No Leash Needed is deemed right fit for long-vacant Ellisville location

Just as a certain dog may be a perfect match for its master, a specific commercial location could be likewise for a certain business. That’s pretty much why No Leash Needed will soon move into its new location at 15599 Manchester Road.

At the March 16 Ellisville City Council meeting, National Veterinary Associates, Inc. (NVA) was unanimously granted a conditional use permit for No Leash Needed. The business will operate a combination pet day care, pet training and boarding kennel facility. Unlike other No Leash Needed locations, the Ellisville one will not be providing veterinary care.

The site was not an easy one to fill as Bill Barnes, commercial real estate broker with NAI DESCO, explained.

“I was hired by the property owner, Mr. Denny Boyd (of the Bedroom Store), to list the property for lease,” Barnes said, noting that he listed the property in April 2019 and it was previously listed by another company. The property is just under 12,000 square feet. 

“It’s well located but it’s been challenging to find a tenant,” Barnes said. “A couple reasons why: Once you get above 4,000 to 6000 square feet, your prospect list goes down quite a bit. Second, the property is not anchored by a traffic generator such as a grocery store, a Costco or Walmart. I’ve been a retail broker for 16 years and when we cold called trying to find retailers to locate at the property, they were very interested in the location and being in Ellisville, but they really want to be in an anchored center. So, we’ve had none that really fit the bill.”

The future site of No Leash Needed in Ellisville (Source: Loopnet.com)

Now, however, NVA is going to invest between $1.6 and $1.7 million in the Ellisville building.

“One thing about NVA that a lot of people don’t know is they’re probably one of the largest veterinary clinics that practices in the country,” Barnes said. “They’re a really established company with the resources to run a really solid business.”    

Answering questions from council member Vince McGrath (District 1), Shad Cloud, of NVA, said the site will furnish up to 66 boarding kennels. There will be anywhere from 60 to 120 dogs on the site for day care. An existing wooden fence will be replaced by a new one and trees in the area will remain as a buffer and extra sound barrier for neighbors to the north in compliance with recommendations of the landscaping plan. Those sound barriers will be for times a handful of dogs are outside.

“The dogs will not be able to go in and out by themselves,” Cloud said. “That would be controlled by the staff. There’s one or two staff members with the dogs at all times.” 

Small groups of dogs are normally rotated in and out and divided by breed size. The facility will have several indoor yards, which helps to manage outdoor yard use.

The last staff person leaves around 10:30 or 11 p.m. and the earliest returns around 6 a.m., Cloud said. However, the dogs are typically inside so any sound would be muted in the case that one or several are howling. Open hours are 7 a.m.-7 p.m. so the last time you’ll see a dog outside would be between 7:30 and 8 p.m.; anything that happens after that would be in one of the indoor yards.

Cloud also noted that both animals and humans are evaluated and well trained. 

“We focus a lot of energy of on the evaluation of dogs to make sure we’re bringing in ones that work well with the population we have,” he said. “We have dogs coming in that can be controlled and can be in that environment. But we also do a lot of training with our staff, and we focus our energy on dog control. So, you don’t hear the amount of barking as you do at a franchise type location or a dog resort because staff members are always there and they’re well trained to control dogs. We want to be friendly and courteous neighbors to everyone.”

Bill 3740 passed unanimously to become Ordinance 3509 after an amendment from council member Dan Duffy (District 3) to amend the petition such that dog waste runoff be handled by best practices as defined by City Administrator Bill Schwer. Solid waste will be collected at all times and disposed of at the end of every day.

XGolf is on the approach for a new location in Ellisville

 XGolf Indoor Golf Simulator may be on par to tee off in Ellisville by Labor Day weekend. 

A conditional use permit (CUP) granted by the Ellisville City Council on March 16 would allow XGolf to operate a retail entertainment establishment complete with liquor and food sales at 15382 Manchester Road.

Owner Drew Weckbach described XGolf as an “up-and-coming franchise model that specializes in the indoor golf simulator business.” He added that most of the company’s roughly 50 locations are in northern U.S. cities, but the concept has gradually migrated to the Midwest. He said he hopes to approach 100 sites nationwide by the end of 2022. That includes a projected early September timeline for Ellisville so that people can enjoy indoor golf during the ensuing cooler weather months.

Inside an XGolf Indoor Golf Simulator (Source: XGolf)

“It’s a little bit of a different model from the traditional golf simulator model you’ve seen,” Weckbach said. “This is on the high-end, (an) exclusive version that operates with cameras and spin rates instead of what you may be aware of on your phone or a trackman that uses GPS, or an outdoor simulator, or if you’re just hitting into a mattress in your garage.”

In response to a question from Mayor Mike Roemerman, Weckbach said the Ellisville XGolf location would feature a high-end combination of bottled beer and other bar beverages. The food choices offered would be simple, traditional St. Louis-style items like toasted ravioli and mozzarella cheese sticks hot out of a convection oven. The retail store will offer golf-related ƒitems, including some basic Callaway items. That said, Weckbach said his stores currently receive just 2% to 7% of their revenue from merchandising.

Weckbach was far more interested in talking about the shared experiences that can be had by his customers.

“There are three main ways people will be able to use the simulators,” he said. “It could be a traditional Saturday morning where you grab a couple of your buddies and play a round of golf. We (also) will have league nights perhaps on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights for couples, or competitive (leagues for) males or females, or recreation (leagues for) males. And then we will have lessons. The fourth one is developing and one of the keys to the franchise in the model – national tournaments. 

“Something you can’t really do right now is have 5,000 people on the same course with the same conditions, same grass height at the same time on a Saturday and see who the real best golfer in America is, holding everything constant.”

Weckbach said the XGolf concept also works well for corporate parties. 

“If you guys have ever done a golf scramble, you see the same three people for three hours. On an indoor golf scramble for a charity event you can bop around and see all the people throughout the Saturday.  You’re not just relegated to the three people in your party.”

The city’s public hearing on the CUP uncovered a good amount of Weckbach’s contentions regarding some of the cross accesses with XGolf, the city and other landlords on the lot, and also sidewalk width details which were impossible to achieve due to electric poles being right there on the edge of sidewalk parts. Weckbach also was against proposed bike racks at the site, which he said would get in the way of golfers dropping off heavy bags of golf clubs curbside prior to finding parking spaces.

However, those items ultimately were amended or waived and the CUP passed unanimously.

“I’m very impressed with your presentation,” Roemerman told Weckbach. “I’m very excited with what you’re doing, and I can’t wait to play golf in the winter and maybe once in a while in the summer, too, indoors.”