Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 24, 1993 TAG: 9301260284
SECTION: ECONOMY PAGE: EC-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
MERCHANTS' MOOD: CAUTIOUS
JOAN Duus jokes that when she and her husband began looking around two years ago for a business to buy, the step was prompted by Chick's "midlife crisis."However, she says, by the time they opened Play It Again Sports in June, the decision proved to be economically astute.
An unexciting economy had dulled Chick Duus' contracting business, but the sporting goods store took off like gangbusters and has stayed that way.
"It was immediately good from the first week. It was unbelievable," said Joan Duus. She runs the store while her husband continues the construction business, at least for now.
Play It Again Sports is a franchise that combines sales of new and used equipment.
The shop also is part of a larger success story: Hunting Hills Plaza.
Not counting the space of its anchor, Wal-Mart, the strip center on U.S. 220 was only 50 percent occupied last February.
Yet, at a time when national retailers such as Sears, Roebuck and Co. and regional companies such as Leggett Department Stores and Moore's Building Supply trimmed older properties, Hunting Hills Plaza just about filled. Its new stores are operated by small merchants like Joan and Chick Duus, who last year found a retailing idea and an opportunity in a shopping center hungry for tenants.
Only two sites remain empty, and contracts for them are in the hands of potential renters, said leasing agent Bill Moseley.
Moseley, who works for the center's owner, Faison Associates of Charlotte, says the mix of retailers at Hunting Hills is an example of the way retailing is going.
The center has a combination of value (or popular price) retailers, such as Rack Room shoes and Dollar Tree, and of retailers with more expensive lines of merchandise, like English's Clothing and Toad'ly Kids, upscale women's and children's clothing shops.
Moseley said the mix is necessary for any mall or center unless the property is in an "extremely exclusive upper-income area."
It takes a variety of price and merchandise ranges to pull in the numbers of shoppers needed to keep a center viable, he said.
In addition to attracting the Duus' sports shop and English's, which is a transplant from Rocky Mount, Moseley also lured Holdren's Inc., a Roanoke electronics retailer, to Hunting Hills.
Moseley also leases Marketplace shopping center in Christiansburg, which like Hunting Hills has Wal-Mart as its anchor store. Moseley a year ago got Holdren's to open a store next to Wal-Mart at Marketplace. "To test the waters," Moseley said.
The Christiansburg experience was enough to prompt Holdren's to close a long-time retail store on Franklin Road Southwest and relocate to Hunting Hills. Holdren's kept its service department on Franklin Road.
Dollar Tree also tested itself in Christiansburg before coming to Roanoke.
The Roanoke Valley retail business is "just extremely healthy," said leasing agent Millie Moore.
But, Moore said, shops still aren't opened without a great deal of thought - and oftentimes a frustrating search for financing.
"Basically people in startup businesses have to have enough cash to do the startup," said Moore. "Also, lenders who hold mortgages on shopping centers want owners of start-up businesses to give three months of security deposits."
Retailers can't get financing based on future rents, Moore said. For example, she said, the owners of Roanoke's Towers Shopping Center, which is 99 percent leased, have been unable to get financing to build a Talbot's clothing store on a site that's now used for parking. Talbot's, a well-known Massachusetts-based women's clothing chain, has been willing to locate in Roanoke for more than a year if the quarters are provided.
Moore, who runs the commercial real estate department at Boone & Co. Realtors, also raises the industry buzz phrase - "cautiously optimistic" - when talking about the state of business.
"It's still not a great economy," she said.
"We held our own last year, but what's hindering us in commercial is the ability of the financial arena. We've got buyers and we've got leases; we've just got inability to get financing," she said.
Judy Tullius, manager of Tanglewood Mall in Roanoke County, said retail watchers are waiting to monitor consumer confidence as Bill Clinton takes office as president.
Improvement in this Christmas season was fueled by post-election optimism, George Rosenbaum, chief executive of Leo J. Shapiro and Associates, a Chicago market research firm, said in the Chicago Tribune.
"Consumers decided to loosen up on Christmas spending not because they feel more secure in their jobs or expect income to increase, but because of a new optimism for the long term." But if they don't see actual improvement, he said, consumers will "pull back quickly on the accelerator."
However, based on the holiday experience, Tullius remains extremely optimistic.
"We're coming out of an excellent holiday season," she said of Tanglewood. "Some of our stores even showed double-digit increases."
She also is projecting slight increases in retail sales during the first quarter, even though it will be compared to a strong first-quarter 1991.
New Market Mercantile, a branch of a Floyd store, has decided to make permanent a store it opened at Tanglewood for the holiday season, Tullius said.
New Market represents about 80 artisans. Another temporary, Dolls for You, also is staying and will be expanding its services to include classes on doll-making.
Tullius said both added to the number of giftware merchants, a category the center needed.