KALAMAZOO, MI -- Plans are being laid for a Qdoba Mexican Grill to be part of a new retail development at Drake Road and Stadium Drive, across the road from the new Costco warehouse membership club.

A one-story, 5,243-square-foot building is to be built in the University Commons shopping plaza, across the street from Costco.

The structure will be just south of the At Home home decor superstore, which opened in February of 2014, and immediately north of the Kalsee Credit Union location, which opened there in June of 2012.

"We are planning to do a retail development on Drake Road, across the street from Costco," said Terry Patterson, vice president of retail leasing and development at University Commons owner Treystar.

He said the building will have two tenants but he would neither confirm nor deny their names, saying no leases have yet been signed.

"We are in the planning stages right now," he said Monday. "We do not have any deals signed yet."

Site plans for the project, filed with the city of Kalamazoo in late November by Continental Cos., a commercial designer and builder, indicate the building will utilize what is now a parking lot area adjacent to the Drake Road entrance of the University Commons.

That relatively new entrance aligns University Commons with the entrance of The Corner@Drake, the large new retail center on the northwest corner of Stadium and Drake. It is anchored by Costco.

Qdoba already has a location on Kalamazoo's West Side, at 4403 W. Main St., about 2 miles to the north of Stadium Drive. Having another restaurant at Stadium and Drake, officially at 2075 Drake Road, would look to take advantage of that increasingly busy area.

Costco has been generating traffic since the 148,000-square-foot store opened at The Corner@Drake in November of 2014. A Field & Stream, a new, 50,000-square-foot, outdoor specialty concept store, is under construction there.

Attempts to contact a spokesperson for Colorado-based Qdoba Mexican Grill were not successful Monday.

The new retail building will be owned by University Commons II LLC, a division of Treystar, a Portage-based developer/manager of retail and office properties.

Rob Bauckham, senior development planner for the city of Kalamazoo, said the city of Kalamazoo's Site Plan Review Committee met and reviewed a site plan for the project on Nov. 24.

"They don't have final approval," he said. "We're waiting on a couple of revisions."

Those are expected in the next couple of weeks, he said, followed by applications for building permits.

"We're expecting the final site plan within the next couple of weeks, before the end of the year," Bauckham said. "And they should file for their permits after the turn of the year."

In that time frame, he said, construction could start this winter, if weather permits. Patterson said Treystar hopes to have a ground-breaking for construction sometime during the first quarter of 2016.

Kalamazoo Gazette/MLive Business writer Al Jones may be contacted at ajones5@mlive.com. Follow me on Twitter at ajones5_al