Village Solutions

Creation Gardens plans major new project

Below is a reprint of the Courier Journal article on Creation Gardens.

The owners of Creation Gardens, a distributor of produce to restaurants and the food-service industry, plans to move to a new site and expand their business.

Ron and Mollie Turnier have signed contracts to purchase about two acres of property on the northwest corner of Market and Shelby streets, including the Neurath & Underwood Funeral Home.

They plan to build a retail and commercial distribution center, featuring a 27,000 square foot building. It would include a 17,000-square-foot, regional fresh-food and produce distribution center primarily for commercial customers and a 10,000-square-foot market open to the public.

In an interview, Ron Turnier said that he hopes to have the new Creation Gardens open in about a year. He declined to say how much he expects to spend to acquire the land, or to invest in the development. He said that the design of the project is not final.

Turnier, who is president of Creation Gardens, projected that the facility will attract over 200 chefs a week, many of whom regularly shop at his current location at 609 E. Main. The new location will include a lounge for member chefs and a resource library.

The land that the Turniers have under contract includes a large vacant lot fronting on Market owned by Service Welding & Machine Co., which will continue to operate its present site on East Main.

Rick Hill, who heads Village Solutions Co., a real-estate strategies and consulting firm working with the Turniers, said the Neurath & Underwood Funeral Home and its carriage house will be renovated and redeveloped with new uses, perhaps as one or more restaurants or other food-related businesses.

The staff of the funeral home referred questions to owner John Bruington. He said in a phone interview that he isn’t sure whether the funeral home will close, or relocate. He said it opened in 1904; he bought it in 2001.

The Turniers, who bought Creation Gardens in 1997, said the Main Street property is targeted for acquisition by the state in connection with the Ohio River Bridges Project and the planned reconstruction of Spaghetti Junction.

The Creation Gardens plans are being unveiled in conjunction with the NuLu Festival this weekend, which uses a new name being promoted by some developers for the area generally bounded by Jefferson, Washington and Campbell streets and I-65.

Tags: Butchertown, creation gardens, Louisville, market, Retail, urban district

This entry was posted on Friday, September 25th, 2009 at 8:00 am and is filed under Real Estate, Real Estate Development, Retail, Shopping Centers, Specialty Retail. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.