Big things in store for Angelo’s Grove

Big things in store for Angelo’s Grove

Developers look to the future for Marion location

news@theeveningtimes.com

Having weathered a national economic recession which stalled its progress the past few years, developers at Angelo’s’ Grove are ramping up plans for a new phase of the development which will see more hotels and restaurants, a movie theater and convention center, and several festivals and live entertainment events designed to help boost foot traffic to the existing businesses.

Developer Kenny Farrell said while the demand still remains soft for attracting big brick and mortar retail stores to smaller markets, they have more hotels calling them and are closer than they have ever been before on landing a movie theater and convention center.

“We’ve got more hotel people talking to us,” Farrell said. “And we are getting real close on the convention center.”

Angelo’s Grove is located on 160 acres fronting the I- 55 Service Road and Hwy.

64 in Marion. It is currently home to a number of chain restaurants, a Hampton Inn hotel, and small retail stores located in a mini mall.

Developers recently announced plans for a new Fairfield Inn & Suites project as well as a Best Western hotel, which together will add over 200 new hotel rooms to the development.

Farrell hosted the first in a series of three informational meetings this week to reintroduce the development and to update the status of the project and what they have planned for the near future.

The first session was an announcement of a series of eight festivals and miniconcerts to be held at Angelo’s Grove beginning in 2018.

Developers will kick things off with a Valentine’s Day event and concert in February and follow with a Spring Italian Festival in April, a School is Out mini-concert in June, an Ice Cream Independence Day Festival in July, a Back to School mini-concert in September, a Corn Maze, Pumpkin & Scarecrow Contest in October, a November mini-concert, and will conclude with a Dickens Christmas Festival in December 2018.

“We will have four big events and several miniconcerts,” Farrell said.

Farrell said the idea is to bring more people to Angelo’s Grove to complement the existing hotels and restaurants while they are working on building the movie theater and convention

center.

“What we are trying to do is grow the traffic here,” Farrell said. “The last couple of big news stories have been hotels. These projects represent about $20 million in investment by local people. As we watch the retail world freeze up because of Amazon, you’ve got to be a real destination for retail to want to go there if you are not a big city. So since the marketplace is telling us it’s hotels and restaurants, we want to do something that supports them.”

Farrell pointed to festivals such as Memphis in May Music Festival and the Crawfish Festival as examples of events which bring in lots of foot traffic.

“That one day crawfish festival in Memphis attracts 40,000 people,” Farrell said. “So if we can bring in 10,000 to 50,000 people eight times a year, what does that do for the restaurants and hotels there?

What does it do to get ready to develop a destination convention center? It is the interim step.”

Farrell said they are probably at least three years away from building a convention center and are looking for a major corporate sponsor for the project. “So we are looking at things that can support the restaurants and hotels and that’s why we came up with an annual schedule of festivals,” Farrell said.

The next update on Angelo’s Grove is scheduled for today at the Hampton Inn at noon.

“Part Two will reveal the new configuration for the town square,” Farrell said.

“And Part Three will be a more detailed description of the convention center, which has gotten bigger, and the financing structure which will not require as much public money.”

By Mark Randall