STARKVILLE — If you want to know what’s happening with the long-awaited, much-delayed Cotton Mills project, just follow the food.
Construction on the Chick-fil-A restaurant at the corner of Veterans Memorial Drive and Spring Street should be complete in time for a late June grand opening. By then, plans for two more unnamed, national chain restaurants on the same six-acre parcel will have started, said Mark Nicholas the developer of the project.
“We are in negotiations with two major national restaurant chains,” Nicholas said Thursday. “I would say we will have something solidified within the next 30 days.”
The Chick-fil-A will be located south of a Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant on land previously occupied by a bank, then a Burger King restaurant.
“All of my property runs into that land, so this is really an extension of that bigger project in a sense,” Nicholas, a partner in Starkville’s Cotton Mills development project, said of Cotton Mills.
Nicholas said financing that disappeared during the economic crash of 2008 has been replaced, and efforts to get the $100-million Cotton Mills project moving are gaining momentum.
“I can’t tell you how excited I am to be a part of the whole project,” said Nicholas, a Jackson native and Mississippi State University alumnus. “It will really create a front door to the university and with the retail, the restaurants, hotel and conference center, it’s going to be a gateway between the city of Starkville and the university. This is easily the biggest project I’ve ever been involved with. We’ve got most of the financing wrapped up and that’s after working on it non-stop for the past two years.”
For now, the focus is on developing the remainder of the six-acre property.
“If we do reach a deal within 30 days, we should be able to start construction on the other restaurants within 90 days,” said Nicholas, who has owned the parcel for seven years. “If all goes well, all three restaurants will be open early in 2013.”
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