Crossroads perhaps past crisis

The new owner may announce new retail tenants in the next couple of months.

By Jenny Kincaid
The Roanoke Times

Crossroads Mall is getting some new retailers, more offices and a fresher look.

Chris White, who purchased the declining Roanoke mall last November from Zamias Services of Pennsylvania, said he'll be ready to announce a couple of new retailers for Crossroads in the next month or two. White owns Southeast Real Estate, a company in Mobile, Ala., that has revived shopping centers from Virginia to Florida.

In a phone interview from his Alabama office, White said his vision for Crossroads is the same. It'll be a mixed-use office and retail center, with emphasis on office space in the mall's interior. Offices will take up about 350,000 square feet, while retail will have about 200,000 square feet, White said.

Crossroads, on Hershberger Road, opened in the early 1960s and was the first enclosed mall in Roanoke. It was a premier shopping spot until Tanglewood and other malls were built.

Crossroads lost several key retailers in the 1980s and turned into a discount mall. Now, it has many vacant spaces. Some of its anchor retailers are Books-A-Million, Kmart and Goody's.

Advance Auto Parts is the largest office tenant there. The Roanoke-based Fortune 500 company is renovating about 73,000 square feet of space into corporate offices, using part of the space formerly occupied by a Circuit City store.

Once construction is complete, Advance offices will occupy about 142,000 square feet, said Laurie Stacy, spokeswoman for Advance.

"The exterior ... is being fashioned to give Advance a great deal of identity," White said.

Advance's new offices should open this fall, Stacy said. Advance will move out of a headquarters building on Valley View Boulevard in Roanoke. It will keep another office location on Airport Road.

The Department of Motor Vehicles, in the back part of Crossroads, will remain there. White said he's considering other office tenants for the rest of the mall's interior.

White is planning some changes to the retail mix at Crossroads. One or two new retailers would move in beside Goody's, near one mall entrance. He said the retailers would have outside entrances, and the front retail strip starting at Rugged Wearhouse would form an L.

A dividing wall will go up at the escalator in the middle of the mall's interior, separating the office portion from the retail, White explained.

"That area that's right now a common area will be pretty much reworked," White said. "If you come in at the Goody's level, you will be coming into a store."

Other plans will involve moving Jo-Ann Fabrics from the back of the mall to the front area. White said he hasn't yet decided where the store would relocate.

But the retailers that are there now will stay, White said, including Rugged Wearhouse, Goody's and Books-A-Million.

The center also will receive an exterior renovation, giving it a "fresh new look," White said. He would not discuss other details about the design, but he said construction should begin this fall.

Crossroads' location is ideal for retail, and White has had success reviving other struggling small malls, said Millie Moore, who owns Retail Real Estate in Roanoke.

With Advance already at Crossroads, it "gave him a good start," she said.

"A lot of these small malls are being razed and the land used for other things," Moore said. "It's wonderful that this mall can be saved."