Here’s a map reflecting Hannibal’s proposal for its latest round of annexation, provided to The Herald-Whig by City Manager Jeff LaGarce. The yellow areas represent Hannibal’s current city limits; the red boxes encompass land that would be annexed. (Click to enlarge.)
If all areas are annexed, they would fill in numerous holes in the somewhat haphazard shape of the city, particularly to the fast-growing west.
An artist's rendering by Architechnics of the terminal to be constructed at Hannibal Regional Airport. (Submitted Photo)
As noted in Tuesday’s edition, the improvements to Hannibal Regional Airport that were described in a Monday story will cost about $692,000 in total, with $533,000 of that going to the airport’s new (and first-ever) terminal. Monday’s story erroneously reported that the improvements would cost $1.2 million. The entire package was designed by Quincy-based engineering firm Architechnics, who provided us with a more recent artist’s rendering of the airport than the one ran with Monday’s story, which reflected Klingner and Associates’ design for the airport.
City Engineer Mark Rees explained that the engineer switch reflected an effort to bring down the cost of the project. He said Klingner’s original proposal ran about $1.2 million, twice as much as the Missouri Department of Transportation’s aviation division intended to fund. After difficulties in bringing the project within budget stretched out the project’s timeline by several years, the airport committee eventually decided to hire Architechnics to design a more stripped-down new terminal.
Rees described the city’s mentality as “Let’s get this designed, meat and potatoes, exactly what MoDOT Aviation wants, and get it built.”
Designing a full-featured but basic terminal is easier said than done, Rees said, and even the new terminal design required some “value engineering and fancy footwork” to be brought within budget.
The total cost of the airport’s improvements — which are funded by MoDOT funds, a federal matching grant and a city matching grant aided by organizations like the Hannibal Industrial Development Association — is slightly less than $692,000. That includes $533,000 for the terminal and just less than $159,000 for the access road and parking lot.
The funds — and, in turn, the improvements for which they pay — reflect MoDOT’s funding capacity, Rees said.
A basic terminal is “all that MoDOT Aviation wants out there, and that’s all they’re willing to fund,” he said. “You have to build what they’re willing to build.”
A couple of years ago, Hannibal’s Huck Finn Shopping Center was an unfortunate victim of circumstance. (More unfortunate than you know, from a selfish perspective, since it involved two of my favorite clothing stores.) In the span of a few months, two fairly new retailers at Huck Finn Shopping Center, Goody’s and Steve & Barry’s — which also had opened within seven months of each other — went bankrupt at the national level and closed their respective Hannibal outlets in the former Walmart. The spaces have sat untouched since then, their signage still visible on U.S. 61/McMasters Avenue.
So I was pretty excited for the shopping center when I heard that a Sears Hometown Store was coming soon to the former Steve & Barry’s space, the previous Sears store’s owner having given up the franchise to strike out on his own.
When I called shopping center owner Hauck Holdings to confirm that information, however, I gleaned even more potentially exciting information.
Harold Fry, Hauck’s vice president of leasing, tells me that Sears — which has yet to open — probably will occupy relatively little of the Steve & Barry’s space, depending on Sears’ own inclination. Instead, it may split the 41,000-square foot space with a soft goods retailer — that is, one selling textiles and related merchandise — that will occupy the bulk of the space. Fry didn’t identify the retailer but said Hauck is in lease negotiations with that company.
“It’s going to be partly up to (Sears), but we’re in negotiations with them as well,” Fry said. “But we have the right to, and we intend to, build a dividing wall.”
The former Goody’s space next door won’t be left out of the action, Fry added. Hauck is in lease negotiations with three different soft goods companies for that 25,000-square foot space. A pet supply company also is in the mix.
Heard the rumor that an indoor shooting range will occupy Goody’s? Fry would like to put that rumor to rest. “That did not happen and would not happen,” he said.
Fry emphasized that it wasn’t Hannibal’s fault that Goody’s and Steve & Barry’s closed. According to The Herald-Whig’s archives, Goody’s declared bankruptcy in June 2008 and shortly thereafter announced plans to close the Hannibal store it had opened in November 2005. A few months later, the adjacent Steve & Barry’s, newly bought out of bankruptcy itself, announced it would close more than a third of its stores, including its two-year-old Hannibal store (and the St. Louis store where I frequently stimulated the economy). Bankruptcy proceedings moved fast for both chains, and both were a memory as 2009 began. (Goody’s has since reopened several stores, including a Jacksonville, Ill. location, as part of the Stage Stores family, which also includes Stage Stores in Kirksville and Moberly, Mo., and a Peebles in Keokuk, Iowa.)
“We hit a couple of bumps in the road with Goody’s and Steve & Barry’s, but no fault of anybody,” Fry said. Of all the shopping centers Cincinnati-based Hauck owns in six primarily eastern states, “this was the only instance where we were affected side-by-side (by) two different companies from two different parts of the country.”
Although Hannibal is a bit off the beaten path for large chain retailers, Fry is satisfied with its steady traffic and likes its biggest shopping center’s chances of succeeding with the successors to Goody’s and Steve & Barry’s.
“There’s always been constant, continuous interest in that center,” Fry said, adding, “It’s a great town.”
