A health and fitness club will be one of the center pieces of the newly renovated Kelsey Creek Center.

Developers applied for a permit last month for the club, which will take up a portion of the old K-Mart building. A grocery store will share the spot with the health club, said Nat Franklin owner of PMF Investments, which owns the Kelsey Creek property.

The health club will be a location of a national chain, said Dietrich Wieland, of Group MacKenzie, the architecture and engineering firm handling the project. Wieland and Franklin declined to elaborate on specific tenants.

Franklin said the permit for the health club represents one of the final pieces of the puzzle. The developers submitted applications last fall for much of the area.

A decision on the center’s design and initial application is expected by March 10, said Bellevue Planner Mike Upston. The conditional use permit for the health club should take approximately three to four months for approval. Once the use permit gets approved, Franklin said, the project will continue on its path to beginning construction in May.

“This is the possible hold-up,” he said. “I don’t anticipate it, it’s just the process.”

Upston said the permit for the health club is separate from the application for the project as a whole. Construction can begin on other parts of the redevelopment before the health club’s permit is approved.

“We’re expecting that the property owner will be able to start construction around spring time,” Upston said.

The project involves the renovation of the old buildings as well as pedestrian improvements to the site as a whole. A big part of the plan is to blend the shopping center with the adjacent residential neighborhood.

Another nearby property, the Shell station, is being developed by Key Bank, but is separate from the property.

Changes in zoning over the summer have made the property more development-friendly.

Previous guidelines required any builder that adds new commercial space to the site to open, or “daylight,” a covered stream that now flows through a concrete culvert below the property.

The rule made re-development of the 16-acre site nearly impossible. The property owner plans to make improvements to the adjacent Larsen Lake property to offset any potential harm to the creek.

Franklin said the plans of the project are superior to his original expectations. Featuring plazas, water features and many other aspects, Franklin said the center, which is slated to open during this year’s winter Holiday season, will finally be reborn as the community anchor people wanted.

“It’s something everybody wanted for all these years, and it’s this close to reality,” he said.