Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 3, 1995 TAG: 9509050013
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: MADELYN ROSENBURG
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
That's 90 days until the Harris Teeter building at Gables Shopping Center is completed.
Not that Rainey has a passion for grocery stores. More, it's a passion for vitality.
Rainey's store, Original Frameworks, is located in Gables - has been for years. He and his wife, Tina, have watched as their neighbors have moved away.
Now, they're watching as the storefronts slowly fill up again. And when Harris Teeter moves in, that should put some life back into the old neighborhood.
"Anything that brings a little more traffic, that helps," Rainey says. "Harris Teeter will be a godsend."
When the grocery store is complete, Gables manager Bob Pack will have only about 10,000 square feet in the center left to fill, out of a possible 136,000.
That's good news to those who have watched what was once Blacksburg's premier (read: "only") shopping center turn into a neglected shell.
The red bricks that construction workers are now stacking outside the Harris Teeter are like new teeth sprouting in the mouth of a second-grader.
Along the strip, store employes talk about what's to come.
Trees - Pack has plans for some 88 trees to be planted this fall, everything from white pines to hackberries.
New lamp poles. New recycling bins.
A Texaco with a convenience store, much like the one on Prices Fork Road in Blacksburg.
An all-around face lift.
"There's a cycle among these malls that were built in the '60s - those are the same malls that are being revitalized now," Pack says. "New fronts, new stores. We're starting all over. You can go to Charlotte (N.C.) and Roanoke and see the same thing."
Pack's father, French, built Gables in the '60s. He sold it in the '80s to a Tennessee developer. The Packs got it back last year after a long string of financial proceedings.
Soon after, things started to pick up.
The YMCA Thrift Shop moved in last February and already has seen a slew of new customers in its expanded location.
Wheelchairs can fit in the aisles now, manager Janice Sherman explains, and a number of retirees have started frequenting the shop. College students visit just as often as they used to, probably more.
Employees at the Y shop are hearing - and enjoying - compliments from the surrounding community. "What we're hearing is they're so glad to see somebody in here and the revitalization," Sherman says.
Advanced Auto - which Pack considers an anchor store - opened in the spring. With it came a sign near the road, the likes of which this part of Main Street hasn't seen for a while. "Now Open," it says.
An absence of such anchor stores - like Leggett - makes things hard on the mom-and-pop stores, Pack says. Somehow, The Music Shop and the Raineys' frame shop stuck it out.
So did better-known stores like Sears, Expert Tire and the ABC store.
Pack is planning a grand opening for the entire center in the spring. It could take Harris Teeter until March to get the store stocked and the people trained, he says.
"The only negative I see - and I'll happily take it - is the parking," Jay Rainey said.
No more spaces right outside his store, he laments. And hopes.
|n n| There's a question Pack has been asked again and again and we might as well address it here:
Why did the contractors pull up everything - particularly the floor - before they started building Harris Teeter?
The 51,700 square feet of space actually includes the guts of several different stores, Pack explains. An old shoe store. Part of a drug store. And of course, Leggett. The floors in each of those shops were built on slightly different levels, though that was probably not discernible to shoppers.
"And for a grocery store, you have to have it all one level," Pack says. "People thought I was crazy."
Madelyn Rosenberg is The Roanoke Times' assistant New River editor.
by CNB