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the town center apart from Thornwood and TraVure is shops and restaurants. A conceptual site plan also shows a movie theater, dog park, 300 luxury apartments, 130-room hotel, 56,400 square feet of office space and parking structures.

If the site develops as many anticipate, it should mesh seamlessly with Saddle Creek, creating a 400,000-squarefoot concentration of upscale shopping in the heart of Germantown. That’s about half the size of Carriage Crossing in Collierville, but still a significant regional shopping destination.

“It’s effectively an extension of Saddle Creek,” said Danny Buring, managing partner in the Memphis office of The Shopping Center Group. “It’s to everybody’s benefit to have these projects feel like one. All the wealth on the east side of Shelby County comes to Saddle Creek to shop here.”

Elkington is working to fill the retail and restaurant spaces. “We have preleased almost half of the whole project. That’s quite a statement,” he said.

Elkington wouldn’t name names of tenants, but “when we announce this, I think people will be shocked,” he said.

They’ll be new to the Memphis market and compatible with Saddle Creek. “It’s really what people have asked for: ‘Can’t you get tenants we don’t have in our market?’” Elkington said.

Germantown will subject the plan to its Smart Growth planning guidelines, which are designed to preserve the city’s predominantly residential character, encourage connections among developments and diversify the tax base beyond single-family residential.

Buring said the town center is part of a trend of mixed-use projects filling gaps in long-established communities nationwide.

“The national trend is to do that, whether it’s in Midtown or Germantown. Instead of TraVure being pure office, they’ve got a hotel and limited retail. Thornwood has residential, a hotel and retail. The Smart Growth policy is forcing these projects to be mixed use. It’s great for the city, and it’s hopefully great for the developers.”

Germantown officials said it’s far too early to tell what impact the town center could have on city finances. City Administrator Patrick Lawton believes the impact will be major, “when you look at that level or private investment coming in to the community and how it will impact our (lodging) occupancy tax, our sales tax revenue.”

Lawton said, “I don’t know what’s going to go in there, but my understanding is it will be things like the Apple store that are destinations in nature. At the end of the day, it means we can keep our property tax rate stable, not rely totally on property tax but look to see what the occupancy and sales taxes can provide.”

Taylor said preliminary analysis shows the project would result in a direct and indirect sales tax increase of more than $100 million over 30 years, as well as 800 direct and indirect jobs.

The economic impact study will be required as part of Carter’s planned application for Germantown’s first tax-increment financing (TIF) district. A TIF would divert a portion of the sales tax increase into project infrastructure including parking structures.

The town center’s retail would represent 13 percent of Germantown’s total retail space, which stood at just below 2 million square feet in the October-December quarter of 2016, CBRE said.

Cameron Ross, economic and community development director, believes geography is on Germantown’s side.

“With all these projects, it’s not just Germantown benefiting from them. They’re regional attractions, and we look forward to the entire region benefiting.”

Get Wayne Risher at 901-529-2874 or wayne.risher@commercialappeal.com.