The abandoned Target building at Springtown Center, recently purchased by 1180 Thorpe, Ltd. Photo by Andy Sevilla.
By ANDY SEVILLA
Associate Editor
The fate of Springtown Center took a new twist last month, when Dayton Hudson Corporation sold the Target store building that lies in the largely abandoned retail complex near the Interstate-35 gateway to interior San Marcos.
The new owner of the Target parcel is 1180 Thorpe, Ltd., a limited partnership, according to the Texas Secretary of State’s office. The managers of the general partnership, 1180 Thorpe GP, LLC, are Edward S. Butler and John C. Lewis.
Butler is the son of Roy Butler, the former Austin mayor who succeeded in a wide variety of businesses and died in November 2009, age 83, after a fall.
According to Hays County records, Butler Family Investments in Austin is the financier behind the acquisition of the Target parcel. Butler holds a $3,150,000 lien on the property, which includes a deed restriction prohibiting a discount department store with more than 40,000 square-feet from moving into the old Target space for at least 10 years.
Documents from the Secretary of State’s office gives the address of 1180 Thorpe as 10300 Metropolitan Drive in Austin, the same address as the Coors distributorship for which Roy Butler beat out more than 2,200 suitors in 1976.
Lewis also was a partner in the Lamy-Springtown Mall, Ltd., which lost its portion of the Springtown property to foreclosure in March. Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, Lamy-Springtown’s mortgager, now owns that property. The Springtown Center is located on Thorpe Lane, just northwest of Interstate-35 and just northeast of Hopkins Street.
An official at CB Richard Ellis in Austin said Ellis is managing the Springtown Center for Thrivent Financial, though the official would not comment on any future plans for the center or whether there have been in talks with San Marcos officials regarding economic development deals.
The Springtown Center has been a cause for concern in San Marcos for almost two years, stemming from its major vacancies, reports of increased crime, mall management’s requests for city subsidies and the center’s ultimate foreclosure.
The center declined when its major tenants — Target, JC Penny, Beall’s and Target — moved to StoneCreek Crossing on Interstate-35 near the south end of the city by March 2009. The state’s General Land Office (GLO) purchased the land that now includes StoneCreek Crossing and began courting the three retailers.
The city subsidized the move — first with $2 million in tax abatements, then with an additional $4 million in November 2008. San Marcos Mayor Susan Narvaiz contended that the city had to make a deal in order to preserve the city sales tax revenues generated by the stores.
Since then, attempts by the city and Lamy-Springtown to make incentive deals for the Thorpe Lane property’s re-development have been stopped by public opposition.
The city council was going to be asked on Feb. 16 to approve a $2.5 million loan for Triple Tap Ventures, which owns the San Marcos franchising rights for the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema. Triple Tap was to place an Alamo Drafthouse in the old Best Buy building at Springtown and pay the loan back in ten years from the incremental tax increase. By mid-February, though, Lamy-Springtown was listed for foreclosure
The city announced that it would hold off on that vote because citizens had been unable to access the information on the city council agenda. The council did receive a formal briefing on the proposal for the first time that night.
Since the Feb. 16 meeting, Narvaiz has discussed the matter at one city council meeting and held three public meetings to discuss the project, arguing that Springtown should be approached as a re-development project, rather than as an economic development project. Narvaiz said the Alamo Drafthouse incentive wouldn’t be intended to address employment so much as to re-develop the mall, keep the existing businesses afloat, and reduce crime and blight.
Two similar proposals were to go before the council last summer. The first was a $5 million interest-free loan to Lamy-Springtown, which would have been required to re-develop the property as an entertainment center and pay the loan over 23 years.
The proposal was unanimously shot down by councilmembers after much resident uproar. Owners of existing San Marcos businesses objected to government subsidies for new competition and others said city subsidies should be expended only to attract living wage jobs. The few remaining proprietors in and near Springtown Center pleaded for re-development to make their business environment safer and more prosperous.
The fiercest opposition came from downtown business owners, many of whom operate restaurants and night clubs. They argued that it would be foul city policy to subsidize incoming competition, particularly after they invested downtown on the promise of a recently-passed downtown master plan.
Lamy-Springtown later pulled a second request for a $3.9 million loan with a maximum six-percent interest rate for the duration of the six-year loan. From 2011 through 2016, the city would have rebated 50 percent of the project’s generated city sales tax above the barren Springtown Center’s current levels. That money would have defrayed the developer’s interest payments and provided up to $600,000 for architectural enhancements.
Narvaiz said that not all businesses coming into San Marcos need to provide professional or living-wage jobs. She said San Marcos needs incoming businesses that will hire people in all socio-economic categories and that she wasn’t against providing incentives for said businesses, like the formerly proposed entertainment destination at the Springtown Center.
Posted by Bill Peterson
on May 2, 2010. Filed under San Marcos 2.
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City Council is meeting in Executive Session on Tuesday (July 6) to discuss, “offers of possible incentives to entities considering locating or expanding in the San Marcos community” (as noted in the agenda). I sure hope our city leaders aren’t going to try again anytime soon to give more taxpayer funded handouts for retail and entertainment project developers.
Economic development incentives need to pass an even higher hurdle these days, in these lean economic times. If and when our City leaders decide to spend our taxpayer money on economic development, they should consider these six questions:
1) Will it raise or lower the average household income?
2) Does it expand the diversity and vibrancy of our local economy?
3) Will it attract the kinds of businesses and industries we have identified for our long-term economic sustainability?
4) How does it stack rank to the plans and projects we already have developed?
5) Is it a good deal for the taxpayers funding the incentives?
6) Can we afford it at this point in time?
Affirmative answers to these six questions will help confirm we are making the best possible decision at the time it is in play.
Now would be a good time for some of the council to show a little back bone and demand that this meeting be public. Let us know what and who the subsidy is for and about and you might be surprised at the support you will get. I am far from no growth but I am tired of the secret and dumb deals. Council persons, just don’t attend the meeting if it will not be held in public. Show some guts and let’s put a stop to all the secrecy right now.