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David - While I appreciate you bringing forward the Town Madison information from the Edgewater meeting with Mr. Joey Ceci, I tend to view many of his comments over the past few years to be full of hubris and lacking on substance. I realize he's the president of Breland Companies and should have the inside info on Town Madison related activities and coming retailers, restaurants, etc., but he's said multiple things via newspaper and news stories just over the past year that simply haven't materialized and simply weren't true when he said them.
1) In April of last year Ceci said that the I-565 eastbound ingress and egress ramps would be open by the end of the summer and that the westbound ramps would be kicking off construction in about six weeks. The eastbound ingress and egress ramps didn't open at all in 2019 and are now supposedly opening on March 15. The westbound ramps still haven't gone out for bid and construction likely won't be finished before season 2 starts.
2) In May of last year Ceci said that an 18 kitchen dining hall was coming adjacent to the ballpark with regional and local chefs, two breweries, and stationary food trucks along with a covered stage and outdoor dining area. He said construction would start in the summer and be complete by the spring of 2020. Construction never started on the dining hall and still hasn't started. He also said work on the Zierdt Road project would be finished in the fall of 2019. The Zierdt project was never going to be finished in the fall of 2019; not even the short stretch from Madison Blvd to just north of Edgewater was going to be finished by then.
3) In June of last year Ceci said that construction of a Hilton Garden Inn was slated to start in 60 days. Construction on that hotel still hasn't started nor have any site plans for the hotel gone before the Madison Planning Commission. He also said site work for the Margaritaville Hotel had started and he expected the hotel to be open in summer 2020. He also reiterated that the dining hall would open in the second quarter of 2020. Construction still hasn't started on the dining hall or on the hotel.
4) In September of last year Ceci said that the Margaritaville Hotel would have a groundbreaking by the end of the year or early 2020. He said the hotel would take about 11 months to construct and would be open by the 2020 holiday season. A groundbreaking still hasn't happened for the hotel nor have any site plans for the hotel gone before the Madison Planning Commission. The Margaritaville Hotel development team still won't acknowledge that one of their hotels is even coming here nor does their website.
5) In November of last year Ceci said the first restaurants at Town Madison would be announced and under construction by the end of the year. Not a single restaurant has broken ground at Town Madison yet and only a handful have been announced: J. Alexander's, Outback, Panera Bread, Starbucks, and "The Hub".
6) In early January of this year, Mr. Ceci said that roadwork on Zierdt would be finished well before March 1st. I believe we are already at a point that's beyond "well before" territory and the work on Zierdt is still ongoing. I'm inclined to believe now that work will still be ongoing on March 1st and may even be pushing up against the opening date of the stadium on April 15th.
Here are a couple of responses to your 6 points:
To your point #2: While an indoor dining hall/food court is not in the works anymore, the Hub will be pretty similar. It will have a large TV for watching sports events and have numerous restaurants located around an outdoor plaza with a common sitting/eating area. There may not be the 18 restaurants as in the announced food hall, however. The hub at 30 A has around 7 or 8 and the owner is trying to bring as many of those concepts to TM.
To your point #5: In the past, Ceci said that Stoney River was looking to locate at TM as well as a high end artisan cooking restaurant. While Stoney River is not, J. Alexander's is owned by the same company as Stoney River and probably has a better chance of making a go of it as its prices are not as high. Looking at their menu, I still have questions if Alexanders can make it in this market when they are offering $15 hamburgers - I'm not so sure the HSV market is strong enough. They will need to count on business travelers staying in the nearby hotels with expense accounts to keep them in business during the week.
The delays in road construction are not surprising as it seems like all of the highway projects in this area get delayed for years. Zierdt Rd. may be the most extreme case.
Overall, TM has evolved from the initial plan of having as anchors a flagship Belk (which located at Bridge Street instead) and Cabela's (which located near Bridge Street) to being anchored by a baseball stadium and numerous hotels. Instead of having shoppers at Belk and Cabela's to drive traffic to other stores, TM is instead counting on Trash Panda's fans (and attendees of other events at the stadium) along with business travelers staying in the hotels to drive business to the restaurants and future retail in the development.
To your point #5: In the past, Ceci said that Stoney River was looking to locate at TM as well as a high end artisan cooking restaurant. While Stoney River is not, J. Alexander's is owned by the same company as Stoney River and probably has a better chance of making a go of it as its prices are not as high. Looking at their menu, I still have questions if Alexanders can make it in this market when they are offering $15 hamburgers - I'm not so sure the HSV market is strong enough. They will need to count on business travelers staying in the nearby hotels with expense accounts to keep them in business during the week.
I think J. Alexanders will do well given their proximity to the stadium. The one in Hoover always seemed crowded when I frequented the Galleria on a more regular basis.
I do wonder why TM continues to float material with different restaurants shown but with no forthcoming announcements. I've seen material that has Taco Bell, Starbucks, and Zoes Kitchen on the Zierdt side and Saltgrass Steakhouse, Milo's, and Zaxby's on the Wall Triana side. Yet, no announcements on any of those except Starbucks. Seems a little baffling that some of these can't be firmed up and announced. I know the development is evolving but you'd think there would've been a push to get some restaurant/retail in place for season 1 given the nearly two years of planning/construction window. I suspect folks are going to be disgusted with the traffic/parking situation this season and with the food options/opportunities outside of the stadium.
1) In April of last year Ceci said that the I-565 eastbound ingress and egress ramps would be open by the end of the summer and that the westbound ramps would be kicking off construction in about six weeks. The eastbound ingress and egress ramps didn't open at all in 2019 and are now supposedly opening on March 15. The westbound ramps still haven't gone out for bid and construction likely won't be finished before season 2 starts.
2) In May of last year Ceci said that an 18 kitchen dining hall was coming adjacent to the ballpark with regional and local chefs, two breweries, and stationary food trucks along with a covered stage and outdoor dining area. He said construction would start in the summer and be complete by the spring of 2020. Construction never started on the dining hall and still hasn't started. He also said work on the Zierdt Road project would be finished in the fall of 2019. The Zierdt project was never going to be finished in the fall of 2019; not even the short stretch from Madison Blvd to just north of Edgewater was going to be finished by then.
3) In June of last year Ceci said that construction of a Hilton Garden Inn was slated to start in 60 days. Construction on that hotel still hasn't started nor have any site plans for the hotel gone before the Madison Planning Commission. He also said site work for the Margaritaville Hotel had started and he expected the hotel to be open in summer 2020. He also reiterated that the dining hall would open in the second quarter of 2020. Construction still hasn't started on the dining hall or on the hotel.
4) In September of last year Ceci said that the Margaritaville Hotel would have a groundbreaking by the end of the year or early 2020. He said the hotel would take about 11 months to construct and would be open by the 2020 holiday season. A groundbreaking still hasn't happened for the hotel nor have any site plans for the hotel gone before the Madison Planning Commission. The Margaritaville Hotel development team still won't acknowledge that one of their hotels is even coming here nor does their website.
5) In November of last year Ceci said the first restaurants at Town Madison would be announced and under construction by the end of the year. Not a single restaurant has broken ground at Town Madison yet and only a handful have been announced: J. Alexander's, Outback, Panera Bread, Starbucks, and "The Hub".
6) In early January of this year, Mr. Ceci said that roadwork on Zierdt would be finished well before March 1st. I believe we are already at a point that's beyond "well before" territory and the work on Zierdt is still ongoing. I'm inclined to believe now that work will still be ongoing on March 1st and may even be pushing up against the opening date of the stadium on April 15th.
Thought I would revisit the counterpoints that I posted in response to some of the things that Joey Ceci of Breland Companies said at an Edgewater meeting in late January/early February (originally posted by David1502). Obviously, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected lots of people and businesses in the interim and has likely caused a refocus/reprioritization of some activities/plans and potentially cancellation of other activities/plans for Town Madison.
1) The I-565 eastbound ingress and egress ramps are still not open as of May 6th. The westbound ingress and egress ramps still inexplicably have not gone out for bids almost two years after the eastbound ramps were (May 9th).
2) Construction on "The Hub" still hasn't started, nor have any plans gone before the Madison Planning Commission. About the only "visible" activity that has occured recently relative to this venue is a name registration (HUB Town Madison, LLC) with the Alabama Secretary of State's office on March 19th. Construction on Zierdt north of Edgewater is still ongoing and will be into the summer. Not a real surprise to anyone who's been following progress on Zierdt over the years.
3) Construction on the Hilton Garden Inn is currently underway nextdoor to the Home2Suites hotel. Nothing has been done at the site of the Margaritaville Hotel as of May 6th.
4) The Margaritaville Hotel still hasn't broken ground nor have there ever been any announcements from anyone affiliated with the hotel chain since this hotel was announced as a future tenant in May 2018. No plans have come before the Madison Planning Commission up through the April 2020 meeting and the hotel's development staff and website still won't acknowledge that a Margaritaville Hotel is coming to Madison.
5) Only two restaurants actually have signed leases with Town Madison as of May 6, 2020. One is J. Alexander's and the other is Outback Steakhouse. Of these two, only Outback has broken ground thus far. A few other restaurants would appear to be somewhere in the process of finalizing locations within Town Madison, though the COVID-19 situation may end up derailing some of these plans. The entities that have requested name registrations through the Alabama Secretary of State's office thus far are: J. Alexander's (Town Madison JAX, LLC), Outback Steakhouse (Town Madison OB, LLC), The Hub (Hub Town Madison, LLC), Qdoba (Town Madison QDBA, LLC), Panera Bread (Town Madison PNRA, LLC), Unknown (Town Madison NC-3, LLC), and Unknown (Town Madison TC-5, LLC).
6) Work on the Zierdt SB lanes and Madison Blvd intersection is still ongoing and likely will be through the rest of May and into the summer. Some delays can be blamed on weather, but it was obvious to most that have followed the Zierdt/Martin widening projects over the years that the Zierdt SB lane construction and Zierdt/Madison Blvd intersection work wasn't ever going to match the timelines provided by Mr. Ceci.
I hate to say it but the postponement of baseball may have been a blessing in disguise for the city of Madison and the Trash Pandas organization as the infrastructure around the stadium still isn't in place to support gameday traffic/crowds. The parking lot at Toyota Field is about 70-75% complete as of now and was only about 50% complete three weeks ago when opening day was set to occur. Additionally, the city and Town Madison still haven't installed a single traffic signal within the development or adjacent to the development along Zierdt (Stadium Way and Town Madison Blvd) to manage/control traffic and the Madison Blvd/Zierdt intersection still isn't in a state where it can handle gameday traffic. I can't imagine the absolute disaster that gameday traffic/parking would be had the team been playing for the past three weeks.
Your points are right - It was a blessing in disguise that the baseball season has not started because the fans would have had a nightmare getting in and out of TM. Many would have been so disgusted that they wouldn't buy tickets for next season.
Thanks for providing the names of the entities who have filed name registrations with the Alabama Secretary of States Office.
The TM website has added an artist's rendering of the J. Alexander's Restaurant. This is in addition to the rendering of the Outback Steakhouse. The other restaurants you mentioned - Qdoba, Panera Bread and two other unknown entities will be located along Zierdt Rd. Joey Ceci mentioned Chick fil A, but he said there were concerns about managing traffic entering and exiting since they can create backups on major roads - Just look at their location on US 72 West on the north side of Madison. However, I would imagine that the City of Madison will discourage any curb cuts on Zierdt and force all traffic to enter these restaurants from an alley behind them with traffic exiting Zierdt at the three roads that are present now.
Overall, with the Covid 19 situation, there is a good bit of construction going on at TM, particularly in the residential area. Stone Martin Builders has a sign up promoting prices from the $500's and these are for houses that begin at around 2,200 sq. ft. with minimal yard. Breland homes has two townhome developments being built and Regent Homes is pretty bullish on the area, too. The retail and restaurant buildings being built (located in front of the residential) are pretty far along and should be complete this summer. They haven't announced who will be the tenants.
Al.com had an article yesterday stating that Madison County is the second best tourist market in Alabama (after Baldwin County) and experienced a 10% increase in hotel room nights in 2019. This explains all of the hotel construction. I bring this up because whenever we got past Covid 19 and business travel resumes again, TM stands to benefit due to its proximity to Redstone Arsenal. The FBI was requesting that more hotels be built there to accommodate the visitors for conferences and training at their new facility being built at Redstone. These hotel guests in town on business will be the customer base for the restaurants they are planning on building.
Zierdt Rd. north of Edgewater looks like it will be open for four lanes of traffic during the early part of the summer. TM plans to install the landscaping in the median in front of their property and the City of Madison will continue the landscaping on the portion in their city limits. It's too bad the City of Madison doesn't have the funds to remove the utility poles that are in the median. Breland paid to have them moved in front of TM.
David - In hindsight the power poles should have been relocated to the eastern edge of the road and not left in the median. The projected cost back in November 2007 to relocate all of the poles was around $600/700k. I think Breland/TM paid in excess of $20k per pole to relocate the handful of poles (6 or so) across from Town Madison.
I can't imagine any curb cuts being allowed along Zierdt for any restaurants or retail given that the multi-use path also runs parallel to Zierdt along the western boundary of the four-lane. I would think that all acess would be internal to Town Madison off of Moon Shot Drive, Stadium Way, and Town Madison Blvd or connecting street.
Relative to hotels in Town Madison, the seven-story Marriot hotel's site plans were included on the agenda for the Madison Planning Commission's April 2020 meeting. The only thing I saw of note there is that the proposed parking lot (243 spaces) for the hotel doesn't meet Madison's required zoning ordinance lot size (255 spaces). The hotel will have 212 rooms so perhaps this isn't a big issue.
A couple of other notes ...
1) A mixed-use development separate from Town Madison is being proposed for the property just west of the Madison Golf Center on I-565. This development is being spearheaded by the son of former Integraph founder and CEO, James F. Taylor, who owns the property. A zoning request and development plan appeared on the March 2020 agenda of the Madison Planning Commission. The main hub of the development would be a four-story apartment building with one and two bedroom units with some onsite retail/work space surrounding the apartment complex.
2) The City of Madison and ALDOT are currently exploring design alternatives to widen Graphics Drive, widen Wall-Triana, and realign the I-565 eastbound off ramp on the western side of Town Madison. This is in the preliminary design stages and concepts are currently being developed to add an additional left turn-lane from Wall-Triana SB into Town Madison/Graphics Drive, reduce the rounding of the off-ramp, and reduce the confusing nature of the right turn lanes onto Cleghorn Blvd and into the Shell gas station. The off-ramp would essentially get pushed further north into the grass median and would not dump into a merge lane as configured now.
5) Only two restaurants actually have signed leases with Town Madison as of May 6, 2020. One is J. Alexander's and the other is Outback Steakhouse. Of these two, only Outback has broken ground thus far. A few other restaurants would appear to be somewhere in the process of finalizing locations within Town Madison, though the COVID-19 situation may end up derailing some of these plans. The entities that have requested name registrations through the Alabama Secretary of State's office thus far are: J. Alexander's (Town Madison JAX, LLC), Outback Steakhouse (Town Madison OB, LLC), The Hub (Hub Town Madison, LLC), Qdoba (Town Madison QDBA, LLC), Panera Bread (Town Madison PNRA, LLC), Unknown (Town Madison NC-3, LLC), and Unknown (Town Madison TC-5, LLC).
Pulling the leasing brochure from CBRE (linked below) shows two updated site plans, one is dated 3/15/20. It looks like NC-3 and TC-5 are building names. The TC-5 looks to be a First National Bank. NC-3 looks like a strip center with 4 spaces including a Verizon, Sports Clip, Pita Restaurant, and Nail Salon.
A few other things I noticed.
1. Other names listed include Baumhowers, Another Broken Egg, Five Guys, Super Chix, Panera, I Heart Sushi, and Starbucks
2. There will be at least one more apartment complex across from The Station.
3. TC-10 looks to be set up to be a movie theatre, at 40k sqft it would be on par with other theatres in the area. An 18,000 sqft building is labeled as a theatre along with an amphitheater near the baseball park. This would be a pretty small movie theatre so maybe it is planned to be more of a staged theatre.
4. The brochure shows two different site plans. The thing that caught my attention is how the Margaritaville site differs. One looks very similar to the hotel Breland has presented. The other looks like it has been scaled down with no lazy river/pool and other retail spaces added. The scaled down version also leaves off the Margaritaville name. I have some doubts about the Margaritaville getting built.
Interestingly the flyover ramps aren't shown on the site plan diagram in the CBRE leasing package. I can't fathom why they wouldn't be shown. To answer your question, I was told by ALDOT director for NA district that it would take about 18 months to build the flyover ramps. So your timeline isn't far off if you factor in review period for bids.
Also notice as noted above that the Margaritaville Hotel isn't shown on zoning layout or side view of site plan.
I've said for months one wasn't being built based on some common sense observations. For one a Madison location has never appeared on the Margaritaville website as a Coming Soon location. Second, not one person affiliated with the hotel has ever announced anything about a Madison location and that includes the hotel development team (I've spoken with them twice). Third, no plans, name reservation or other paperwork has materialized on any municipal website in the two years since the hotel was announced.
I also noticed a few weeks ago that CBRE replaced SRS real estate as the commercial leasing entity responsible for leasing space for restaurant, retail, and office space at Town Madison. Would guess that Breland became dissatisfied given that we are two years from announcement of baseball coming to Town Madison and east side of development still is mostly grass and dirt. Hard to understand how things aren't further along. Even Clift Farms seems to be ahead of Town Madison in much shorter timeframe.
Last edited by Big Grumpy; 05-06-2020 at 05:46 PM..
Interestingly the flyover ramps aren't shown on the site plan diagram in the CBRE leasing package. I can't fathom why they wouldn't be shown. To answer your question, I was told by ALDOT director for NA district that it would take about 18 months to build the flyover ramps. So your timeline isn't far off if you factor in review period for bids.
Also notice as noted above that the Margaritaville Hotel isn't shown on zoning layout or side view of site plan.
I've said for months one wasn't being built based on some common sense observations. For one a Madison location has never appeared on the Margaritaville website as a Coming Soon location. Second, not one person affiliated with the hotel has ever announced anything about a Madison location and that includes the hotel development team (I've spoken with them twice). Third, no plans, name reservation or other paperwork has materialized on any municipal website in the two years since the hotel was announced.
I also noticed a few weeks ago that CBRE replaced SRS real estate as the commercial leasing entity responsible for leasing space for restaurant, retail, and office space at Town Madison. Would guess that Breland became dissatisfied given that we are two years from announcement of baseball coming to Town Madison and east side of development still is mostly grass and dirt. Hard to understand how things aren't further along. Even Clift Farms seems to be ahead of Town Madison in much shorter timeframe.
I suspect a big reason is that it's taken so long to build the northern part of Zierdt Rd and the intersection. Even now, you drive by on any given day and there is either no one working, or just a small handful. There were more during the paving activity, but that was an anomaly.
Even Clift Farms seems to be ahead of Town Madison in much shorter timeframe.
I noticed that Clift Farms is being built in Madison county outside of both Madison and Huntsville city limits. Do you think it will remain that way?
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