Provo plans 59-acre development

PROVO — A large Target store is expected to anchor a major new shopping center near the Provo Towne Centre mall and the Reserve at East Bay Golf Course, city leaders announced Thursday.

PetSmart, Sports Authority and Circuit City have agreed to join Target in the new Southgate Center, on the southeast corner of University Avenue and 1860 South, just off the I-15 University Avenue exit. Another dozen retailers are negotiating with developer Boyer Co.

If approved, the Southgate project would remove seven of the existing holes on the Reserve at East Bay Golf Course, but Provo leaders said it would remain an 18-hole course. They would use much of the $6.5 million from the sale of the city-owned land to improve the course, including the addition of a signature island green.

The shuffling of the holes is part of a creative solution to a difficult problem for Provo, which so far had been able to develop just one-quarter of the I-15 interchange. The city desperately seeks more retail stores and the shoppers who spend money there, thus generating sales-tax revenue for the city. Provo leaders worked for seven years through numerous obstacles to develop the Southgate project, which would be built on a landfill and require moving important wetlands to another part of the city.

Once the retail capital of Utah Valley, city leaders in the late 1960s passed on a chance to build a mall, which instead went to Orem.

"That retail prominence Provo had went with it," Mayor Lewis Billings said. "We've made a significant effort in recent years to bring some of that prominence back to the city."

The catch-up plan has included the Provo Towne Centre in East Bay and The Shops at Riverwoods near the mouth of Provo Canyon.

Southgate would cover 59 acres, with 450,000 square feet of commercial retail space in Phase I. That phase would cost about $45 million. About 225,000 square feet of office space would be built in Phase II, which would cost $25 million to $30 million, Boyer senior vice president Mark Pace said.

A proposed site plan shows three office buildings and 23 shops, many of them small and scattered around the parking lot in a way similar to The Meadows in American Fork.

The project would generate an estimated $125 million a year in retail sales, Provo City Council Chairman George Stewart said. That, in turn, would generate about $1 million a year in sales-tax revenue for the city. It also would add tens of thousands of dollars in property-tax revenue from land that until now has generated none.

Billings and Stewart said Provo Towne Centre officials and Sam's Club executives have been looking for diverse retail stores for East Bay because the added traffic would help all area businesses.