NAIOP hosted a luncheon yesterday on the topic of the soon-to-be-developed Horizons development in Riverside, MO. Nathaniel Hagedorn, master developer for the Horizons project and the highly successful Briarcliff development, gave an overview and explained they were current negotiating on 2 million square feet of industrial users as well as 200,000 square feet of office users. The draw for the area being a centralized Northland location in between the airport and downtown KCMO, as well as some sweet incentive packages and design features that they hope will allow them to stand out from competing sites.
One of the most interesting morsels I gathered was that Nathaniel regularly takes his development team to other mixed use developments around the Midwest. One of those developments that provided the inspiration for the lakes and canals planned at Horizons is New Town at St. Charles. New Town is primarily a residential community, but the canal systems added a sense of community that Nathaniel is betting will flow over to an industrial and office development.
From my perspective, Horizons is akin to Corporate Woods in Johnson County (which I might add has done very well over the course of time), except with kayaks instead of runners circling the campus on weekends. I sat next to Chad Meyer with ARCO during the luncheon (they will be handling the vertical construction portion) and he confirmed they look to be very busy in 2012 on this project.
