Kite Realty Group was ready to go ahead with re-development work at Four Corner Square earlier this year, which would bring in new business to the city as well as improve buildings for existing enterprises.

But a whole series of challenges, including the tanking economy, hit at once and everything came to a screeching halt.

Mark Jenkins, senior vice president of development for Indianapolis-based Kite, said on Friday that its project at Four Corner Square in Maple Valley looked to have some movement earlier this year.

Kite, in fact, had gotten as far as having a pre-construction meeting with Maple Valley city staff which typically means construction is imminent.

“It has been a long process to get to this point,” Jenkins said in a phone interview from Indianapolis. “We have every intention of developing this site and you pick up the paper every day and you watch the news every night and it’s easy to see what’s going on out there.”

Nearly five years after purchasing the commercial property and about two years after buying the neighboring wrecking yard — the future site for a new 60,000 square foot Johnson’s Home and Garden — Kite is just not sure when it’s going to start moving forward on the project.

That doesn’t mean the developer has any plans to abandon it.

“We have spent a lot of money,” Jenkins said. “You don’t spend the amount of money that we’ve spent and just walk away.”

At this point, Jenkins wanted to clarify that while Kite is considering recalling its construction bonds that the city requires it to take out as basically an insurance policy, the company has not yet done so.

“We’ve had conversations with the city about what would happen if we requested those bonds back,” Jenkins said. “What’s happened is when we get our permits the city makes us post bonds for the value of construction that’s tied to those permits. There is a yearly fee that you have to pay to the bonding company that keeps those bonds active.”

Jenkins explained that Kite has asked the city what would happen if the developer wanted to save the money they’re putting into bonds by recalling them until they’re ready to build.

“Then they give us our permits back and we’re back to where we were before,” Jenkins said. “Given that there are things that are going on that are outside of our control, is it the best use of our money (to pay for the bonds)?”

City officials told The Reporter last week that Kite had recalled its construction bonds for the commercial site, which it purchased in November 2004 for $10.5 million.

Now, Jenkins said, it is possible that Kite could recall those construction bonds. He said that decision is being mulled over and “it could be in 30 days we could pull back the bonds.”

So why has it taken so long for this property to be re-developed and for work to start on the neighboring site?

Jenkins said this is not the typical time line for projects Kite develops.

“A lot of it goes back to just permitting issues,” he said. “We kind of got caught in a situation, through no fault of anybody’s … there’s a lot of pieces to fit into that puzzle dealing with the subarea plan, dealing with WashDOT (Washngton Department of Transportation), dealing with the city of Maple Valley and on top of that re-locating a tenant to a new building. Unfortunately, that’s just the way the world is moving, things just take longer.”

Re-development of Four Corner Square is also a piece of the overall economic development puzzle that the city is trying to solve with its subarea plan for the southern commercial node of Maple Valley.

The Four Corners subarea plan would create a blue print for further development for that section of the city, which already has businesses, but has room for more, and planning economic growth is important to the city as it approaches residential build out and slow down in new home construction.

Work on the plan has already been delayed while Maple Valley’s community development staff deal with all the work that comes with planning for the 156-acre Summit Place, also known as the donut hole, which the council has directed them to focus on while Maple Valley tries to get the King County owned property annexed into city limits.

Another hiccup in the adoption process came when a decision on the northwest quadrant was deferred, which included Maple Valley Fire and Life Safety Station 80, the Motorplex, a handful of other businesses and the city-owned Legacy Site.

Right now there is a little breathing room on the subarea plan, Community Development Director Ty Peterson told the Reporter in June, because the development moratorium expired in February and interim regulations are in place until next February. At that point the decision will have to be made about what permanent regulations should be in place for the northwest quadrant.

Despite some speculation on Kite’s timeline for the project, Jenkins said he couldn’t provide specific target dates for start of construction at this point.

“We would like to be out there today, if things would allow us to get out there today,” he said. “Since we are a public company, we are not at liberty to discuss schedule. When we start construction, we are in a much better position to talk schedule.”

It will happen, Jenkins said, and once it does everyone in Maple Valley will know.

“We want to get this process moving as fast as possible,” he said. “We bought the property to develop it and we intend to develop it. That’s our main focus, to get this into position to develop it.”