R.P. Lumber sign now on front of former ShopKo building, but no official announcement has been made

QUINCY — The sign is on the front of the building. The zoning is in place. The company has owned the property for three years.

All that appears to be standing in the way of R.P. Lumber from opening a store in the former ShopKo building at 3200 Broadway is time to complete renovations in the building and an official announcement.

“We’ve seen the sign go up,” said Jason Parrott, director of planning and development for the city of Quincy. “We have been talking with the owner of the property for several years now since they purchased the property. We knew that this was a possibility. When we saw, like everybody else, the sign going up, that gave us more of a sense of knowing from our past discussions that it could be the lumber yard that he had talked about.”

R.P. Lumber has 88 locations throughout Illinois, Missouri, Wyoming, Iowa, Wisconsin and South Dakota. The company also operates two truss manufacturing facilities and an e-commerce platform offering nearly 100,000 items for sale. Company officials, however, aren’t yet promoting any plans to open a store in Quincy.

Attempts to reach State Sen. Jason Plummer, who lives in Edwardsville and serves as president of R.P. Lumber, have been unsuccessful since the sign was installed on the ShopKo building on Jan. 14. 

The company’s website has announcements in 2024 of the acquisitions of businesses in Perryville, Chillicothe, Cameron and Plattsburg in Missouri, Custer in South Dakota and Mount Carroll in Illinois. However, there is no announcement about putting a new business in Quincy.

Asked last week about plans for the Quincy site, Jaime Eads, a project manager with RLP Development, told Muddy River News, “I don’t. Not yet. If you want to follow back up in a couple of weeks, I’ll see, but I don’t have any updates for you.”

Documents filed in the Adams County Recorder of Deeds office show the sale of the former ShopKo building for $1.8 million was finalized on Dec. 16, 2021. RLP Development Company, Inc., a real estate development firm in Edwardsville, was listed as the buyer.

Robert L. Plummer founded RLP Development Company in Edwardsville in November 1988. It began as a developer of residential home sites and lots in several Illinois communities near St. Louis. It has expanded into providing improvements for entire residential subdivisions, as well as commercial offices and professional and industrial parks.

Plummer has been a successful businessman in the Metro East area of St. Louis since he abandoned a teaching career and bought a defunct lumberyard in Staunton in 1977. He turned that lumberyard into R.P. Lumber.

At the time of RLP Development’s acquisition of the Quincy property, Eads said the company had “no plans to do anything at the moment” with the 7.2-acre property.

Parrott said he has recently talked with Jason Plummer but had nothing definitive to announce. He said the building is properly zoned if it is used for indoor storage only.

“When a business has that proper zoning, it’s not necessary that they come to us and say, ‘Hey, we’re going to operate there,’” Parrott said. “A lot of times (the city will learn about the plans for a business) with the sign permit. We knew that they had been doing work there. Our inspectors had been out there, as they were doing work inside the building, and even when they were doing work inside the building.

“It doesn’t ever have to be where (business owners) have to come out and say, ‘Hey, this is what we’re going to do.’ In speaking with them, we knew that this was a good possibility because of the business that they’re in and understanding the markets and where they go. They have done a lot of acquisitions in recent years, and so we knew this was a possibility.”

Parrott said most of the property is zoned C2, general commercial. However, a portion of the property is zoned C1B, retail commercial.

“(The property zoned C1B is) OK for a parking lot, but we would really look clean up that zoning (on the entire property) at some point,” Parrott said. “As long as a business meets the zoning requirements, it’s not something when our office typically gets involved.”

Parrott said he had heard other retail types of businesses might possibly rent the building. Rumors that Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker was sending buses to Quincy with migrants who were going to live in the building were debunked in February 2024.

“Absolutely not,” said Ryan Darr, another project manager for RLP Development.

The seller of the property at 3200 Broadway was listed as Quincy Holdings LLC, which has its principal place of business as The Battery Group, a Brooklyn, N.Y., real estate firm owned by Willy Beer and Charles Scharf.

R.P. Lumber was founded by Robert and Donna Plummer in 1977 in Staunton and now is based in Edwardsville. 

“We’re excited to have another one of the big box stores filled,” Parrott said. “We knew that this property was purchased several years ago, and I think they were just looking for the right time and the right opportunity to move ahead.”