Office Park Blooms With More Vendors

Commerce Plaza LLC, the investment crew behind Bentonville’s Commerce Center development on South Walton Boulevard, is close to completion of its latest office building. This time, it’s a 16,000-SF facility at 1716 SW Commerce Drive.

The investors, who include Mark Marquess, Collins Haynes, Dan Dykema, Vic Evans and Rick McCullough, obtained the $1.3 million in financing from the Great Southern Bank of Springfield, Mo.

The building is already completely leased to several firms, including Sara Lee, Testrite and Fisher-Price, that call on Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

Commerce Plaza also has plans to begin construction on a $700,000 8,900-SF office building and a $1.5 million, 19,000-SF executive office building in Commerce Center. The smaller facility is about 25 percent preleased. The larger building will feature a variety of executive services including a conference rooms for multi-media presentations, T-1 high-speed modem lines and secretarial services.

Great Southern Bank is also handling the financing for those next two projects. That would give Commerce Plaza a total of 75,000 SF at Commerce Center. Soon, the holding company will begin work on another sizable retail center that could be as large as 25,000 SF.

Another deal Commerce Plaza is working on is the sale of four acres directly across South Walton Boulevard to the U.S. Postal Service. The site will be used for Bentonville’s new post office.