ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, July 27, 1996 TAG: 9607290026
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG
SOURCE: KENNETH SINGLETARY STAFF WRITER
Books-A-Million, a national megastore book chain, plans to open in the vacated Wal-Mart space in the struggling Marketplace shopping center, which this month lost the second of its three anchor stores.
Meanwhile, Rack & Sack, a Norfolk-based grocery chain, is considering opening a store in Christiansburg. Company officials would not comment on whether they were considering the newly vacated former Brendle's store in the Marketplace.
The Books-A-Million store will open before the end of the year and will be similar in size, atmosphere and offerings to the chain's Roanoke store, said Terry Finley, vice president of marketing for the chain based in Birmingham, Ala. The Christiansburg site will be 24,150 square feet and will carry potentially more than 100,000 book and magazine titles.
The store will not carry textbooks for Virginia Tech and Radford University students, though the manager could customize the store for the local audience by carrying, for example, more classic titles, Finley said. The store will employ between 25 and 30 people and will have a coffee shop.
Books-A-Million has 75 stores across the southeastern United States with plans to open 25 to 30 more in the next year, and 60 mall-based Bookland stores, Finley said.
The former Wal-Mart location has 85,000 square feet of space. Finley did not know what other businesses, if any, might move into the site, given that the bookstore will take up less than one-third of the space. Wal-Mart officials at company headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., did not return telephone calls Friday.
Jeff Thomas, senior vice president of operations for Farm Fresh Inc., parent company of Rack & Sack, said the discount grocer, which opened its first store in Roanoke in June, is "looking at Christiansburg." Farm Fresh, headquartered in Norfolk, is the Tidewater area's largest grocer and is the second largest in the combined Richmond-Norfolk area. The chain has 38 Farm Fresh stores and 13 Rack & Sack locations, with plans to open several more in 1997, Thomas said.
Rack & Sack's Christiansburg location will feature three stores in one, Thomas said: a Farm Fresh section with perishables including produce, meat, deli items and seafood; a no-frills dry goods section in which the items will be in boxes on warehouse shelves; and a pharmacy, health and beauty section.
Thomas said Farm Fresh prefers its Rack & Sack stores to be at least 50,000 to 60,000 square feet, but will consider smaller locations, depending on local availability. The Brendle's site is about 35,000 square feet.
The nearby Wal-Mart Supercenter opened this year, and includes a complete grocery store. "Competition makes us better. ... I welcome competition," said Herb Conley, supercenter manager.
LENGTH: Medium: 55 linesby CNB