SPRINGFIELD -- Developers Davenport Companies is in discussions with a retail tenant who might take up most of the Main Street-fronting space in its long-planned Davenport Square project near MGM Springfield.

Charles Irving, principal with Boston-based Davenport, said recently that he expects to make a public announcement of the deal sometime before January.

Davenport has long proposed an 11,000-square-foot multi-tenant building with parking to the rear on the site. The Head Start daycare facility is currently the only business on the property, occupying a section to the rear away from Main Street.

The property would also have it's own parking.

Irving said the prospective tenant, he can't yet say who it is, would mean there would be fewer small tenants than is shown in artist renderings.

Davenport Companies, which was MGM's real estate partner on the nearly $1-billion casino project, bought the acre-and-a-quarter property at 991-959 Main St. and 155 Union St., for $1.6 million from a number of owners. This is according to deeds on file at the Hampden Registry of Deeds.

Davenport also owns property across Hubbard Avenue to the south of the proposed Davenport Square site. The lot across Hubbard Avenue was once the site the Square One day care center headquarters that was also destroyed by the tornado.

Davenport owns the Springfield Plaza shopping center, the old Registry of Motor Vehicles Building on Liberty Street and the former Willys-Overland Building at 151 Chestnut St.

Davenport says it plans to renovate the Willys Building into apartments and has publicized plans to build a retail center at the old RMV site.