Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 9, 1994 TAG: 9404120022
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: STEPHEN FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The announcement Wednesday that Rose's Stores Inc. would close its store in the mall by midsummer took the mall's manager and leasing director by surprise.
"I hate to see Rose's go," said mall manager Mary Ann Nunn. "I thought the store would stay ... but there's nothing they can do."
"We were surprised like everyone else that they were leaving," said Vicky Chastain, leasing director for EBL&S Property Management, the mall owner. "They had made it through that first cut, so we thought they were in the clear."
Chastain, who works in Philadelphia, was referring to an announcement in January that Rose's would close stores in Pulaski and Bedford as part of downsizing that included closing 38 stores nationwide, seven of them in Virginia. Wednesday's announcement said Rose's would close 59 stores nationwide, including Blacksburg's.
Rose's occupies more than 40 percent of the mall's total space, Chastain said. The store's departure, coupled with the planned departure of Heironimus, which announced last fall that it would close it's store in Blacksurg and build a new store near the Market Place in Christiansburg, leaves her with 60 percent of the mall to fill.
"It's not going to look pretty," Chastain said of the occupancy deficit.
The departure of the two anchor stores seems to reverse what had looked like a period of rejuvenation for the mall. Currently, only 4,000 of the mall's 162,000 square feet is not in use, Nunn said. Just last summer, she and Chastain were talking ecstatically of how the center had rebounded from rock-bottom days six years ago.
"Isn't that amazing?" Chastain said Friday. "It always happens that way."
Town Manager Ron Secrist sounded notes of disappointment and frustration, too. When the two stores depart, it will leave Blacksburg without a major department store.
The town's residents "deserve to have conveniently located retail outlets that will meet their needs," he said. While the town does all it can to work with shopping center owners to attract business, there's only so much it can do.
"It's difficult and frustrating," he said.
All the more so when, "They [the mall] were really looking up, and now we've sort of been dealt a double blow ... for completely different reasons," Secrist said.
Rose's closing relates to companywide downsizing in an attempt to restructure from bankruptcy. Heironimus' owner said last fall that sales for his store had fallen by $1 million since the New River Valley Mall opened in 1988. Richard Lynn, who could not be reached Friday, also cited the nonretail types of businesses in the mall as a selling-point disadvantage.
Without Heironimus and Rose's, University Mall will be left with but one anchor store: Revco.
"We'll just have to fill them up," Nunn said. "We just have to concentrate on anchor stores."
But Chastain put a different spin on the announcement when she said she sees opportunity in the closings. She deemed Rose's closing as a "temporary setback."
She plans to have the Rose's end of the mall remodeled, and looks at the open space as a chance to revamp the mall's tenant structure.
Chastain said she will try to woo off-price retailers to the center, and might consider dividing the Rose's space for more than one store. It's too early to say what operations might move in, she said, but she cited the mall's location and the marketability of the Rose's end near Prices Fork Road as drawing advantages.
"It's a challenge, but I'm not afraid of it," Chastain said.
by CNB