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| 7/28/2010 10:43:00 AM | Gryphon building nearing completion
Building owners say end of 'long road' is fulfilling
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by Chris Roberts - Editor
Nearly 50 percent of the Gryphon building will be filled with tenants when it opens for business this fall.
For building owner Paul Whitehill, that fact is a welcome relief after such a long journey. Whitehill, who owns Joplin's Images In Tile manufacturing business, purchased the former Bagcraft building at 1027 S. Main Street in December 2007 for approximately $3 million. Prior to that the building sat in Joplin blighted district as one of the town's most visible eyesores. It was his dream at the time to develop the building into a cultural center for the tri-state area, but over the project's nearly three years of development it has evolved into a business center with high-end, class A space.
"It's been a long, long road," Whitehill said. "It's been very fulfilling to see it all come together, especially since we started the project before the economic downturn and had to ride that out. What once looked like an old broken down warehouse is now something people are excited about. It's fulfilling to have tenants who are so excited to move in. People are getting it now."
One of the new tenants in the building will be Sunrise Media, which has signed a lease for about a third of the available space on the building's third floor.
"Our team is very excited to be moving into the Gryphon Building," said Doug Hunt, owner of Sunrise Media. "This move will allow us to better serve our clients with expanded production facilities, a new large studio for HD video and audio production, as well as having fiber optic access to the web. Our reputation as a marketing and public relations firm has always been cutting edge, so moving into a state-of-the-art 'green' cutting edge facility is a perfect fit for us that will benefit our clients."
The third floor will also be home to a number of small businesses in the building's business development center, in which tenants can lease space from 112- to 304-square feet for anywhere from $200 to $550 per month. Toby Teeter, one of the partners of Gryphon Building LLC, said the plan for a business development center came into being about a year ago when the management team realized that many of the calls they were getting from potential tenants was for smaller amounts of space.
"These are executive suites that come with a shared conference room, reception area and break room," Teeter said. "This will be the most efficient way for one-, two- and three-person small businesses to move into Joplin's premiere office building."
Teeter, who recently started a business called Localbase, will move his company's operations into the Gryphon, as well. According to Pete Ramsour, building and project manager, there are currently eight large businesses and seven smaller businesses with signed lease agreements planning to move in between Sept. 1 and Nov. 1. Ramsour said seven of those eight larger businesses are expanding and adding new jobs by moving into the Gryphon.
"That tells you that these are all successful businesses here," Ramsour said. "(The project) has certainly evolved into a number of different things. It's always your goal to get on first base and eventually make it all the way around to home. Well, we've made it to first base and we're headed to second."
Part of that continued work, Ramsour said, includes building the remaining office space to the specifics of the tenants. There is also some exterior work to be done, including completion of an outdoor courtyard on the back of the building where Ramsour said they hope to be able to hold some small events. Eventually Ramsour said there will be a restaurant on the first floor that would sit adjacent to the courtyard, though he's doubtful a restaurant will sign a lease before the beginning of 2011.
"We've promised our tenants that we'll have a quarterly after hours," Ramsour said. "The courtyard out back will allow us to maybe have some events - we don't want to just be an 8-to-5, Monday-through-Friday business building. We want it to be a destination."
Ramsour said many of the tenants are already working together and feeding off of one another as they prepare to move into the new building. He said the synergy among the companies has been "amazing."
For Whitehill, who's dream was to bring a community together under one roof, that's music to his ears.
"It's incredible to be part of the history of Joplin and to be able to bring some of that history back," Whitehill said. "I never thought in a thousand years that I'd be part of something like this."
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