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Thousands of vehicles pass a former grocery store in Greenwood every day, but right now all drivers see is a window patched with plywood and semitrailers parked in the lot.
But by spring, the agent marketing a former grocery store building near U.S. 31 and Smith Valley Road wants to have a new business in the building and develop two new spaces for banks or restaurants near the highway.
The building has been vacant for about a year after a Marsh grocery store closed — one of its three Indiana stores shut down last year.
In 2012, Greenwood officials were contacted by companies considering the building for an auto body shop or indoor golf facility. Walmart also considered moving in but decided to build a new store off State Road 135 instead, according to Doug Thompson, one of the building’s owners.
Ryan Zickler of Zickler Associates is marketing the property and received about 15 inquiries about the building in the past month. He plans to target types of stores that Greenwood doesn’t already have, such as a premium grocery store chain like Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s.
The 31,000-square-foot building is currently the largest vacant retail property in Greenwood, city planning and zoning director Ed Ferguson said. With the way the property is zoned, just about any retail or service business could use the site, he said.
About 38,000 vehicles pass by each day, and about the same amount of traffic travels by Greenwood Park Mall and the stores and shops around it, according to state traffic counts.
The building owner, investment company Black Diamond 880 LLC, waited to market the building because Walmart was considering the site, Thompson said. Allen Commercial Group worked with Walmart to find a new location in Greenwood late last year, Thompson said.
But the retailer instead decided to head west to the Center Grove area, where its plans to build a new store next door to Home Depot near State Road 135 and Smith Valley Road recently were approved. Walmart will open a 152,434-square-foot store at the site, which is about five times the size of the former Marsh building.
Once Walmart decided on another location, the building’s owners started looking for a new real estate firm to market the building. Over the past year, interest in the building has been low. City and local development officials initially heard about ideas for an auto body shop, indoor golf center or call center, but none has been officially proposed.
Zickler has created a list of companies that he plans to contact, instead of just waiting to see who calls him.
“We’re going to go after those users and occupants until they give us a good reason of no,” he said.
He also plans to develop two new lots on the property along U.S. 31, which could become sites for fast-food restaurants, banks or auto shops. Those smaller lots could get a high amount of interest due to the amount of traffic along U.S. 31 and Smith Valley Road, Zickler said.
Zickler said his schedule to have the site occupied by spring is aggressive. Retailers typically don’t make real estate decisions until the beginning of the year, he said. But he wants to contact companies before the holiday shopping season.
The vacant building needs work and detracts from other businesses in the highly traveled area, Johnson County Development Corp. Chief Executive Officer Cheryl Morphew and Greenwood Mayor Mark Myers said.
“The community is stuck with it. It would be ideal to backfill and bring it to life again,” Morphew said. “That’s a really busy intersection.”
Myers said he would like to see a sit-down restaurant as opposed to fast food, or a unique, niche retailer instead of a dollar store.
“I would really like to contact (the developer) and really go to more quality than low-end retail stores. We don’t want to be a discount row type place,” he said.
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