Remember how we said yesterday that new homes would be replacing all of the mostly vacant retail strip in Lake Highlands Plaza? Well, it looks like we were partly wrong.
“As far as we know, we’re still there,” says My Office owner Roger Hohnstein. “We have not been told we’re going to be moving.” My Office is in the southeast corner of Lake Highlands Plaza in a mostly vacant shopping strip. The only retail buildings standing between My Office and Audelia are the vacant Washington Mutual branch and the vacant LH Floral store, from which “the florist actually left more or less in the middle of the night about a year ago after Mother’s Day,” Hohnstein says. Skillman Veterinary Hospital, which used to be located on what is now the Lake Highlands Town Center property, moved around the corner from My Office, and those are the only two remaining businesses on that side of the property.
From what Hohnstein understands, Christon Company will “tear down right up to our wall on the west.” Hohnstein and his wife, LHHS ’81 graduate Karen, bought the shop roughly a year ago from T. Hee Greetings and Gifts owners Tony Doles and David Farris. Hohnstein says they have about a year and a half left on their lease, and that the new shopping center owners “would have to relocate us within the shopping center if they wanted us to move.”
Is it feasible for My Office to move to the strip where T. Hee, Highlands Cafe, the nail salon and the doughnut shop are? Perhaps, Hohnstein says. “The doctor moved out, and an old dry cleaner space is open, and one or two small spaces that probably wouldn’t quite meet our configuration needs,” he says. “And if not there, we’ll find someplace” in the neighborhood, he says, sounding upbeat.
The development news for the shopping center is good news, Hohnstein says. Upscale residential homes “will make it more aesthetically pleasing over there,” plus bring new shoppers to the center, he says.