Lenexa native Jon Youness, a developer now based in North Dakota, is building a small office and warehouse space on some family-owned property that he hopes to lease out to a handful of small business tenants in the near future.
Located just east of West 85th Street and Quivira Road, the 85th Street Shops — as Youness has dubbed the project — will include an 8,700-square-foot industrial building with room for four business tenants.
Youness, a partner at Eagle Ridge Development in Fargo, N.D., said he and his team are looking forward to building on the vacant site roughly a mile away from where he grew up.
“From a personal standpoint, it’s a piece of property that I’ve been familiar with for the last couple of decades,” Youness said, “so it’s exciting to see it from back when I was responsible for mowing it to now putting together a project that we hope to be successful on.”
This project marks a first in the Kansas City metro area for Eagle Ridge Development.
A property in the family
Youness’ family has owned the property for a couple of decades.
The roughly one-acre vacant site has been most recently used as a vegetable garden by a local church. The church plans to move the garden to a nearby lot to make way for the development.
The Lenexa Planning Commission on Monday voted 8-0 to approve a preliminary plan. The project will continue through the city process until the city considers a final project plan. Youness said they hope to break ground sometime this fall and complete it in summer 2022.
A place for small businesses to grow
Each of the four units will have its own bay, bathroom and office space, with the flexibility to customize and add a second floor as needed.
Kansas City metro-based Renaissance Infrastructure Consulting is the civil engineer on the project.
“Given its central location, ease of access to pretty much anywhere in the city, we felt like it’d be a good spot for small businesses to have their own location generally geared towards people that are maybe moving their business out of their house and looking for a physical address,” Youness said.
85th Street Shops has no tenants at this time, but the project owners are looking for small sub-contractors or someone looking to move out of their home or garage and expand into a professional office space.
For leasing information, contact Liz Zimmerman at liz.zimmerman@reecenichols.com.
