WEBB CITY, Mo. — The Webb City Planning and Zoning Committee will review a special-use permit for a “golfing facility with food and beverage” in the reclaimed mining area on Daugherty Street on the east side of town.
The committee meets at 5:45 p.m. Monday at Webb City City Hall.
Tee Time LLC has proposed building a new entertainment complex on 20 acres of land near the current Route 66 Sports Bar.
Kellen Grantham, a partner in Tee Time, called it “like a Top Golf, but not a Top Golf,” referring to the golfing and entertainment complexes that have started to spread across the country, including Rogers, Arkansas, and Overland Park, Kansas.
“It’ll be one story, but the feel will be the same,” Grantham said. “The bay layout will be the same, the user experience, so on and so forth. Then we’ve paired that with another concept out of Kansas City called Chicken and Pickle. … It’s a restaurant with a bunch of pickleball courts and a big courtyard area for yard games, just a big community hangout spot. We thought the two models put together would be just what Joplin needed.”
Grantham said the concept was similar to one written about in an article in The Joplin Globe in April, but he said his is a separate project.
“That should get the ball rolling for us, though. We do have a few steps we need to take, so we want to keep this as quiet as possible for now until we are 100% a go. At that point, absolutely we want to blow this thing up,” he said.
Webb City Administrator Carl Francis said the application for the special-use permit was the first step the company needed to take before starting actual engineering work.
“Once Planning and Zoning approves the special-use permit, that will go to council for approval,” Francis said. “Once that is complete, their project design and engineering team will present paperwork to public works for a building permit. That’s when the plat inspections will occur, when fire and police and sewer and water and everybody inspects it to make sure it conforms to code. Then a building permit will be issued, and hopefully they’ll get under construction pretty quickly.”
Grantham said plans include a 215-yard driving range.
“It just barely fits on that property, Grantham said. “We’ll have 20 bays, and I think the building footprint sits right about 10,000 feet. It’s good size, it’s not huge, it’s definitely not Top Golf, but for our area, I think it’ll be perfect.”
In April, the Globe reported that a group of local investors, led by George Michalopoulos, of Joplin, and Kaleb Marti, of Jasper, was exploring the possibility of a golf attraction on former mining land along Route 66 between Carterville and Webb City. It also was to be similar to Top Golf.
Reached over the weekend, Michalopoulos said: “We are still doing it. It is just going to be in a different area. … We’re going in a different direction.”
He said more details will be coming out soon but that he could not disclose the location yet.
It will have multiple bays, adding, “It’s going to be like a golf resort.”