photo by: Submitted graphic

Eudora city officials and its consulting partners have upgraded the marketing plan for the Nottingham property just north of the community's main Church Street gateway from Kansas Highway 10 to reflect the Texas company High 5's plan to build a family entertainment complex on the site. The update marketing site plan shows 21 businesses eventually located in Nottingham.

Work will start next month in Eudora on a $2 million upgrade to Church Street, a project that’s associated with the city’s current commercial redevelopment of the old Nottingham Elementary School site.

The Eudora City Commission approved a contract last month with Amino Brothers Co. Inc., of Kansas City, Kan., to upgrade Church Street from about a block north of its 14th Street intersection to about a block south of its 15th Street intersection.

Last year, the city learned it would receive a Kansas Department of Transportation cost-sharing grant that would help pay for the project to upgrade Church Street, which is the city’s primary gateway from Kansas Highway 10. The contract the City Commission approved last month for the $1.99 million project fixed KDOT’s costs for the project at $1.25 million and the city’s cost at $742,000, Eudora City Manager Barack Matite said.

The project will widen the street, adding turn lanes for the busy intersections with 14th Street and 15th Street. It will also add new curbs, guttering and sidewalks, Matite said.

Amino Brothers’ construction schedule calls for the work to begin on March 15 and last through late summer. In late spring and early summer, the work is slated to require drivers to detour around Church Street.

The work is related to the commercial redevelopment of the nearby 15-acre Nottingham site, and Matite said that while the city would have made those improvements eventually even without the Nottingham redevelopment, the Nottingham project was what made the state grant possible. Without the grant, he said the road upgrades would have been built gradually and their cost would have delayed or prevented other needed city projects.

In other news on the Nottingham property, city officials and consultants have updated the marketing plan for the site to reflect the recent announcement of its anchor development — an entertainment facility by the Austin, Texas, family entertainment company High 5.

High 5 plans to build a miniature golf course, bowling alley, laser-tag facility and dining area on 3.5 acres in the southern section of the Nottingham site. The sale price of the property was $750,000, and it was the third piece of property on the site to be sold; previously, the city sold lots to Casey’s General Stores and a Wendy’s restaurant franchisee for $840,000 and $520,000, respectively.

The city originally purchased the Nottingham site from the Eudora school district in 2015 for $850,000 with the goal of bringing retail development to the site.

Matite said the new marketing plan for Nottingham included a site map that showed the High 5 anchor development and 20 other businesses, including the Wendy’s and Casey’s storefronts. The businesses are shown occupying individual pad sites or in multi-unit developments of between two and six storefronts. Four storefronts are shown as restaurants, and another stand-alone business, which overlooks a green space denoted as “The Village Green,” is shown as a microbrewery/restaurant.

Matite said the businesses shown in the marketing site map were aspirational. However, he said some of the uses envisioned reflected possible tenants the Nottingham team was exploring. The High 5 agreement grew from a similar past association that members of the marketing team had with the Texas business, he said.

“That’s what marketing is,” Matite said. “Marketing is all about connecting and networking.”

Matite said the Nottingham team was approaching businesses about individual pad sites and looking for developers interested in purchasing multi-unit pad sites of two to six storefronts. He also said that if the city got interest from a business that it didn’t think was a good fit for the development, the marketing team would look for possible sites on the Church Street corridor north and south of K-10.

To help with the marketing and to inform Eudora residents about developments at the site, the city will soon have a Nottingham web page at cityofEudora.gov/nottingham, Matite said.