Developer plans twin Q.C. shopping centers

LAS VEGAS - A Phoenix-based developer is planning two twin shopping centers in Queen Creek that will together encompass 1.1 million square feet.

Major shopping center proposed for Queen Creek

Vestar — which developed Tempe Marketplace and Desert Ridge Marketplace near the Scottsdale-Phoenix border— has plans to build a 600,000-square-foot mall called Vinyard Towne Center and a 500,000-square-foot center called Ironwood Towne Center. They’ll neighbor each other about five miles east of the 1.1 million-square-foot Queen Creek Marketplace, a Vestar mall that recently opened its first phase.

Vestar officials revealed their plans Tuesday at the 2008 Global Retail Real Estate Convention.

Vinyard Towne Center will be at the northwest corner of Gantzel and Combs roads and Ironwood Towne Center will be at the northwest corner of Ocotillo Road and Ironwood Drive.

“They’re significant,” said David Larcher, Vestar’s vice president of development. “We’re just in the planning stages.”

Tracy Clark, an economist with Arizona State University’s W.P. Carey School of Business, said it will be a while until population growth in the area reaches a healthy clip.

“Five to eight years sounds right to me,” he said.

But once the housing market recovers, the once-tiny town of Queen Creek is expected to see much of the East Valley’s growth, he said.

Larcher said that the Vinyard and Ironwood centers will most likely host the kind of retailers seen in similar regional power centers.

“You might see a Target and a Home Depot and a Ross,” he said.

Rival mall developer Westcor also has its eye on Queen Creek.

It plans what is being called Meridian Crossing on 400 acres on the southwest corner of Rittenhouse and Riggs roads.

That project is expected to take shape within a decade.

Larcher said construction on both Vestar projects should be underway sometime between 2010 and 2013, when population figures are able to support that much retail.

“We always knew these projects would be somewhere between two and five years after the Queen Creek Marketplace opened up.”