Helping small business get bigger

Published 1:00 pm Wednesday, December 27, 2006

A new business park is keeping jobs on the island, the owner says.

It’s not a Walmart.

But with 11 buildings, 350 parking spaces and some 100,000 square feet of space, Sportsman Park Business Complex is, by any measure, mighty big.

That’s especially true on boutique-y Bainbridge, where the introduction of smaller spreads has in the past tripped the volatile sensors of the island’s “character” alarm.

“I’m just building what people want,” said Doug Nelson, who began work at the 7.5-acre site across from Sakai Elementary School three years ago. “I couldn’t believe how much demand there was once we got going.”

For Nelson and the businesses already entrenched at the complex, the going has been good.

All six of the buildings taking shape at the property are either occupied or pre-leased. Future tenants will include technology companies and several medical offices.

Because of zoning, the complex will house no retail space.

Reviews from the first tenants – among them New Motion Physical Therapy and the newly launched Storyville Coffee Company – are glowing.

Space, they say, is abundant. Absent are the parking woes that face some other local businesses. In their place are buildings filled with optimism and enthusiasm.

“We liked our old building, but parking and congestion were just too much,” said Suzy Powers, of New Motion, which until recently resided on Hildebrand Lane. “This place is great that way.”

At 7,000 square feet, New Motion’s new building is more than one-third bigger than its previous home. That, said Powers, has benefited both patients and employees.

And the clinic is still trying to decide how best to use a 1,600-square-foot space on the building’s top floor.

“Having more room is vital to our growth,” she said. “And people seem to love it here.”

Love was hardly the word Nelson would have attached to the project in its infancy. It was originally going to be a useful, but unexciting venture – a mini-storage facility with simple buildings.

But as Nelson gauged the market, he found there were a number of cramped businesses looking for the room that would allow them to expand. He began looking at ways to spice up the buildings without completely scrapping the original template.

Through his discussions with potential tenants came the idea for the “vanilla shells” that now dot the property and make uniform the exteriors of buildings whose innards soon will be teeming with a diversity of commerce.

Business owners lease a building or portions therein and craft their own interiors, at costs that Nelson said generally range from $200,000 to $400,000.

“It gives them the freedom to design the space they want,” he said of the arrangement. “And it gives me some security knowing that they believe in what they’re doing and are investing in their business because they plan to be around for a long time.”

Job retention

Though modified to have more character, the buildings have retained the functionality of warehouses, with loading bays and cavernous spaces within. An open feel prevails throughout.

At Storyville Coffee Company, a large coffee lounge and meeting space overlook the roaster and its employees below. Simi­larly, at New Motion, patrons have plenty of headroom to do pilates or other exercises, thanks to the height of the ceilings.

Outside, the site aims to retain significant trees along with planting new ones, and includes two areas of open space, part of which could be built out in the future.

Having recently toured the project, Bainbridge Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Kevin Dwyer offered his support by touting Sportsman Park’s economic benefit to the community.

He lauded the scale and size of the buildings, and said similar development elsewhere on the island would be a step forward.

“We’re lucky to have a lot of entrepeneurs living here already,” Dwyer said. “There doesn’t really need to be a big sales job. If people hear about these places, they will be successful.”

Nelson said Sportsman Park is in some cases keeping island businesses from migrating off island, citing one technology company that was considering moving – with its 40 employees – elsewhere.

“There just aren’t that many available buildings on Bainbridge that can accommodate that many employees,” he said. “It’s important to keep those jobs here.”

Other large companies, like Storyville and a European technology company, are building new homes there that might not otherwise have been possible.

Even after altering his plans, Nelson is attracting some unexpected tenants. Looking to build a new youth center for nearby Island Church, Leighton Harder and Al Doyle spent some time perusing the site last week.

“It’s close by,” Harder said. “And the size would allow us to include the things we want to include.”

The center would likely offer basketball courts and a half-pipe, in addition to providing for youth groups the type of place the church couldn’t build on site.

For work or play, Nelson is just happy people are snatching the spaces up.

“There are a lot of businesses in the community that are out of room,” he said. “This place will allow some of them to remain on the island, which is a great thing for the local economy.”