Developer plans business center.

Byline: Jack Moran The Register-Guard

SPRINGFIELD - City slickers with a hankering for coffee and a fresh doughnut soon may be able to mosey down to the corner of Jasper Road and South 42nd Street to round up what they need.

There, Eugene real estate agent Max Jordan is developing the first phase of his Jasper Junction commercial center, which is planned to have an Old West theme - complete with wood plank sidewalks and fascia shopfront signs.

"The idea is to make people feel like they're walking through an old Western town," Jordan said.

Settlements in the Old West didn't have Starbucks. But Jordan is hopeful that Jasper Junction will. He said he has approached the Seattle-based coffee chain about opening a new shop in his development.

"If we can't work with (Starbucks), it will be an independent coffee shop that goes there," Jordan said, without naming any other potential tenants.

Jordan expects that a shop will open by January.

Plans call for the coffee shop to share an existing 4,000-square-foot building with a bakery. The long-vacant - and frequently vandalized - building on the west side of South 42nd Street will be remodeled during the next few months.

Jordan said he has not secured a tenant for the bakery portion of the building.

The development is planned for a 6-acre parcel that now includes only the one vacant building and a home occupied by renters. Jordan said the house eventually will be demolished to make room for future retail and office tenants he hopes to attract to the site.

In the past several weeks, work crews have been clearing the site in advance of spreading concrete and pavement.

City planners last fall approved a site plan for the property that includes remodeling the existing building and constructing two new roads, one of which will empty onto South 42nd Street and the other onto Jasper Road.

Jordan's company, Jasper Junction LLC, purchased the property in 2005 for $780,000, according to Lane County property records.

Jordan intends ultimately to construct four new buildings on the site.

One would house a small strip mall, another a restaurant.

The other two are planned to be three-story office buildings.

Jordan would not venture a guess as to when the development would be completed, saying it all depends on how soon he can secure tenants.

Construction of new homes in the area - most notably in the 100-lot Filbert Meadows subdivision off Jasper Road - prompted Jordan to purchase and develop plans for the Jasper Junction property.

"The residential growth in that area warrants having a little commercial center there," Jordan said.

City officials agree and say they are pleased that the property is being redeveloped.

The existing building that is now planned to include the coffee shop and bakery has been considered an eyesore for years, they said.

The building was built more than 20 years ago by a previous owner but never opened for business.

Jasper Junction "will be an improvement to that area," said John Tamulonis, the city's community development manager.

"It's a burgeoning area, and we would like to see something like that there so people (who live nearby) don't have to travel so far" to shop.