It happened in a building, not in a tent. Developers unveiled their plan for the corner of Sunshine Street and National Avenue, and they shared the name — the Heights.
While the developer won't give a cost estimate, the Heights' price tag is certainly in the multimillions. It would have a parking garage, restaurants and public art on the first level, retail shops on the second level, offices on the third level, apartments on the fourth and fifth levels and the possibility for a sixth level.
Residents of the surrounding University Heights neighborhood came to the DoubleTree Hotel on North Glenstone Avenue to direct their feedback toward the mixed use development plan on the far southeast corner of their neighborhood. Like in two previous public meetings, foul language flew out, this time at about the 25-minute mark of the two-hour meeting.
Ralph Duda III and Anthony Tolliver are the developers behind Be Kind and Merciful, or BK&M LLC. The two paired up in 2012 to form Anything Possible, a fishing equipment company with a mission to get kids out of their houses and on waterways to explore fishing. Its brands include Kid Casters, Profishiency and Perfection Lures. Nov. 7, they disclosed two more partners for the Springfield project, two-time NBA all-star center Brad Miller and Marty Duda, Ralph Duda’s brother.
Ralph Duda stopped the presentation and told a woman to leave the hotel conference room. Duda said the woman mouthed an expletive at him.
“I’d like you to go, please,” Duda said. “You don’t look at me and motion (expletive), that’s not acceptable. We’re not standing for that today.”
“I deserve to sit here and listen to what’s about to happen to me,” the woman responded.
“Do you read lips?” another audience member asked.
Ultimately, she was allowed to stay and see the unveiling of plans for the Heights, a development that will have 50 loft apartments on the upper levels, which residents will navigate through a series of terraces.
A balance of two scales
BK&M bought properties along Sunshine Street, National Avenue and University Avenue in 2022 with the intent to rezone about 1.8 acres of land and have it rezoned from residential to commercial.
On Nov. 7, the developer explained how the elbow-shaped building for the Heights would hug the corner of National and Sunshine, with a public atrium at the point of the elbow on the corner. BOTI Architects President Bo Hagerman gave much of the 40-minute rundown of the plan.
“It should be fun, I hope,” Hagerman said. “If design can’t be fun, I don’t know what can be.”
Hagerman showed plans for a building somewhere between 75,000 and 200,000 square feet in size, with 1920s French Parisian architecture meeting modern design standards that take cues from the “displaced” house that once stood at the corner of National and Sunshine.
“We’ve tried to follow, basically, the guidance that the city has already put out for their long-term planning,” Hagerman said. “Essentially, the goal is to make Springfield a better place in the long term.”
Hagerman explained that the project is designed on two scales, an urban scale that relates to the larger city of Springfield, and a neighborhood scale that matches the look of University Heights.
“People want to live in walkable areas where they can go and eat, shop, play and even go to work,” Marty Duda said.
The Heights would attract business from its tenants, from locals in University Heights, from neighboring hospitals and businesses, and from the entire half million people who live in the Springfield metro area, Hagerman said.
“Obviously, when you’ve got so much urban stuff along so much neighborhood stuff, you’ve got a little tension there,” Hagerman said, chuckling along with the neighbors who laughed at his remark. “And so, one of the things we want to do is try to resolve the tension between those two things.”
While the developers haven’t specified exactly what businesses would go into the commercial spaces, they published a list of “Nos” in a handout that circulated among University Heights residents. The list includes pledges not to have cannabis or vape businesses, payday loan stores, massage parlors, clubs or bars, liquor stores, adult-based businesses like lingerie stores, auto repair garages and gas stations. It also pledged that any retail shops would not operate after 10 p.m.
Uncertainties abound
The meeting at the DoubleTree was not governmental, but meant to be informative. The Springfield Planning and Zoning Commission could take up the BK&M proposal in December, and a City Council vote would follow in December or January.
“There is no guarantee that we’re going to get this rezoned; we took a risk,” Ralph Duda said.
There is also no guarantee for any potential restaurant, retail or office tenants, who would rent spaces through a third-party property manager. Duda said it is too early in the process to talk about specific tenants, but that BK&M’s team would be willing to listen to University Heights residents about what type of businesses they might like to see rent space at the Heights.
As for the people who would occupy the 50 loft apartments, Duda and Hagerman both made references to the idea that some of them would be employees at Mercy hospital. It’s probably not safe for them to walk across the intersection of Sunshine and National to go to work.
“We’ve talked about the possibility of building a bridge,” Duda said. “We talked about a potential tunnel, but that got pretty pricey.”
BK&M said it's possible the apartments will offer a daily shuttle service to and from the Mercy campus as a perk for potential apartment renters.
And then there is the overall cost of the project, which a woman in the audience asked Ralph Duda to provide.
“I’m not going to provide that estimate at this time, thank you,” Duda said.
Traffic concerns are key for neighbors
The developers said multiple times that the intersection of National Avenue and Sunshine Street is the “second-busiest intersection in Springfield,” seeing about 70,000 cars on a typical day. The Heights would have two entrances and exits, a main driveway on Sunshine Street, and a secondary entrance and exit on University Avenue.
“Basically, National and Sunshine are going to be full of traffic forever, and that’s kind of the plan, so adding traffic to National and Sunshine isn’t really a big deal” Hagerman said. “Traffic into the neighborhood is the bigger thing.”
To reduce the likelihood of drivers cutting through residential streets to access the Heights and avoid major streets, the developers propose for University Avenue to be closed off, creating a right turn-in and right turn-out only access for University Avenue onto National Avenue, and sending all neighborhood traffic west.
The street decisions would ultimately rest with the Springfield City Council.
“Our goal is to vacate the street,” Ralph Duda said. “Ultimately, the city is going to be that judge.”
Chain of events and expletives
BK&M held a public meeting at Messiah Lutheran Church on Aug. 18, a meeting which devolved to the point Duda terminated it after someone in attendance directed a vulgar expression at Duda’s wife. The same woman allegedly doubled down on her obscene language toward Duda’s family and told his father to “(expletive)-off.”
“We are not going to work with people who are obscene, insulting and derogatory,” Duda told Daily Citizen columnist Steve Pokin after the meeting.
University Heights Neighborhood Association President Jan Peterson later apologized to Duda.
In September, BK&M applied for demolition permits from the Springfield Department of Building Development Services. The house was boarded up on Sept. 14. On Oct. 4, the white colonial house at the corner of National Avenue and Sunshine Street met its demise at the hands of the heavy equipment operators hired to raze the house.
BK&M and the neighbors of University Heights entered the public debate theater again Oct. 24, this time in a dark tent on the property at 1755 South National Avenue. Twenty-three people spoke at the meeting, which attorneys working for BK&M ran.
Rain pounded the roof of the tent and contributed to muddy grounds and a power failure, but the discourse pressed on with armed security guards watching over the proceedings.
1755 changed hands several times
The city of Springfield bought the property at 1755 South National on June 19, 1995. The property is recorded as Lot 12 of the University Heights subdivision.
March 17, 1997, the Springfield City Council passed a bill accepting a bid from Hartman and Company for an intersection improvement project at National Avenue and Sunshine Street. Hartman and Company had a low bid of $603,476.60.
City Council documentation from 1997 shows traffic at National and Sunshine was a concern to neighboring homeowners then, just as it is now. In the bill explanation, part of the background reads that the intersection, “is of particular concern due not only to the large through volume on each street, but to the significant turning capacity that occurs.”
In 1997, Sunshine and National were each carrying 26,000 vehicles per day through the intersection. At peak traffic times, 500 vehicles per hour were passing through, per lane. The intersection widening project was funded through a ¼-cent sales tax.
Greene County Assessor’s Office records show the city of Springfield owned the property until April 1, 1997. On that April Fool’s Day, the city sold the property to Robert L. Hamm and Elaine Hamm, a husband and wife. The special warranty deed is signed by then-Mayor Leland L. Gannaway.
Neighbors said ‘No’ to B&B for Mercy families
Greene County Assessor’s Office records show the property was deeded from Robert L. Hamm to Yvon L. Hamm on July 9, 2003. Yvon Hamm then sold the property to a person named Dan Baker on Aug. 24, 2005. Baker owned the property until April 3, 2009, when Mortgage Electronic Registration assumed the deed for six days, then deeded the property to the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, or Freddie Mac.
Precision Investments, run by Stephen Robert Plaster of Lebanon, Missouri, bought the property from Freddie Mac on Aug. 18, 2009.
In 2015, a woman named Kathy Penrod wanted to purchase the home and convert it into a hospitality house, offering low-cost overnight accommodations for people with a loved one in the hospital. Residents in the neighborhood opposed Penrod’s idea, and Springfield City Council denied her request for a conditional use permit in 2016.
Plaster’s Precision Investments continued to own the house until March 30, 2022, when BK&M, LLC bought it. The Warranty Deed for the 2022 transaction shows BK&M bought two tracts of land, Lot 12 of University Heights, and the east half of Lot 13.
The warranty deed from 2022 reads that the property is “subject to easements, restrictions, reservations and covenants of record, if any.”
