Project officials will discuss possible tenants at former Tastykake site this week

The name’s slightly different, but plans for a new mixed-use retail center at the former Tastykake site in Nicetown are intact and moving ahead.

It’s now called Bakers Center — a slight alteration from the original Bakers Square project that broke ground in March — but will still feature a Brown’s ShopRite, a shopping center and professional offices on a 30-acre site, at Fox and Roberts streets and Hunting Park Avenue.

 

Later this week, project officials will hold a public meeting to update the community on where the plan stands and field questions about what comes next, said Dennis Lee, a consultant working on Bakers Center with Metro Development Corp. and leasing agent US Realty.

Topics will include a project update, discussion of possible tenants, and a construction update. Lee said the project was able to secure $12 million in state funding through Sen. Vincent Hughes’ office, and a general contractor would be named soon, hopefully by late November.

“By March, we will start breaking ground,” Lee said, with completion by 2013. “We’re strongly committed to getting local businesses in here.”

No major announcements will be made at the meeting, Lee said, but it is part of the developer’s ongoing effort to include the community in the process. Lee’s list of community contacts for Bakers Center includes civic groups in East Falls, Nicetown, Tioga, and Ridge-Allegheny-Hunting Park, among others.

Major components of Bakers Center include the 71,000 square foot ShopRite, and American Heritage Credit Union, a medical clinic, social services offices, “junior-box” and smaller, independent retailers and eateries. Lee would not disclose names of potential tenants, but said the community would have input in the process.

If you go: The public meeting will take place at 6 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 27, at the Temple University Health Center, 2450 W. Hunting Park Ave.

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Contact Amy Z. Quinn at azquinn@planphilly.com.