CrossRoads Mall

[XDeSuEhTX]

The CrossRoads Mall is Beckley's largest indoor mall, located roughly two miles north of the soon to be demolished Raleigh Mall (which I have posted a thread about). First opened to the public in 1983, the structure is anchored by Sears, JC Penny, and Belk. While it is technically not a "dead" mall, it has faced some difficult times within the past five years loosing a number of tenants, including several national clothing chains, book stores, toy stores, restaurants, even it's arcade and cinema. In an effort to stop the mall from falling into irrelevancy and facing a fate similar to the Raleigh Mall, the owners have begun to restructure the building and re-think the kind of retailers that it harbors. Last year a former K&W Cafeteria was replaced with a PetSmart, featuring an entirely new outdoor facade and entrance. Though the store is only accessible from the exterior, it has done well at the location. The mall has also seen the recent opening of a Sheetz gas station and restaurant on it's parking lot that seems to do well. This year with shuttering of more tenants, six former storefront spaces are being redeveloped for the opening of a Dick's sports superstore, which will also be accessible via a brand new exterior facade. A few tenants have been shuffled around amidst the new construction, but remain operational.

It seems as the though developers envision a strip mall on the front, with a remaining indoor mall for the smaller tenants in addition to the anchors. Will this save the mall? It's hard to say. Malls in this area are doing terribly in recent years, and Walmart's seem to be doing better than ever. Perhaps the economy is just so bad that there are not enough consumer dollars to keep higher end or specialty chains afloat, at least in this region anyway.


Here are a few photos I took recently.



Rear entrance of Belk is a ghost town because the doors have been sealed.


Former cinema, shut down in 2009.


Cinema exit.


Redevelopment of the front to the south hallway, soon to be Dick's.




An overview of the former storefronts that are being stripped for redevelopment, right next to last year's addition, PetSmart.


I will document this mall's progress and post more pics later.

[retailisking]

Remember all the discount stores that collapsed in the stagflation of the 1970s?  I think the recession is accelerating a trend away from smaller malls that was already underway.  Like it or not, except for the largest malls, partial or total strip center conversion is the wave of the future for most of these enclosed centers.

[XDeSuEhTX]

Progress update: Former spaces fully gutted for renovation.


Notice that the original Belk signage has been taken down. The new corporate logo has gone up, in the form of a temporary paper sign.


If my memory serves me, the former tenants of these now gutted spaces were, at one time, Radio Shack, Walden Books, F.Y.E., K.B. Toys, and three other spaces... I can't recall what they originally were, before two of them were made into a Dollar Tree that opened around 2006 and left around 2009.

For some reason, the storefronts closest to the anchors are the ones that have faced the most vacancy as the last of the "first-rate" tenants in those spaces fizzled out around 6 to 8 years ago. Overall the mall has retained only about 10% of it's original indoor tenants since the 1990s, as my memory of the mall only dates back to the early 1990s. At that time, the mall was at full capacity and contained only national and regional mall chain type stores. In those last 6 to 8 years, it has gone through a period of containing several "non-mall" tenants in former spaces, which now seems to be over and replaced simply with vacancy. The newest phase shown above with the photos - restructuring.

[XDeSuEhTX]

Remember all the discount stores that collapsed in the stagflation of the 1970s?  I think the recession is accelerating a trend away from smaller malls that was already underway.  Like it or not, except for the largest malls, partial or total strip center conversion is the wave of the future for most of these enclosed centers.

To me the trend seems like a matter of the shrinking and downsizing retail landscape, which is probably what you're saying. During this recession, and even long before the recession, we've lost mall chains. They've simply liquidated and vanished, they are no longer part of the retail scene. I suppose there must be A LOT less specialty chains out there than there were before, the only ones that seem to do well in today's economy are the larger ones, take for example, PetSmart and Dick's, both fairly large stores. I can understand why these types of stores would prefer strip mall to indoor mall. So wouldn't the decline of indoor malls be mostly a matter of the smaller scale specialty store disappearing?

[ynkeesfn82]

take for example, PetSmart and Dick's, both fairly large stores. I can understand why these types of stores would prefer strip mall to indoor mall.

2 Malls here in Connecticut feature Dick's - The Westfield Meriden Square Mall has a smaller Dick's store in part of the Former Lord & Taylor (which because Dick's, Best Buy, and Border's). They even kept L&T's escalator to the parking garage. The other mall in Connecticut that features Dick's and this is a large location is the GGP owned Buckland Hills Mall in Manchester. It's a 2 story location.