Contract to build Academy Sports store in Columbus almost ready

The project that will bring an Academy Sports and Outdoors store to Whittlesey Boulevard at Columbus Park Crossing appears to have cleared most of its hurdles toward construction likely to begin this fall.

A 64,400-square-foot Academy Sports store will anchor a shopping center called “Whittlesey Commons” at 7221 Whittlesey Blvd., a 16-acre development that looks to include additional restaurants and retailers positioned on outparcels fronting the larger retailer.

Dennis Lacy, pastor at North Highland Church, which is selling the land adjacent to the place of worship to a Houston, Texas-based development company, said the final sales contract is now being put together.

“We’re hopeful that the property (sale) will close by the end of September,” he said. “We don’t have an actual confirmation of that, but all seems to be going well at this point.”

The project included a rezoning of more than 13 acres of the land in February by Columbus Council, which approved a change of its usage from single-family residential to general commercial. A lawsuit protesting the rezoning was later filed in Superior Court against the church and the city by a homeowner in a neighborhood adjacent to the site.

“Judge (Frank) Jordan upheld the council’s decision to rezone it to general commercial” on June 15, Columbus City Attorney Clifton Fay said Wednesday. “There are no appeals that I know of, so that’s the end of it.”

(Academy Sports and Outdoors headed for high-traffic area of city)

(Academy Sports and Outdoors rezoning now headed to Columbus Council)

(Academy Sports and Outdoors moves closer to construction of Columbus store)

Farhad Alifarhani, a design engineer with the city’s engineering department, said site plans for construction were submitted by the developer, Houston, Texas-based The Raiden Group, a couple of weeks ago for review, which is now under way. Those plans include elements such as grading of land, a drainage system, stormwater management, erosion control and required buffers between the development and the homes behind it.

“Their plans and everything go toward preparing the site, for the site to be finished and everything, and they have it (being completed) by the end of this year as far as the parking lot and all of those things,” Alifarhani said.

That likely would put vertical construction of the structure on a fast track to completion to get Katy, Texas-based Academy Sports and Outdoors up and running on the property, which is just west and downhill from North Highland Church. Most retailers like to be operating heading into a holiday shopping season, although the goods that Academy Sports sells are popular year-round.

Calls and an email request for comment sent to Academy Sports and Outdoors were not returned Wednesday. The company is owned by private New York City investment firm, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts.

“I don’t think I’ve actually heard a timeline on that,” Lacy said of Academy Sports target for construction and opening its doors in Columbus. “I’ve just heard that once they begin, they don’t wait. They hit it and run. So it could be fairly quick.”

A check of the Academy Sports website shows the retailer opening nearly a dozen stores since mid-April. Those were in Columbus, Mo., Greensboro, N.C., Huntsville, Ala., Weatherford, Texas, Florence, Ala., Manhattan, Kan., Starkville, Miss., Paducah, Ky., College Station, Texas, Poplar Bluff, Mo., and Rockwall, Texas.

Lacy said he and his congregation of about 1,000 never lost faith that the rezoning, purchase and future development of the land would make it to the finish line. He said the plan all along has been to be sensitive to nearby neighbors, which he believes has been the case with the developer approving extended buffers and berms to reduce noise and light from the future commercial activity.

“I really think it’s going to be a plus for everybody,” he said. “It’s going to be a plus for the community. It’s going to be a great retail store. There’s a lot of people who go all the way to Opelika to do business with that store, and now they’ll be able to do it here ... Whatever they do, Academy’s always done it first class. It will be very congruent with all of the building here on Whittlesey Boulevard.”

The original price for the property being sold by the church was $3.5 million. The pastor said the final number will be less than that, somewhere just under $3 million, with proceeds strictly going toward paying off church debt, just as congregation members voted to do. He more or less called it a blessing out of the blue.

“The reality was we really had not put our property up for sale,” Lacy said. “This all started when we got approached (by real-estate developers) and they said, ‘Would you be willing to sell some property?’ So we really weren’t trying to sell it. It really came to us, and we deliberated and prayed over it for awhile before we consented that, yeah, we don’t have to have this piece of property in our master plans for any future buildings that we would do.”

Academy Sports and Outdoors is a recreation and outdoors goods retailer that sells a variety of merchandise at what it calls “every day low prices.” Merchandise includes leisure items such as barbecue grills, athletic apparel and footwear, hunting, fishing and camping gear. Brands it carries include Nike, Under Armour, Adidas, YETI and Columbia.

Founded in 1938, the company operates more than 230 stores in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. The retailer’s nearest location is about 40 minutes away in Auburn, Ala., not far from the Tiger Town development in Opelika.

Academy Sports is ranked No. 79 on a Forbes magazine list of “America’s Largest Private Companies.” The retailer’s revenue in its last fiscal year was $4.7 billion, with it employing 23,000 companywide. Each store has about 100 workers.

This story was originally published August 23, 2017 at 6:00 PM with the headline "Contract to build Academy Sports store in Columbus almost ready."