More businesses coming to Gautier, but is something missing?

A new store is going up in Gautier’s town center — an area of the city planned to be its downtown with two streets, a traffic roundabout and a central fountain.

The new store is an AutoZone, built in the chain’s latest style, a “good fit for a town center,” Mayor Gordon Gollott said.

It is taking a prime U.S. 90 location, joining Belk, Lowe’s, a Keesler Federal Credit Union branch, a gas station and an out building in the parking lot of what used to be the Singing River Mall.

The town center was laid out several years ago in hopes that it would attract retailers and other businesses to fill it. That has been a slow process, but the failure to attract a big box or major national retailer is not a condition unique to Gautier.

“Everyone is holding their breath, waiting to see what’s going into D’Iberville,” Gollott said.

And he’s not the only one who believes that.

Scott DeLano, a real estate developer and commercial broker out of Gulfport, said big box retailers looking at the Mississippi Gulf Coast focus on U.S. 49, Interstate 10 and what’s going to happen in D’Iberville.

Right now, everyone seems to be waiting to see if the Gulf Coast Galleria — Bob Mandal’s project for the southwest corner of I-10 in D’Iberville, with its $96 million in tax incentives — becomes a reality, DeLano said.

Delano’s business is Southeast Commercial, which has worked with a number of Wal-Marts.

“D’Iberville and the projects proposed there have paralyzed many retailers,” he said. “It has promised a large retail expansion, and the Mississippi Coast is limited in the retail dollars it will generate.

“D’Iberville, it will suck up a lot of retail dollars. And if you’re not locating in D’Iberville, then you have to make sure you have a strong base of sales around you.”

Focus has shifted

He said there has been a slowdown in new building among retailers since 2009, and the focus has shifted to growing sales in the stores they already have.

In the case of Gautier, like Long Beach and other areas of the Coast, it is down the list of considered sites, he said. He said he’s seen the case made that a circle drawn around Edgewater Mall in Biloxi to indicate what area it pulls customers from, and a similar circle drawn around Mobile’s central shopping area, overlap in Gautier.

“But most important for Gautier,” he said, “we are a linear market, moving east and west, and regional retailers will locate along the I-10 corridor before the more local traffic route of U.S. 90,” where Gautier’s town center lies.

He said securing Lowe’s was definitely a coup for Gautier, and tearing down the Singing River Mall was the right thing to do.

“Gautier is a much better place today to attract investments than it was five years ago,” he said. “There was no opportunity to bring new retailers into the area as long as the mall was there, with its restrictions on building around it.

“Today, you’ve got a blank canvas, and when the investment spigots are turned back on, Gautier is very well positioned to attract those investment dollars.”

Lee Brumfield of Ocean Springs, who invested in the mall in 2003, purchased at a bargain price, hasn’t given up on redeveloping the site.

The former Singing River Mall acreage takes up the southeast quadrant of the town center.

“It’s not really so much that we can’t attract national retailers, we had 41 letters of intent at the time Wal-Mart pulled out on us,” he said. “It’s hard to get a large anchor tenant.

“The market is there. There’s no question about it. As of today, we have a lot willing to come but we need an anchor like a Costco, a Sam’s or a Wal-Mart.”

This story was originally published July 23, 2016 at 6:00 PM with the headline "More businesses coming to Gautier, but is something missing?."