Kansas City, Missouri

Late television host Ed Sullivan enjoyed touting his “really big shoe.”

Whitney Kerr Jr. is equally glad to have a really big shoe distribution center to market.

Kerr, a vice president and principal of Colliers Turley Martin Tucker in Kansas City, was selected as listing agent for the 812,700-square-footPayless ShoeSource distribution center in Topeka.

“It’s the largest building available for sale in the region,” Kerr said of the building, at 5040 N.W. U.S. Highway 24.

Listed for $11.5 million, the building comes with 151 acres, including 69 acres of vacant land for expansion, Kerr said.

During 30 years of operation before closing last month, more than 3 billion pairs of shoes were shipped from the center, according to the Topeka-based parent company, Collective Brands, Inc. The facility employed as many as 600 before Payless replaced it with distribution centers in California and Ohio.

Eager to replace those jobs, theGreater Topeka Chamber of Commerce is supporting efforts to market the building. Kerr said his efforts also should benefit from the building’s attributes and price.

“To build this could easily cost three times what we’re offering it for,” he said.

Kerr, who helped Home Depot secure a Topeka location for a new 465,000-square-foot distribution center now under construction, said logistics consultants for “big-box industrial” tenants are enamoured with Topeka’s access via Interstate 70 and other highways in the Kansas Turnpike system.

He is pitching the Payless facility to all tenants known or thought to be considering large distribution facilities in the region. That includesKellogg Co., the Battle Creek, Mich., cereal giant, which was looking for as much as 1.3 million square feet in the region before the recession hit.

“They opened a new one in Columbus, Ohio,” Kerr said of Kellogg, “and Kansas City was supposedly next on the list.”

Some users have been geared toward new, build-to-suit distribution centers, like the 1.1 million-square-foot facility being built for the Coleman Co. at Midwest Commerce Center in Gardner. But Paul Licausi, president of the company developing Midwest Commerce Center, said many big-box tenants want a building they can get into in 60 to 90 days — meaning a new spec or an existing building like the Payless facility.

Having build-to-suit sites and ready-to-occupy facilities is the best situation for the regional market, he said.

About Colliers Turley Martin Tucker

Colliers Turley Martin Tucker recently completed the consolidation of its ownership structure with Cassidy & Pinkard Colliers, Colliers Pinkard, and Colliers ABR, forming a holding company that is one of the nation's largest commercial real estate service firms.  The consolidated entity operates in all 50 states, completes more than $13 billion in worldwide transactions annually, and manages more than $30 billion in real estate.  The holding company's portfolio totals 300 million square feet under property management, 210 million square feet of space for lease, and $5 billion in capital markets transactions annually.  The Corporate Solutions division sustains more than 20,000 locations for Fortune 1,000 companies and delivers a new location "Every 80 Minutes".  Colliers is the top-ranked real estate firm on the Global Outsourcing 100 companies list, IAOP Top 100.  For more information about Colliers International, a worldwide affiliation of independently owned and operated companies, visit www.colliers.com.

Contact Information

For more information, please contact Kristin Brotherton, Marketing Manager, at (816) 412-0204 or kbrotherton@ctmt.com.

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