The Coming of Valley View Mall

Friday afternoon, December 6, 1985.

The sky above Roanoke is crisp and blue, and slightly alive with holiday anticipation.

Traffic at the 1-581/ Hershberger cloverleaf is brisk but smooth. In one of the cars moving around this brand new commercial hub is a typical American family, the Wil-sons. They’re from Beckley. Or Galax. Or Marion. Or White Sulphur Springs.

The Wilsons are a modern, middle-class family; more affluent, more urbane, more discerning and demanding than their counterparts of even 10 years ago. Yet they have chosen, as have increasing numbers of families, to live away from the urban centers. Instead they live in the small towns and communities that dot the mountains and valleys of Western Virginia and Southern West Virginia.
An American city at the turn of the century is suggested by the green fencing and the domed skylight of the center court. Reproductions of 19th century railroad station clocks are now manufactured in the U.S. for use by developers of projects such as Valley View.

The Wilsons have come for a weekend of Christmas shopping. They’ve checked in at the new Airport Marriott. Or the classy Sheraton next door. Or the new hotel that just went up west of Valley View Mall. Or one of the four other motels within a mile of the new shopping center.

The vibrant new Roanoke the Wilsons see is not the same Roanoke they saw even as recently as April, 1984. Jet aircraft bearing the insignias of four or five airlines—Delta among them—lift smoothly and regularly away from the newly completed runway extension. Traffic toward downtown—toward Center in the Square and the bust-ling new businesses in and around the City Market is as steady as the stream of cars entering the year-old Celebration Station outlet mall and the six-month-old Valley View Mall. On the lots of both levels of Valley View, a quarter of the cars bear out-of-state plates.

The Wilsons are just one of the thousands of families from the outlands of Southwest Virginia and Southern West Virginia who come to Roanoke to shop. And with them comes $7 billion in effective buying income. Roanoke has long been South-west Virginia’s trading post. While the market ranks 173 rd in population, it is 56th in retail sales per household.

The main draw for these families from Tazewell and Wytheville and Warm Springs and Clifton Forge is Valley View Mall, the newly crowned bazaar supreme of the Appalachians, a mercantile crystal palace which has realigned the shopping patterns of three-quarters of a million people in the “woods” to the south and west of Roanoke.

As the Wilsons enter Valley View they quickly see much of the reason for that migration.

Entering the mall along a second-level gathering of shops, they gain an immediate sense of the intimate, cobbled shopping districts of Europe and the East, with quaint, arch-windowed storefronts and the feel of a bustling Parisian street or an open-air market in ancient Istanbul.

Farther along, at the Victorian-styled west court, they rest briefly on benches beneath trees as large as the ones at home in the back yard. The checkerboard square floor carries the feel of the 19 th century by the graceful wrought-iron trim on the lampposts and benches, by the symmetry of the marble-based fountain.

Down the mall, after they have browsed through some of the 125-or-so shops and stores, the Wilsons visit the center court, which is dominated by a large, train station-style clock with four Roman-numeraled faces. The urban turn-of-the-century feel is affirmed by the industrial green color scheme and wooden railings. A large, domed skylight welcomes the blue above Roanoke into the court.

At the far end of the mall, which is made to seem closer by the clustered design elements, fully grown ficus trees and tropical vegetation, the east court sparkles with modern, high-tech glitter. Chrome poles support sequences of bright globes, and contemporary metal sculpture dominates the asymmetrical reaches of the east pool, which rises gracefully to floor level with three soft, broad steps. The Wilsons have been ushered through echoes of three or four architectural eras, have received their first exposure to a new era in shopping for Southwest Virginia.

For what the Wilsons and the thousands of others will enter for their 1985 Christmas shopping is a mall, which will present an ultimate eclecticism of architectural styles, shopping modes and human congress. It will be situated on a plot of ground so exquisitely central and accessible to Roanoke as to prompt Charlotte developer Henry Faison to say, “I’d never seen a site so perfect in the past, I haven’t since, and I don’t expect to in the future.” It will draw from a Connecticut-sized trade area and will rank in size among the top 2.3 percent of all U.S. malls. It will stand, in short, at the very forefront of the art of the shopping center.

The Art of the Mall

That art has its roots in the 1920s, when migration from the cities spawned the first planned retail areas. But real growth did not occur until after World War II when prosperity, babies and cars pushed millions of optimistic, consumption-oriented families into sprawling new bedroom communities, with beltways and spurs soon to follow. Retailers inevitably followed the migration: In 1950 there were about 100 shopping centers nationwide; by 1955 the total was 1,300, and by 1960, as the baby boom reached its last crescendo, the figure reached 4,500. Roanoke’s first center — Crossroads —opened in 1961, and Towers and Roanoke-Salem Plaza followed the next year. Tangle-wood began operations in 1973.

But over the past five years the evolution of modern American shopping patterns has reached a crossroads. Nearly 1,000 centers a year were built in the U.S. between 1958 and 1968, and by the end of 1982 there were 23,300 shopping centers in the country. But during 1981 only about 550 were constructed, as the recession slowed construction appreciably. That fact, coupled with the dwindling number of prime sites remaining nationwide and the turn of the development industry’s eye toward downtown renovations and the expansion and remodeling of existing centers, has altered the mall development business appreciably. Roanoke, with its strong downtown refurbishing activity, its recent or projected alterations to three of the four existing malls, and the movement of the bulldozers over the red clay of the old Huff Farm, finds itself in the sweet position of being able to follow both paths concurrently and fully.

There is a feel of quivering energy and good fortune about the simultaneous blossoming of downtown and the 1-581 / Hershberger quadrangle, with its hotel/motel construction, it’s exploding shopping section and its airport runway extension. Roanoke is truly in a best-of-both-worlds situation.

Valley View Mall will glitteringly affirm that “best world.” With five anchoring department stores, three separate court areas and 110 to 120 ancilliary shops, the mall will be in number of stores and shops “at least as big as any in Virginia,” according to Faison.

With about 890,000 square feet of gross leasable area (GLA)—which excludes common areas and parking—the mall ranks at the mid-range of the regional category for malls, second only to the increasingly rare super-regionals, which have one million or more square feet of GLA. Nationwide there are about 290 super-regionals and about 265 regionals. So Valley View is in the 97 th percentile of malls in the nation.

And many of the super-regional monsters—topped by the 2.6 million square-foot Woodfield Mall in Illinois—are in the process of becoming relics in the industry. Of the top ten U.S. malls by size—only two of which are in the East—seven were built in the 1950s or 60s, and only one was completed after 1976. These giant malls parallel the heavy, high-finned sedans of the same era—both are cumbersome behemoths whose sheer size, energy consumption and casual use of space have fallen behind the trends in both industries toward downsized, efficient quality. If the nearly square-mile mall of 1967 is an over-muscled, gas-hungry Buick of the same year, then Valley View Mall may well be the smooth, efficient Mercedes 500 SEL of 1985.

ARCHITECTURE

The design of Valley View, in terms of entrance-egress, the positioning of the anchors, the retail presentation and the very feel of the space, comes in large part from the mind of Berlin-born architect and sculptor Alfred Kloke of Katzman, Kloke Associates in Rowayton, Connecticut. Kloke, who over the past 30 years has designed 20 malls of regional size or larger (including River Ridge in Lynchburg), views the American mall as an ever-evolving, vital process, and speaks of its planning and design with a breadth of knowledge which for most of us does not extend beyond the planning of the back yard garden plot.

“Shopping centers got too tunnel-like for a time,” he says, “to the extent that both physical and mental fatigue were caused for the shopper. What we’re seeing now is a strong trend toward the community in a mall, where you have more food and cine-ma and activity, and a stronger feel of the past.

“Valley View conveys those senses of the past and community through its courts. The west court has a Victorian look, with its wrought iron and marble. The east court is entirely different, with polished chrome, contemporary pole lighting, and a modern fountain.

“The attempt is to break things up into sections, in order to allow the shopper to know where he is, to avoid the tunnel appearance in what is basically a straight mall, and to create an atmosphere consistent with the shops in each part of the center.”

The ceiling of the mall will feature large skylights—domed above the center court and geometric over the east and west courts and exposes trusses, to build a sense of older structures.

“Twenty years ago this architecture would have appeared unfinished to the American eye,” says Kloke. “Now, with the trend toward renovation of old downtown buildings and leaving parts exposed, the visible trusses achieve a pleasing charm which carries a subtle message of downtown and community. Valley View will be a community.”

RETAILERS. James Culpepper IV, vice president for leasing at Faison As- sociates, is busy filling that community with retail tenants.

“We’ve had an overwhelming response nationally and regionally,” he says, “and excellent response from local merchants. At least 20 percent of the tenants will be local, and that percentage would be higher if it included those which began locally but have now become regional.

“We’re well ahead of our leasing time table,” says Culpepper, who exudes an unmistakable excitement about Valley View. “The five anchors are set, we have a six- theater commitment from General Cinema Corporation, and we’re moving well with the others.” The mall was about 65 percent leased as of March 1.

Culpepper emphasizes that Faison Associates doesn’t take every store that applies. “We screen thoroughly,” he says. “We want tenants who will be there in five years and who will be doing well in five years. We look at experience, financial stability and past volume. We want everyone who goes in to succeed.”

Culpepper agrees with Kloke’s view that slight downsizing in malls is a strong current trend. “And one big reason is that merchants now make much better use of their space. A store that used 10,000 square feet years ago is now showing even more merchandise in 6,000. The statues and mills and dead spaces are all gone. We want retailers who do it well and small.”

The core of that retail strength is made up by the five anchors. Culpepper expresses pride in the fact that four of the five will be transferring stores into Valley View. Sears will close its Williamson Road store; Miller and Rhoads and Leggett will close Roanoke-Salem Plaza stores, and J.C. Penney will leave its Crossroads site. The only real newcomer will be Thalhimer’s.

And the anchors will be new, modern stores. Sears, for example, will put in an “A” store—its complete-line, state-of-the-art outlet. Of the 14 stores the firm will complete nationwide in 1984, seven will be “A” stores. The Roanoke store will also be a “store of the future,” meaning that it will be “Sears, but different,”according to Mary Strahlendorf, regional spokesperson. “Merchandising will be presented in entirely new ways, and computerization will make shopping easier for the customer.” The 152,000 square-foot store will be one of the largest in the eastern region for Sears, and the largest in the Valley.

Culpepper says that access to the stores is another major factor in the success of a mall. “Valley View will have two levels, and there will be parking on two levels. There will be two major access areas on each level, in addition to department store entrances. You’ll be able to get in and out without a long walk.”

TRADE AREA.

If Faison Associates’ projections for the Valley View trade area—where its customers will come from—run true, then for many that short walk will be at the end of a long drive from Southwest Virginia or Southern West Virginia. The trade area is divided into primary, secondary and tertiary markets, with the primary area being the Roanoke metropolitan area with Craig County tacked on. These are people within a 15- to 30-minute drive who have the potential to do all of their mall shopping at Valley View. This core of shoppers is made up of 225,000 people who have an effective buying income of about $2.5 billion.

The secondary trade area, bordered generally by Narrows and Pulaski to the southwest,Ferrum to the south, Bedford to the east and Lexington and Clifton Forge to the north, will pull from an additional 265,000 people with an effective buying income of $2.1 billion. These are the shoppers who will gather two or three friends, once or twice a month, and make a day of it in Roanoke. The secondary trade area gives the mall its true regional status, and these shoppers will send Roanoke even higher in its already surprisingly high national ranking for per-household retail sales.

Currently, the Roanoke Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) ranks at number 173 for population among 323 MSAs nationally, and at number 211 for median household income. But even without Valley View the Roanoke MSA ranks 56th for retail sales per household, an indication that the area already has a significant identity as a shopping center for Southwest Virginia and Southern West Virginia. The secondary-area shoppers will pump even more out-of-town dollars into the Roanoke economy.

The tertiary trade area, from which the Wilson family traveled to Roanoke, reaches well into West Virginia and almost to the Tennessee and North Carolina borders at the southwest corner of Virginia. Shoppers from these areas will shop less often but will be inclined to buy more each time. They may well stay overnight or longer in Roanoke, and include in their stay a trip downtown to the Market, a drive along the Parkway, a night at a civic center event, and a visit to a Valley law firm, hospital or financial institution. These shoppers will affirm and dvance the regional status of the mall and the market.

The coming of Valley View is still more than a year away, but the first edges of its implications to this area are beginning to be felt. Much as the coming of Center in the Square in 1983 had a coalescing effect on the arts and culture in Roanoke, the opening of Valley View will present a parallel process for the area’s commerce. With an immediate impact of 1,500 new jobs for Roanokers—out of a total of about 2,000 in the mall as a whole—and an estimated $3 million per year in new tax revenues for the city, Valley View will inject a major dose of good economic medicine. In this area, 1,500 jobs change the unemployment index by a full one-and-a-half percentage points.

And beyond the important fiscal transfusion is the far broader view—the synergism of a new and verified identity for both the I-581/Hershberger Quadrangle and Roanoke as a whole. In the Valley’s role as shopping center for the coal corner of the Commonwealth, the Airport interchange will be the hub of the hub, the core of a new commercial era for the Valley, wherein airplane flights are frequent and filled, hotels and motels have all the convention and banquet trade they can accommodate, and the green and glistening new retail palace brims with bright displays of the goods that Southwest Virginia looks to Roanoke to provide.

SIDEBAR
Valley View Mall: A Chronology

Spring, 1976: Developer Henry Faison notices the Huff Farm site on a flight to Roanoke on other business.

February 7, 1978: First public mention of the possiblity of development on the land. March 15, 1978: Faison Associates requests rezoning of the property. April 5, 1978: Roanoke City Planning Commission votes 6-0 to rezone the property for commercial use.

June 22, 1978: Thalhimer’s is first to announce its intention to put a store in the mall. The 150,000 square-foot store is projected to be the largest in the valley.

December 15, 1978: Citizens’ Environ-mental Council of the Roanoke Valley files suit citing the rezoning as “arbitrary and capricious” and in violation of the city charter.

January 11, 1979: Airline safety question first raised by Sam Garrison, Roanoke lawyer.

March 15, 1979: Rezoning suit dismissed by Judge Jack B. Coulter.

May 15, 1979: The name “Valley View” is announced.

November 8, 1979: Miller and Rhoads announces plans for a 140,000-square foot store.

April 18, 1980: A single-engine plane makes an emergency landing on the Huff Farm.

June 19,1980: Tanglewood Mall, Inc. files suit, charging that the City of Roanoke conspired with Faison Associates to illegally rezone the Huff Farm site. July 13, 1981: Judge Jack B. Coulter upholds the rezoning and dismisses the Tanglewood Mall suit.

July 23,1981: Tanglewood Mall appeals to the Virginia Supreme Court.

July 24, 1981: Faison Associates announces intent to buy the Huff Farm.
November 9, 1981: State Highway Department awards $420,000 contract for storm drains on Hershberger Road — first contract related to Valley View.

March 2, 1983: Virginia Supreme Court upholds rezoning.

August 22, 1983: Mayor Noel Taylor and developer Henry Faison are in attendance as ground is broken for Valley View Mall.

December 29,1983: Sears announces plans for a 152,248 square-foot store in the mail.Store will be the largest in the Valley.

March 1, 1984: Faison Associates announces plans to develop 50 acres next to the Valley View site— to include a hotel, a restaurant, offices, and financial tenants.

SIDEBAR
581 AND HERSHBERGER RD
Roanoke’s Gold Quadrangle

While Valley View Mall cannot be: characterized as any less than a significant chunk of the iceburg in the development of the 1-581/Hershberger cloverleaf area, it is also clearly not the only ingredient in the current economic boom around that intersection. Estimates are that up to $ 150 million in development is currently underway in the area, which is the approximate center of the Valley’s population.

“The 1-581/Hershberger area is close if not the top area for development in the southeastern U.S. today.” says Bob Mills, president of Area Development Corporation of Richmond, developers of the outlet mall on Hershberger. “With the interstate there, the proximity to the airport, the hotel/motel construction and the shopping centers, you have a tremendous amount occurring in one location. And it’s a trade area with a huge draw.”

Henry Faison, developer of Valley View, obviously agrees. He recently announced plans for the construction of offices, a restaurant, a hotel, and space for financial institutions. This brings to 130 the total acreage under development by Faison. He originally purchased 140 acres and about 80 of that will be taken by Valley View, with another 10 to be used by roads, slopes and ponds.

“Valley View serves as the catalyst for the area,” says Faison. “But that location is so good that it would have happened anyway. Valley View just accelerated it.”

There is still prime land to be developed according to Roanoke lawyer Jim Douthat. “There are several tracts that were bought up 10 years ago by T.D. Steele. Billy Branch and Maury Strauss,” says Douthat. “Those are three people of no small vision. They saw what would happen at that intersection. It’s flat, it’s in the center of the Valley and it’s accessible.”

Here is an overview of other activity around the 1-581/Hershberger area.

• The Roanoke Airport Marriott is under construction and will open in the fall with 255 guest rooms and 12,000 square feet of meeting and banquet space.

• The Celebration Station outlet mall, a $6 million, 132.000 square-foot center across Hershberger from Valley View, will also open in the fall.

• Best Products has sold nine acres behind its Hershberger Road retail store to the owners of K&W Cafeterias, according to a Roanoke City official, and there will apparently be a new restaurant built by the chain.

• U-Haul, directly across from Best, has requested rezoning in order to build 278 mini-warehouses behind its retail operation.

• Prudential Life Insurance Co., owners of Crossroads Mall, is planning a major facelift for that center.

• New industry continues to settle around the airport. In January John C. Nordt and Co. began operations in a $2 million building on Coulter Drive, and the firm is already considering expansion of the building within the next two to three years. Airport manager Robert Poole says there is additional land available for industrial development in the airport vicinity.

• The $ 14 million airport improvements project is now well into its second phase— the construction of the runway extension, with major parking lot improvements to follow.

• American Motor Inns plans a lower- cost alternative to complement its Airport Sheraton, in the form of a new 128-room motel next to the existing Inn.

• Other developments in the works or planning stages: The old JC Penney auto repair building will probably become a family-style restaurant… Steve’s Hotdogs is looking for a new location … New movie theatres are tentatively planned for the acreage behind Hardee’s at Hershberger and Ferncliff… It is likely that a new Bojangles will go up in the area.

SIDEBAR
The Quotable Henry Faison

Henry J. Faison. 49, is president of Faison Associates of Charlotte, the developers of Valley View Mall. He is a graduate of Davidson College and holds an MBA from the University of Virginia. Faison Associates is one of the largest development companies in the Southeast and is currently ranked 40 th in the U.S. for total gross leasable area under management (7.8 million square feet), according to National Mall Monitor. The firm has built about 65 malls. Development projects are currently underway in Richmond, Charleston, West Virginia, Jacksonville, Florida, and Charlotte, in addition to Roanoke, with a total of more than $900 million in those projects. Faison is robustly opinionated on all aspects of the Valley View development. Here are a few of his views.

On The Roanoke Valley … “You have good government, a strong work force, lots of available energy, and good transportation access. I’m bullish on Southwest Virginia. The next 10 years will be far better than the past 10.”

On The Suits to Stop Valley View … “There was never a doubt we’d win. The suits were specious—ridiculous. But, then, that kind of attempt goes with the territory. Some people simply don’t like competition.”
On The Potential Over-mailing of Roanoke … “Just ask Thalhimer’s, which is now part of the Carter-Hawley-Hale chain. Or ask Miller and Rhoads, which is owned by Allied. You just don’t see multi-billion dollar corporations investing in something that isn’t needed or isn’t going to work.

” On Overmalling, Take Two . . . “ Roanoke shoppers are voting with their feet at River Ridge in Lynchburg. Eight to 10 percent of that Mall’s business comes from Roanoke. And that’s simply because the Valley doesn’t have a modern mall yet.”

On Downtown Roanoke . . . “Valley View will operate in concert with downtown. People who come to Roanoke to shop Valley View will also use Roanoke’s banks and accountants and doctors and lawyers and hospitals. And those who come primarily for those services will go to the mall as well. There’s a vibrancy to downtown. Roanoke is a helluva town.”

On Mall Design … “We’ve made strong use of large trees for eight or 10 years now. The vegetation, benches, sculpture and fountains are an art form in themselves, designed to create a comfortable streetscape in an enclosed environment.

… “A mall is a people place, a happening. From at least one perspective enjoyment and entertainment are primary, and shopping is second. The idea is to create a place that people will enjoy.”

 

Originally published in the March, 1984 issue of The Roanoker