A pair of Memphis investors has bought a property on West Poplar Avenue in Collierville, with plans to convert it into a new retail space.

Ed Apple and Eddie Kircher teamed up as Poplar Partners LLC to purchase the Ballew Bridal and Formal Salon building at 547 W. Poplar Ave. for $1.3 million on May 1, according to a deed filed with the Shelby County Register. The deal was brokered by Barry D. Maynard and Frank Dyer III of Gill Properties.

Ballew Bridal and Formal, which owned the property, closed shop on May 27. Now, Maynard and Dyer will oversee the redevelopment of the 7,500-square-foot property to fit the needs of a single occupant or multiple retail tenants.

Maynard believes that the building could have many uses and is willing to see what opportunities arise. He can see the space becoming a medical office or serve several tenants if there is the right fit for that use.

“We may break it up into two or three different tenants,” Maynard said. “It just really depends where the market takes us.”

The former bridal shop will undergo interior and exterior renovations to meet new clients' needs, with the new owners prepared to spend over $1 million to build-to-suit. Maynard said the opportunity to have a property already ready and not having to build from the ground up was attractive for the group.

“There's an opportunity for [Apple and Kircher] to jump in the commercial realm,” Maynard said. “There's no better street … than Poplar Avenue. There's

a lot of things that make Collierville tough to [build new], and this already has a pretty nice freestanding building on it that has a lot of opportunity, a lot of uses.”

Both Apple and Kircher have long been players in the Memphis real estate market. Kircher owns his own homebuilding business, and Apple has a wide variety of residential and commercial properties across the metro.

“What attracted us is the population in Collierville, which has doubled since 2000,” Apple said. “20% of their population earns over $200,000 a year. It has schools, hospitals, health care, parks, quality of life, but it's got a very, very small retail district. We've been looking at Collierville for quite a while, and the current market conditions gave us a once-in-a-decade opportunity. We knew immediately that we wanted it. What the city has done and become is nothing short of amazing. And, to me, it's as good as it gets in West Tennessee.”