New shopping center coming to Starkville in Summer 2022
Starkville has grown a lot over the past couple of years, and there is no sign of it stopping anytime soon.
It has been discussed for months, and now there is a new shopping center coming to Starkville at the long-time home of Garan Manufacturing on Highway 12.
Castle Properties owner Mark Castleberry is describing the new area as a “power center,” which will be anchored by an international grocery store and well-known retailers, such well-known retailers like Aldi and Marshalls.
When it is all said and done, Castleberry is optimistic that this new power center under the working name “Triangle Crossing” will help keep local customer dollars in Starkville.
“Between COVID and the ‘Amazoning’ of retail, there’s been a lot of change with those two factors. Who are the winners and who are the
losers? The retailers that we’ve selected and who have selected us have been very successful in an AMAZON-COVID environment,” said Castleberry. “These retailers have figured out offering an online presence in addition to the brickand-mortar presence. Brick-and-mortar is competing with online sites like Amazon, so these retailers have figured out how to compete with that successfully. The advantage for the community is that you can get it immediately, your sales tax is occurring in Starkville, and you also get that socialization experience of going shopping. I think it will offer a great deal to the community.”
When asked what time frame his company expects to start physical work on the new power center, Castleberry laid out a timeline.
“We will start the demolition of the old Garan building at the beginning of September of this year, and we are looking for a completion date sometime within the summer of 2022,” said Castleberry.
Castleberry expressed his gratitude to the City of Starkville and Oktibbeha County for their incentives they put in for this project, otherwise it would not happen.
“The incentives were absolutely necessary, and there are not many retail projects like this moving forward. Starkville is getting one of the few projects moving forward at this time due to the incentives and support from Mayor Lynn Spruill, the Board of Aldermen, and the Oktibbeha County Board of Supervisors,” said Castleberry.
For some rough numbers, the $200 million investment in the 92,000 square-foot space will create about 220 jobs and should create about $35 million in annual sales.