Winpark Place shopping center could be home to 18 businesses

Winpark Place, a strip center under construction near Hillside Road and South Bell Street, should be up and running by April.

Brian Shinall, manager and co-founder of the Shinall Group commercial real estate outfit behind the $3.5 million project, said the site is on a great route to Interstate 27 that is followed by many residents of newer neighborhoods to the west.

"If you look at it from an aerial (view)," Shinall said, "you see this 4-acre vacant piece of land that looks like a hole in a donut."

The parcel is bordered by Café Marizon and the Education Credit Union to the west and an Amarillo National Bank branch, Golf Headquarters, and Papa Murphy's to the east.

"Incomes, households, population and traffic counts are big factors," Shinall said.

"It fell into a good range in each of those classifications, so we decided to pull the trigger."

Three buildings will take up 35,000 square feet of space at Winpark. Shinall said 3,000 of those square feet will be occupied by Edes Custom Meats. He said it is Edes' first storefront to open outside of its 6700 W. McCormick Road location. Edes has been in business since 1982.

"I think it's going to be very similar to the situation when you go out there and you ask for a steak to be cut 1¾ inches, and they'll cut it for you," Shinall said.

Dickey's Barbecue, based in Dallas, had already been announced as a tenant in another of those buildings.

Shinall said he is not ready to announce the other tenants, but did say he is in negotiations with a professional office that could use 3,000 square feet, clothiers and other retailers, and a few "sports bar/brew house" establishments.

In all, as many as 18 businesses could call the shopping center home by spring.

Shinall said Amarillo is seeing so much strip center development because the market for it is "popping" to catch up with a decade of residential expansion. At the same time, he emphasized that he doesn't think Amarillo overbuilds, but instead stays within the lines of commercial demand.

"The popcorn's popping," he said, "and we're probably right where we need to be as far as retail space."

Shinall has partnered with Cody Campbell and John Sellers to build Winpark Place as Amaworth Partners LLC. As previously reported, Campbell and Sellers are partners in a Fort Worth oil and gas company called Double Eagle Investments.