Kirby Gate East shopping center to be auctioned online
The Kirby Gate East shopping center, which never quite recovered from the Great Recession, will be auctioned online Monday through Wednesday.
The starting bid will be $650,000 for the center that comprises three, one-story buildings totaling 72,480 square feet on 7.4 acres at 6635 Quince Road.
Originally called Willow Grove Shopping Center, the site is just southeast of Quince and Kirby and near Tennessee 385.
An appraisal completed for the owners last fall values the property at $4.2 million. The Shelby County Assessor’s Office appraises the property for tax purposes at $2.445 million.
The winning bidder “might want to change the asthetics of the buildings with a color scheme and maybe add a little landscaping to give it some color,” said Walter D. Wills III, whose family bought the 29-year-old shopping center about 20 years ago.
“It really has upscale potential to it because of its location in East Memphis in the 38119 ZIP code,” said Wills, managing partner for his family’s Willow Grove LLC.
Occupancy is now 57 percent after reaching a high of about 90 percent in years past, Wills said.
At the time of the fall appraisal completed by CBRE, 16 tenants occupied 40,181 square feet. Eight spaces totaling 32,229 square feet remained vacant.
In its heyday, Kirby Gate East housed tenants like T.J. Mulligan’s, InterContinental Hotels Group offices, a physical therapy office and a Wells Fargo loan office.
A longtime tenant still operating there is Formosa Chinese Restaurant. Other tenants include a Curves fitness center, Blues City Thrift, a barber shop, several staffing agencies, a prosthetics business, hair salon, dress shop and insurance agency.
A grass outparcel of about seven-tenths of an acre fronts Quince in the middle of the parking lot.
Bidding on Kirby Gate East shopping center
The bidding occurs on the Ten-X Commercial website; visit ten-x.com/commercial and search for “Memphis” or “Quince” for more information about the auction.
Wills used a Ten-X Commercial online auction two years ago to sell another family property, the Walnut Grove Gardens office park with six buildings and nearly 15 acres.