Patt Johnson, pjohnson@dmreg.com
Buy Photo
After a decade of sitting empty, the K’s Merchandise Mart building in Urbandale is getting a new life.
Hy-Vee Inc., the West Des Moines-based grocery store chain, bought the 81,936-square-foot store at 3303 86th St. for $3.6 million earlier this month. It plans to transform the former retail store into a training facility for employees and a fulfillment center for its online grocery ordering program, Hy-Vee Aisles Online.
The company said it has started demolition work on the inside of the building and will begin construction this spring.
Hy-Vee will open Hy-Vee University in the building, where it will offer training in retail services, retail management, business leadership and an advanced masters of retail operations. The education and training center, which is expected to open in late fall, also will include a teaching kitchen and lab area, auditorium and collaboration areas, the company said.
Creating a new use for the long-vacant building is a plus for the city, said Mayor Bob Andeweg. It is located in a central part of the city, across from city offices and the Urbandale Public Library. “We have a vested interest in this area,” he said. The new Hy-Vee development and renovations at the neighboring retail center recently renamed Urban Town Center will bring vitality to the area, he said.
The building’s former owner, David Greenspon, president of Greenspon Property Management Inc. in Des Moines, bought the empty building in 2007, a year after K’s Merchandise Mart, a catalog showroom department store that sold jewelry, furniture and other merchandise, closed that store and 17 others it operated in the Midwest and Kentucky. K’s Merchandise constructed the building in 1989.
Greenspon, who also owns Competitive Edge, a Clive company that customizes products like T-shirts, pens, clothing and drinkware with clients' logos, used the building for storage. Greenspon said there were interested buyers over the years, but none that would fill the entire building or wanted to pay the asking price. The building has a steel roof and brick over steel exterior.
“It’s a well-built building on one of the busiest corners in the city,” Greenspon said. “Everything is picking up in that area and this building is a gem in the rough.”
The property covers 9 acres and is set back from 86th Street. It has a large parking lot that can accommodate 420 vehicles. The assessed value of the property in 2015 was $2.1 million. Greenspon said with the improvements Hy-Vee plans to make, the company likely will be paying more in property taxes than his company did, which will benefit the city.
Hy-Vee will use the training and education center to develop store leaders and managers as well as offer classes for cake and floral designers and employees who want cheese, wine and seafood certification, said Tara Deering-Hansen, Hy-Vee spokeswoman.
The training and education programs now are held at the company’s corporate campus in West Des Moines. The new space will allow Hy-Vee to expand the program and enroll more employees.
“We want to make sure we’re training our employees on all the latest trends in grocery and in their specific department areas,” Denise Broderick, Hy-Vee vice president of education and training, said in a prepared statement. “With this new facility, we can bring in multiple outside experts to one location or use video conferencing technology to virtually connect with them.”
The building’s proximity to the Urbandale Hy-Vee store at 86th Street and Douglas Avenue will aid training center students who often practice what they’ve learned in a real store setting, Broderick said.
Details on the online fulfillment center have yet to be finalized, said Deering-Hansen. “As online shopping grows and stores take on more orders, there are more employees going through the stores,” she said.
Hy-Vee rolled out online shopping for all of its 240 stores last year. Customers can order online, pay electronically and either pick up their order at the store or have it delivered.
Large retailers like Wal-Mart and Target already use fulfillment centers. And in Europe, fulfillment centers are growing as online grocery shopping becomes more popular.
As the popularity and volume of online shopping increases at supermarkets, more companies will be dedicating space outside the stores for fulfilling orders, said Jim Hertel, senior vice president at consulting firm Willard Bishop, an Inmar Co.
"It takes too many store personnel to fill orders" when online shopping grows, he said. "It too expensive and employees are tripping over real customers in the stores," he said. Hy-Vee's relatively new online program must be successful if it is moving fulfillment operations out of stores, he said.
No comments:
Post a Comment