Clear Lake council approves development agreement for new HyVee store

CLEAR LAKE — The Clear Lake City Council Monday night approved a development agreement for HyVee to place a grocery store in the eastern portion of the community.

Embree Development Group of Georgetown Texas plans to construct a 51,000-square foot store and convenience mart with related surface parking on six-and-a-half acres of land northwest of the intersection of US Highway 18 and North 20th Street.

The development agreement includes an incremental property tax rebate agreement for ten years in a cumulative amount not to exceed $850,000, as well as a not-to-exceed $550,000 offset to be used by the developer to finance  municipal water and sanitary sewer service main extensions, service laterals for the project, and to re-route a 60-inch storm sewer pipe around the building.

City Administrator Scott Flory says a grocery store project of this magnitude is another economic development victory for the community.   “A community grocery store of this scale, this magnitude, is kind of a once in a generation type of project. Where I came from as a kid growing up, the HyVee store has probably been there 50 years, and the Fareway, a much smaller store, about 30 years. You don’t see these kinds of things happen very often in a community.”

Flory says the city worked with Embree for about a year to bring the project to Clear Lake.  “It takes some time, especially with some of the other challenges, but I think that’s really gone pretty quickly. When there are so many other communities struggling to put projects together, to be able to pull off a Marriott project and now this project, those are going to be about $20 million just in those two in capital investment, so it’s a big deal for a community like this.”

Councilman Bennett Smith says the community is building quite a track record of economic development projects.   “We’ve hit a lot of single and doubles in terms of economic development, and then when we get a project like this, it really becomes a home run for us to hit, and again I think it’s just going to catalyze further economic development along that area.”

The council in a separate action also approved a subdivision agreement for the Emerald Edge Subdivision where the store will be located. The land is owned and being developed by Sukup Ag LLC and will include seven buildable lots and one outlot that would be subdivided at a later time. It will include new roadway paving and new underground infrastructure. The developer requested the city participate in purchasing of water main and sanitary sewer main line pipe material for the subdivision, such as the city did for the Courtway Park Subdivision east of Interstate 35.