Retail center to replace Cedarbrook Landscaping in Shawnee Hills
A Columbus developer is planning to build a retail center on the site of Cedarbrook Landscaping & Garden Center in Shawnee Hills.
The developer, Equity, is planning a 14,175-square-foot strip center called Shawnee Station on the site, on the north side of Glick Road just west of the Scioto River.
Equity is buying the 2.5-acre property that has been occupied by Cedarbrook for four decades.
“That corridor has an unbelievably strong demand for retail, for a niche area, and an unbelievable barrier to entry — you just can’t find land in that area, and if you can, you won’t get it rezoned for retail,” said Aaron Heath, senior vice president of retail services at the Hilliard-based Equity.
Cedarbrook Landscaping will continue, but running both the landscaping company and the garden center got to be too much, Cedarbrook owner Larry Burchfield said.
“I’m 72 years old,” Burchfield said. “It’s hard to physically do the landscape company and the garden center, and it’s very hard to compete in the big-boxstore market.”
Burchfield has run his landscape
company for 50 years and the gardening center for 40. Among gardeners, he is well-known for his inventively madcap creations at the annual Dispatch
Home & Garden show, where he won the “people's choice” award for 45 out of Cedarbrook's 47 years at the show.
Burchfield is not retiring. He instead is opening a wine shop and deli across the street in the Shawnee Square shopping center that will continue the Cedarbrook name — The Wine Snob at Cedarbrook.
Equity, based in Hilliard, plans a single-story retail center on the site that will house five or six tenants. Already committed to the center is Boston Stoker Coffee, a Dayton-based coffee chain that operates a shop on Neil Avenue.
Heath said Equity is talking with several other prospects and will reserve one end spot for a restaurant with a patio.
“We've had some boutique fitness centers and several different restaurants and food concepts express interest,” he said.
Heath said Equity plans to break ground on the center in the spring and open it in late summer or early fall. jweiker@dispatch.com @Jimweiker