Cascades, Tyler Junior College Help Revitalize Section Of Tyler By Brian Pearson, Business Editor   |   Jan 04, 2010

When the hunt started for a Tyler site for a Rudy's Country Store & Bar-B-Q, the potential growth on the city's west side proved irresistible.

The freshly expanded Loop 323 was seen as something that could open unprecedented entrepreneurial doors, said Pete Bassett, operations director for the Lakeway-based company.

"The land was right," Bassett said. "The potential growth was there. Daytime traffic counts (were ideal)."

The hunch paid off for Rudy's, which has 27 stores spread over three states and opened its Tyler franchise in 2000.

"It's been great," Bassett said. "We really love that store, and it's doing great."

Rudy's was part of a vanguard of new businesses that followed in the wake of Loop 323 expansion from four to six lanes.

During the past decade, growth on the city's west side has been second only to the explosion along Broadway Avenue south of Loop 323.

From the affluent Cascades residential development and championship-caliber golf course to colorful strip malls with a variety of tenants, the west side has been a portrait of economic diversity.

Numerous nationwide businesses have set up shop here, including McCoy's, Hollywood Theater, Starbucks, Subway and Verizon. The bustling Super Mercado Monterrey opened two years ago.
And then there's the massive Walmart Supercenter that popped up, with Atwoods rushing in fill the box that Wal-Mart had abandoned on the other side of the loop.

Southside Bank is building a 7,700-square-foot branch near the corner of U.S. Highway 64 and the loop.

B.G. Hartley, Southside's board chairman and CEO, said it was the Walmart that helped tip the decision regarding construction of the new branch.

"We had looked at that part of town for years and years," Hartley said. "It became a prospect for us."

Tom Mullins, Tyler Economic Development Council president and CEO, said it could be only the beginning for the west side's commercial emergence.

"Traffic counts are good over there," Mullins said. "You've got a lot of available property that's cheaper per square foot than what you have on South Broadway."

He pointed to the expansion of Loop 323 from four to six lanes as the new-business dam-breaker.

"That allowed for very efficient traffic flow," Mullins said. "You've got land at a fraction of the cost, and you've got high traffic volumes.

"You've got two of the ingredients that people look at in terms of growth options."

He said frontage along South Broadway goes for between $20 to $25 a square foot for the land, compared to only $5 to $6 a square foot for Loop 323 frontage on the west side of town.

As for daily traffic, that part of the loop averages in the upper 30,000s, while the count averages in the mid-40,000s for South Broadway, he said.

"As far as growth patterns, for 50 years, it has been South Broadway," Mullins said. "Increasingly, you're seeing growth coming around the west side."

At the center of it all is a business park and Tyler Junior College's growing west campus, he added. Earlier this decade, Suddenlink opened a nearby customer-support center, which employs 600.

Mullins said he expects commercial as well as residential growth to continue on the west side.

Across the picturesque Lake Bellwood from the Cascades subdivision, there are plans for a conference center and hotel. The Lake Bellwood Master Plan is part of the city's Tyler 21 plan for growth and development.

"I think you'll see continued development at Bellwood," Mullins said.

A 2002 study that the Tyler Economic Development Council commissioned recommended the Lake Bellwood area as the best site for a special events center, according to Tyler Morning Telegraph archives.

The East Texas State Fair's master plan calls for developing a 230-acre site for the center.

"The west loop has consistently been identified as the best choice for a new events center, a 5,000- or 6,000-seat center that could attract concerts and sporting events, kind of like a mini American Airlines center in Dallas," Mullins said.

He said another growth catalyst will be the Sunnybrook Drive extension to Loop 323. Bids are expected to go in February, with construction starting in the spring.

"That's going to add great new infrastructure to that part of town and will provide a reliever route for people in the middle part city to get out to the west side," he said. "That whole area of the city will now have a direct route to get out to the west loop."

Tyler Junior College also has plans to do its part in the development derby.

"TJC has purchased 11 acres from the TEDC so they can expand the west campus," Mullins said.

"They're hoping to build infrastructure and facilities that would support different technologies that they're trying to add to their curriculum."

He said there is a small fly in the ointment in the form of one small section of the loop that remains four lanes. That section is just south of the Front Street intersection.

"Eventually they're going to have to add two lanes," he said.

However, Larry Krantz, Tyler-based spokesman for the Texas Department of Transportation, which would handle the project, said the expansion plans are on the backburner for now.

"I have no idea when we'll get funding for it," said Krantz, whose agency in recent years has been hit with staggering budget shortfalls. "It's not a lack of planning. It's a lack of funding."