise Corner, Davison said, since the bank already is working with the city on a new community park.

“They are really making a big splash . . . in Goddard.”

Legacy president and CEO Steven Suellentrop knew Aaron Snook for decades, including going to high school and K-State together.

“He had brought the opportunity to me and to Legacy Bank,” Suellentrop said.

“It is a growing community where we’ve actually had involvement for many years even without a physical presence.”

Through a lot of residential development and construction lending, he said, “We’ve had a hand in helping build Goddard indirectly.”

Suellentrop said the bank was founded 140 years ago in Colwich, just down the road from Goddard.

“We want to be able to take better care of the customers we do have in that market,” he said. Also, “We’re hoping to gain customer relationships in and around the Goddard area.”

The bank will take just over 1,700 square feet on an endcap at Paradise Corner and will have a drive-through and an ATM lane.

Depending on construction, the new location — the bank’s 11th — could be ready by next spring.

Even with Snook’s absence, Suellentrop said, it means a lot to be part of a project that had been his vision.

Suellentrop called Snook a great connector of people with a wide network.

“Many, many folks . . . called him a friend.”

Tequlia!

As El Agave considered Goddard, word circulated that another Wichita Mexican restaurant was looking to open in the city, which caused El Agave general manager Jesus Valencia some hesitation about opening a third restaurant.

“It’s like a lot of big things,” Davison said. There are “hurdles that you have to work through.”

The other business didn’t end up coming, and Valencia said it makes sense for El Agave to be there since its other restaurants are far away on North Rock Road and North Maize Road.

“We have a lot of customers (coming) from Goddard,” he said.

He said they’ve been requesting an El Agave closer by.

The restaurant is taking about 4,800 square feet and will have seating for almost 200 along with an outdoor patio.

El Agave, which is named for the plant used to make tequila, has almost 100 kinds of tequila and specializes in margaritas.

The new El Agave will be the same as the ones in Wichita, which serve traditional Mexican food.

“Not like Tex-Mex or anything like that,” as Valencia once told The Eagle. “We offer the best Mexican food in town.”

‘Over the moon’

Even with just two tenants for Paradise Corner so far, Crossette said, “We are just over the moon about it. . . . We’re ready for it to be here. That’s for sure.”

For Davison, of course, the progress is more bittersweet.

Though she said, “I’ve been involved with construction my whole career,” she didn’t expect to be quite so hands-on at this point in her life, and she never planned to do it without her son.

“Aaron and I had always thought we would do this.”

Davison has hired Simpson Construction Services as the builder, and she’ll likely break ground in the next couple of months.

Now that it’s all happening, Davison said, she believes she knows how her son would feel about it.

“I think he’d be happy about it. I do.”

Upon reflection, she added:

“He would probably say, ‘Come on, mom, it’s about time.’ ”

Contributing: Kevin Bumgarner of The Eagle.