KALAMAZOO, MI - Look for a new credit union, a new bank and a cluster of smaller "unique" retailers in the shopping plaza that houses the Costco warehouse membership club store at Stadium Drive and Drake Road.

The build-out of the plaza, called the Corner@Drake, continues with the construction of a new location for Kellogg Community Federal Credit Union and commercial space for various other businesses.

The credit union is the northernmost of three buildings that are nearing completion along Drake Road in the 39.2-acre shopping center.

The construction arm of property developer AVB Inc. is putting the exterior finishes on the 4,500-square-foot, two-story Kellogg Community Federal Credit Union building.

The new location will be a full-service branch of Battle Creek-based KCFCU. It will feature teller and member services, loan services, mortgages, investment services, commercial lending, a 24-hour ATM and night depository services. It is to be ready for the financial institution to occupy in November.

Between that and the 6-month-old regional office/retail location of Consumers Credit Union, there are two 10,000-square-foot structures under construction. Each of them will house four to six retailers in various space configurations, said Joe Gesmundo, head of AVB Inc.

He said AVB wants to fill the spaces with businesses that are new or unique to the Kalamazoo community. The buildings are to be ready for interior improvements by November.

"It will probably be about 50 percent different kinds of food services," Gesmundo said of the businesses that will occupy those spaces. "... We want a variety. You might have a sandwich shop. You might have ice cream, pizza, breakfast. You might have a brewpub. So those are the kinds of food services you might have and a variety of other things."

He said AVB is in various stages of negotiations with multiple potential users.

"In an ideal world, it would be businesses/food services that are not already in the Kalamazoo market," he said of those who signs leases there. "I can't guarantee that, but that's our objective."

The 6-month-old Consumers Credit Union location (it opened on March 30) is a 6,082-square-foot full-service banking office that serves as a regional hub for the Kalamazoo-based credit union. Among other things it allows credit union members to use interactive tellers in the lobby or drive-thru lanes.

It is also along Drake Road, and is just north of the Century Avenue entrance to the shopping center.

The Corner@Drake is off the northwest of the intersection of Stadium Drive and Drake Road. It opened in November of 2014 with Costco as its primary anchor tenant.

Just south of the Consumers Credit Union location, the foundation and footings have been installed for a regional headquarters for Old National Bank. It will be a 15,000-square-foot, two-story facility that will house a banking center and executive offices as well as a cyber cafe and a community room available to partner organizations. It is to be completed and ready for occupancy by spring 2017.

Between the bank location and the 50,000-square-foot Field & Stream outdoor specialty store, which opened in March on the west side of the shopping plaza, AVB plans to build another 32,000 square feet of commercial space, as well as space for two stand-alone restaurants. The space for restaurants will accommodate two 6,000-square-foot venues.

Gesmundo said he has turned away inquires by several restaurants interested in the space "hoping that we can attract somebody that's not already in the market."

"One was a restaurant that's got multiple locations in our marketplace," he said. "And there have been several that we just didn't think fit. We've got high aspirations, I don't know if we'll make it."

He said there are any number of attractive, well-regarded restaurants that people know from larger cities but are never likely to open in Greater Kalamazoo. That's because their management looks to expand only in markets that have populations of at least 1 million people. The Kalamazoo metropolitan area has about 325,000, Gesmundo said.

"A lot of retailers have a minimum threshold of 500,000 population for a metropolitan area and that's the bar," he said. "That's the hurdle that you have to get over in order to even talk to them. But in spite of that, that's what we're trying to do."

He said he does not expect to settle on the restaurant tenants until other spaces are filled in. Those include 32,000 square feet of adjacent commercial space that he expects to be utilized by other eateries and shops. One may be a natural foods grocer.

He also wants those users to be unique to the area.

Gesmundo said plans to build one or more hotels on the site were set aside a long time ago. Hotels were part of the original plan for the site when the project was announced about three years ago. They were to be located where the Field & Stream store now sits.