West Loop retail development boom continues
By BRENDA SOMMER news1@leader-news.com

L-N Photo by Brenda Sommer Getting It Done Rafael Amalos cuts wood being used to frame in the front walls of the new addition to the El Campo Town Center strip mall at West Loop and Hwy. 71.

Development is sprouting up again at the corner of West Loop and Hwy. 71 as one retail center grows and another is about to begin construction.

Framing is already under way at the third phase of the El Campo Town Center, at the southwest corner of the two major roads.

Randy Summers, vice president and sales manager of Davis Equity of Weslaco, said the extension to the retail center that already includes cludes Cato and Dollar Cato and Dollar

Tree will encompass Tree will encompass

8,000 square feet.

"Hibbett Sports is

"Hibbett Sports is

going in there," Summers going in there," Summers

said, noting said, noting

the national sporting the national sporting

goods chain store will goods chain store will use up some 5,000 square feet of the new facility.

Hibbett Sports has 600 stores in more than 23 states, selling sporting goods and gear including athletic shoes.

"We're working on some tenants" for the remaining 3,000 square feet, Summers said.

Tractor Supply Company is located in a free-standing store in the same development. The El Campo Town Center will have roughly 30,000 square feet of retail and office space on the 11-acre development when it is built out.

Catercorner from El Campo Town Center, dirt work is already under way for the longawaited West Loop Plaza, a project first announced in 2005.

"We're getting ready to break ground on it, we're gathering permits now," said Abe Charski, partner at Armada Realty Partners of Houston, which is developing the site.

That company plans an 18,000-square-foot shopping center at the location and has already leased 5,500 square feet of the planned development to Shoe Dept., a North Carolina-based footwear company which has approximately 1,000 stores across the country.

"We had a bit of a delay, focusing elsewhere for a little while, but now we're back in focus in El Campo," Charski said.

"The drawings are completed … and I guess it will take about four months to get 'out of ground,'" he said, meaning having finished the slab, roof and exterior walls.

The rest of the building will be devoted to clothing, retail and restaurant space, Charski said.

"We're excited about it and we certainly hope the community will enjoy the mix we bring of retail and restaurants," he said.

The two retail spaces are the latest in a flurry of development that began at the intersection of West Loop and Hwy. 71, starting with the construction of Buc-ee's, Wal-Mart, Pizza Hut and Cindi's Spirits (now Subway), and now extending down the length of the road.