Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, August 5, 1994 TAG: 9408090066
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By STEPHEN FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
"The shopping center is going to happen and I think we're all going to be happy when it does," said Richard Reiss, legal counsel for Brantner Limited Partnership, the group of Charlottesville investors that took over Blacksburg developer Ray Chisholm's project last fall.
The partnership has been talking recently with Blacksburg's planning department about a revised plan for the site on Prices Fork Road and bounded by Turner and Gilbert streets, Reiss said.
The changes are minor, but will require the project to go through the zoning process again to be approved, said Adele Schirmer, Blacksburg's director of planning and engineering. The new site plan would contain a little more open space, with more visible parking, and would lessen the amount of store front along Prices Fork Road. The plan will have to go before the town's planning commission and council, with a public hearing before each.
Chisholm initially proposed building an $8 million, 75,000-square-foot retail and commercial complex on the 3.7-acre site in early 1992. Hoping to take advantage of the proximity to Virginia Tech, he won approval from Town Council to have the property rezoned commercial.
But after investing at least $200,000 of his own money in the project, Chisholm, who had hoped to have the center built by last August, wasn't able to hold it together financially.
The Charlottesville partnership took over the project last fall. Now Chisholm, who referred questions to Reiss, calls himself an "unpaid consultant" who will receive some financial reimbursement when the project is completed.
Reiss said if all goes as planned, that could be by next summer.
He said it has taken about a year to secure the properties and revise the plans. "It has just taken us some time to really assess the situation," Reiss said. "It has by no means been an easy project."
Some of the partners are also involved in Brantner Limited Trust, which also allied with Chisholm in acquiring an island of land just up the street last summer that Tech had been eyeing for years as a place to build an engineering building. Chisholm has floated the idea of building a graduate student dormitory, but so far nothing has happened. Reiss said nothing is anticipated in the near future.
"Right now we're not at all focusing on that piece of property," he said. "We're focusing all our energies on the shopping center."
Reiss downplayed the risk involved in building a new shopping center in a town which has seen three of its existing centers lose major tenants to the Christiansburg retail hub around the New River Valley Mall or to bankruptcy. He said there's a backlog of tenants interested in the center, and Chisholm said negotiations are proceeding with two national bookstore chains that would provide an anchor for the center.
Most importantly, Reiss said, the center, which is now estimated to cost $5 million to build, has the most important thing on its side: location.
"We're a stone's throw from the biggest parking lot at Virginia Tech. We think we're going to have the benefit of both" traffic from Prices Fork Road and pedestrians, he said. "We really feel strongly about the possibility of its success."
by CNB