Shawnee Marketplace, an $18 million dollar retail development currently under construction on the southwest corner of Interstate 40 and Kickapoo Street, is only 6-7 miles from the entrance to American Country Estates! How exciting for our future homeowners, and for Shawnee!

Shawnee Marketplace will generate $35 million annually in retail sales in Shawnee, and create about 500 new retail jobs in the first five years, according to a study commissioned by the Shawnee Economic Development Foundation. The study estimated the development will generate an estimated $900,000 in new, annual sales tax revenue for Shawnee.

Plans for the project show national retailers such as Hobby Lobby, PetSmart, Ulta and TJ Maxx as tenants in the new development. Though a developer had eyed the plot for a retail development in 2008, the national economy tanked, causing new construction to come to a halt. Once the economy started to come back, Dallas-based retail developers Hunt Brothers came looking.  Shawnee city officials, Pottawatomie County officials, and the Commissioners of the Land Office agreed to a deal for the creation of a two-phase, 400,000-square-foot retail development on 23 acres of the 640-acre site.

Construction began in May on the first, 150,000-square-foot phase of Shawnee Marketplace, and the first retailers are expected to open in spring 2015.