As a development team works on the design for a project on about 6 acres off Oleander Drive, the area could be home to new retail and office flex space in the near future.

Developer Steve Anderson said Wednesday that plans are in the works for about 40,000 square feet of retail space and another 15,000 to 25,000 square feet of potential office flex space on about 11 parcels with frontage in the 5800 block of Oleander Drive.

A longtime Wilmington developer whose recent projects include the Offices at Airlie and the Offices at Mayfaire, Anderson is working with Josh Mihaly of Mihaly Land Design, Tripp Engineering, Cothran Harris Architecture and McKinley Building Corp. on the potential new Oleander project.

“We would look at this being in the neighborhood of 1,500-square-foot, plus or minus, bays [in about four buildings]. The beautiful thing about this corner is that it’s a corner. It has that 58th Street exposure there that opens up that corner so nicely,” Anderson said.

He said the properties’ access off 58th Street, Oleander Drive and Park Avenue would likely be attractive to potential flex office space users.

“That’s what makes this project one that’s really fun to design,” said Anderson, who has the properties under contract with a closing expected to take place this summer.

He said he wants to have designs submitted to the city of Wilmington soon in hopes of getting on the schedule for a March meeting of the city's Technical Review Committee.

“We are in the early design phases right now, and with everything I do, it’s market-driven. What does the market tell us it needs to be? And that’s what we put on paper that then gets permitted, and then McKinley works their magic,” he said.

McKinley Building Corp. is currently building Anderson’s The Offices at Airlie, a 20,000-square-foot building on about 1.8 acres at the corner of Military Cutoff Road and Wrightsville Avenue. That building is nearly full, with only two spaces left – a 1,600-square-foot unit and 1,800-square-foot unit – on which Anderson has recently received an offer that’s under consideration. He said The Offices at Airlie are expected to be completed by the end of March.

As Anderson continues to work on the fourth building in the Offices at Mayfaire group on Military Cutoff, he’s also on the lookout for potential new development elsewhere in the city, specifically in the midtown section of Oleander Drive.

On Wednesday morning, his plan for part of the day was to start around the 3,500 block of Oleander and drive "from there to South College and Oleander, looking for land to do another Anderson Square,” he said, referring to the office and retail complex in the 4700 block of Oleander that he completed more than a decade ago.