Barron Commons adds tenants at former Wendy’s site in Tecumseh

TECUMSEH — Menu choices are growing at a former fast-food location on Tecumseh’s west end.

Tropical Smoothie Cafe and Domino’s Pizza are joining Dunkin’ and Jimmy John’s at Barron Commons, the retail center that is being built at the former Wendy’s site on West Chicago Boulevard.

Developer Mike Howard said he named the location for his son.

He plans to turn over the building to the tenants in late September or early October. It then will be early 2027 before the businesses begin to open. Dunkin’ and Jimmy John’s are further ahead with their plans, Howard said, so they’re likely to open first.

“It just takes them a few months to build out their space,” Howard said.

“We had a little bit of some design changes we had to make as we started to get new tenants,” he said. “So as we had a new tenant, we had to kind of tweak some things to accommodate them on the front end rather than retrofit later.”

There is one more unit to fill, Howard said. That’s one more than he originally planned to have in the building when he acquired the property last year. That last unit will be next to Dunkin’, which will be on the west side of the building. Dunkin’ will use the existing drive-thru lane. Jimmy John’s will be on the east end, closest to Occidental Highway. It will have a drive-thru, too.

The extremely hot days and the smoky days didn’t affect the construction schedule. He said there was a lull in activity on the site after the structural steel was erected because that contractor finished the work early and the next contractors weren’t scheduled to begin yet.