ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, August 14, 1996 TAG: 9608140012
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B8 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Marketplace
SOURCE: MEGAN SCHNABEL
The plywood barricades are finally coming down at Valley View Mall.
The Roanoke shopping center, in the midst of a full-scale tenant transition, has looked something like a ghost town since late last year, when a slew of retailers moved out and left behind boarded-up storefronts.
But, as you probably noticed if you're a regular Valley View shopper, the vacancies have been filling up recently, and the mall's management says the center will be 98.5 percent occupied by Nov. 1.
Among the stores - and their lines of merchandise - that have opened at Valley View Mall this spring and summer: Garden Botanika, bath and body; Gymboree, kids' clothing; Gadzook's, young men's and women's apparel; Pretzel Maker, hot pretzels; Sports Fantasy, sports gear; Multi-Media One Stop, cellular phones, and LaGrange Leather, leather goods.
Gold Italia, a gold and jewelry store, is scheduled to open within a week. And, capping off the current wave of new national-name tenants, The Disney Store, which sells souvenirs of Walt Disney Co. productions, and Eddie Bauer, an outdoor clothing and gear retailer, both should be open by early November. About five more tenants are scheduled to move into the mall early next year, said Scott Ashcraft, the shopping center's marketing director.
Some of the mall's existing stores have relocated and remodeled in recent months. Kay-Bee Toy & Hobby, Waldenbooks, Kirkland's and Express all have moved to new spots within the center. Some merchants moved because they needed larger spaces, others as part of a general reshuffling to make room for new tenants.
With the newest spate of openings and closings, locally owned tenants have all but disappeared from Valley View. Lazarus women's clothing store, one of the mall's original tenants, closed in January. And John Norman, a men's and women's apparel retailer that also has been at Valley View since the mall opened 10 years ago, is in the middle of its store-closing sale.
"That's an unfortunate thing that's happened within the industry," Ashcraft said. "We want [local merchants]. And we look for them." But, at the same time, the mall is trying to "increase the scale" of its tenants, he said.
"We're trying to bring things to Roanoke that normally you'd see in big cities," he said. That trend started with stores such as Victoria's Secret and The Gap, he said, and continues with the addition of Eddie Bauer and Disney.
Right now, the biggest blank spot in the mall is the former Morrison's Cafeteria on the upper level. The 10,000-square-foot space, which was vacated this spring, probably will be divided into two smaller stores, Ashcraft said.
Other stores that have closed since last fall include Merry-Go-Round, Webster's, B.Dalton and Chess King.
The game of musical tenants is part of the mall's 10th-anniversary rollover, said Louise Dudley, Valley View's manager. Because many of the mall's original tenants signed decade-long leases, nearly a third of the mall's leases expired this year.
River Ridge Mall in Lynchburg went through a similar turnover several years ago, said Dudley, who also has managed River Ridge for Charlotte, N.C.-based Faison Associates. And Tanglewood Mall in Roanoke also has reshuffled its tenants, as leases expired and the mall's new owner, Tanglewood Mall Associates, renegotiates contracts.
Such turnover may leave mall customers wondering for a while whether their malls are going under, Dudley said, but a lease rollover can be healthy for the mall itself and its owner. That's because leases between mall owners and merchants generally are based partly on the tenant's sales volume. The more successful the tenant, the more the mall can charge in rent.
"You're able to go through the tenants and weed out the nonperformers," Dudley said.
You won't see any cosmetic changes at Valley View along the lines of the renovations going on across town at Tanglewood Mall, Ashcraft said. Valley View made some basic cosmetic improvements - painting and repair to marble surfaces - in the past two years, and remodeling in small doses will continue, he said.
Additionally, as tenants' leases come up for renewal, they'll be asked to remodel their stores to keep up with the mall's new face.
"When the storefronts are modern, the whole mall looks modern," Ashcraft said.
LENGTH: Medium: 85 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. PHILIP HOLMAN STAFF Garden Botanika, a bath and bodyby CNBstore, is among several new shops at Roanoke's Valley View Mall,
where even more tenants will open in the coming months. color
2. map - New at Valley View STAFF