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Progress
Sunday, March 24, 2002
THE BUSINESSES: Bell Towne developer hopes to inspire others SCOTT WYLAND THE OLYMPIAN
LACEY -- Mike Young thinks it's fitting that the health club he co-owns is the first business to open within an area designated as Lacey's downtown core.
After all, good health is central to a person's life, Young said. And what is a city made up of except people?
"If people feel good physically, then everything else in their lives works better," said Young, whose Powerhouse Gym franchise is housed in the new Bell Towne Centre.
Composed of two buildings totaling 66,000 square feet, Bell Towne is the first peg in what city leaders envision as the heart of downtown Lacey: a cluster of commercial buildings near Sixth Avenue, Sleater-Kinney Road and Pacific Avenue.
"It's sort of cool to be in what's considered to be the center of downtown Lacey," Young said.
The idea of being in a budding downtown was as appealing as moving into an attractive new building, Young said.
Young co-owns the Powerhouse franchise with Anthony Carrillo and Randolph Simmons.
Foot traffic
Having a fitness club in the midst of a retail district is proving synergistic, Young said.
Young suspects that when the core area crystallizes, foot traffic at the gym will increase.
A greater variety of stores and eateries within an area gives people a reason to get out of their cars and walk around, said Steve Chamberlain, president of SCA Consulting Group, which developed Bell Towne.
A Lacey resident, Chamberlain has been involved with the effort to create a downtown hub since the city began discussing the idea seriously a few years ago.
The newly designated core section will need time to evolve, Chamberlain said. "It won't happen overnight, but it will take shape."
He hopes that Bell Towne will inspire other developers to put up buildings that will augment the central area, he said.
Powerhouse is a good way to start because the gym is open 24 hours, Chamberlain said. One of the city's goals is to create a downtown that has activity at all hours, so pedestrians feel safe, he said.
Chamberlain plans to move his SCA offices to the third floor of the main building. Powerhouse occupies the building's ground floor.
Believing exercise is important for worker morale, Chamberlain decided to lease to Powerhouse so his employees would have a handy place to work out.
The gym takes up about 13,000 square feet and cost $1 million to bring on line, Young said.
Yearly rent on the space is $18 a square foot, Young said. "I think we got a pretty good break because we jumped on the bandwagon before the building was even built," he said.
As Lacey's downtown grows more defined, leasing rates in the area will probably go up, and that would be a good thing, Chamberlain said.
If rents are higher, then classier tenants will site there -- the type that are willing to spend money to make their buildings attractive, he said.
Thriving merchants will generate business taxes for the city, Chamberlain said. "It kind of all feeds on one another."
Chamberlain estimates he spent $10 million developing Bell Towne.
Look and feel
The overall challenge will be creating a stylish, quaint-looking downtown amid existing retail stores, he said.
Lacey's downtown is being added after the fact, and for that reason it won't feel like a traditional downtown, even if it functions as one, he said.
"You have to work around buildings that are already there," Chamberlain said. "You can't wipe the slate clean and start from scratch."
Scott Wyland is a business reporter for The Olympian. He can be reached at 360-357-0748 or swyland@olympia.gannett.com.
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