Valley River Center in Eugene is teeing up for a hole-in-one with a deal to snag sports retailer Dick’s Sporting Goods. Dick’s is considering opening a Dick’s House of Sport store, a gargantuan sports-products-and-services emporium, at VRC, architectural and other planning records reviewed by Eugene Weekly show. It would be Oregon’s first Dick’s House of Sport and would be an anchor business for VRC.

The two-story, roughly 150,000-square-foot Dick’s building would be constructed on what is now VRC’s main-entrance outdoor plaza and part of the front parking lot, the plans show.

House of Sport stores are over-the-top venues that Dick’s began rolling out five years ago. Dick’s, America’s largest sports retailer, calls them “experiential sports retail destinations.”

Macerich, the California-based owner of VRC, is reviewing construction plans with city of Eugene planning staff. The company hasn’t put in for building permits yet.

VRC and Dick’s representatives did not respond immediately to emails from Eugene Weekly.

Publicly traded Pennsylvania-based Dick’s has 889 stores nationwide, including 22 House of Sport stores. Dick’s is a long-time retailer in Eugene. Since 2008, Dick’s has had a standard 55,000-square-foot single-story Dick’s Sporting Goods store in the Delta Oaks shopping center off Green Acres Road. If the VRC location is built, Dick’s would likely vacate the Green Acres spot, which it leases.

With its House of Sport brand, Dick’s is trying to overwhelm sports-retailing rivals. A House of Sport typically features rock climbing walls, golf simulators, multi-sport cages for trying out baseball, softball and soccer, as well as lacrosse gear and services from baseball glove steaming to bicycle repair. And they have literally acres of sports products, the company says in its financial filings.

At VRC, the building footprint would be two acres, from the main entrance of the mall to within about 30 feet of the standalone Texas Roadhouse restaurant. Half an acre of the footprint would be a covered “sports field,” the plans show. The rest would be for the two-story store.

Dick’s spends about $20 million on products, facility features and other costs to open a House of Sport store, news reports say. The stores are “commanding unprecedented landlord interest, positioning us to be an anchor in some of the most successful retail centers in the country,” Dick’s boasts in its filings. 

In all likelihood, Macerich would construct and own the building and lease it to Dick’s. Dick’s almost exclusively leases retail space, the company says in its filings.

Dick’s leases the Delta Oaks spot from California-based owner Realty Income, which has 15,000 properties in the U.S. and Europe. Dick’s moved in there when the previous occupant, the G.I. Joe’s sports retail chain, went bankrupt.

Dick’s is likely synchronizing construction of the VRC store with the expiration of its Delta Oaks lease. Dick’s says most of its Dick’s Sporting Goods stores have leases that expire in the next five years, giving Dick’s the chance to shut or move them.

The company is profitable: For the fiscal year that ended last February, it reported a $1.2 billion profit on $13.4 billion in sales.

Update on PeaceHealth real estate

Multi-family housing developers are taking an interest in the newly marketed 51-acre parcel immediately north of PeaceHealth’s RiverBend hospital in Springfield.

Owned by PeaceHealth, the 51 acres are zoned for medium-density housing up to three stories high.

How much PeaceHealth is hoping to sell the tract for is unclear.

A PeaceHeath spokesman said the hospital chain had no comment on that and referred questions to the Portland office of real estate brokerage Cushman & Wakefield, which is marketing the property.

“We do not have a stated asking price,” says Mark Carnese, a Cushman executive managing director. “We do have some early interest at this point, but no agreements have been signed,” he adds in an email to EW.

The parcel is mostly empty pastureland and nestles up against the McKenzie River. Only about 35 acres can be developed. The rest is off limits due to flooding hazards.

Bricks $ Mortar is a column anchored by Christian Wihtol, who worked as an editor and writer at The Register-Guard in Eugene 1990-2018, much of the time focused on real estate, economic development and business. Reach him at Christian@EugeneWeekly.com.