Richmond Business & Commercial News

Today's Grand Opening at White Oak Village (pictures, too!)

Today was the big day for the Shops at White Oak Village!  The eagerly anticipated shopping center was formally introduced to the community this morning, and while the line of speakers patting each other on the back for a job well done was the agenda for the event (and well deserved!), the important news is that this is not your typical shopping center.

Every developer says that their shopping center is unique, but this time it was proven.  Not only was the environment taken highly into consideration in the construction and build-out, but the way the traffic is controlled and the landscaping is done lends to a very pedestrian-friendly environment.

Then again, this is the same developer that did Short Pump Town Center and that was a new style for the area, too.  I have to say that it is refreshing to see that there are developers doing such high quality work and not just churning out the same strip mall over and over again.

UPDATE #4: White Oak Village

Lately I have seen a flood of inquiries for information on the newest addition of shops in the East End of Richmond -- The Shops at White Oak Village.  From all of the internet traffic, it is easy to believe that this shopping center will be a huge hit.

With the GRAND OPENING occurring this Monday, October 13, it is an appropriate time to revisit the project and see how everything stands for the public unveiling.  All of the shops that were revealed in the previous post (3/27/08) have been confirmed, plus quite a few more.  Take a look at this page of the official website for the directory of shops.

Several comments from the previous post called for a fitness center, a Chipotle, and a movie theater.  Unfortunately, it doesn't seem as though any of those are on board yet -- except that there is a Qdoba scheduled to open right away!

There is a grand opening event on Monday that I will be attending, so I will be sure to report back with my impression of the overall project and see if I can bend the ear of an insider to find out about any other hot pieces of info to share! 

Be sure to check back next week for the update, or just subscribe using your feed reader or by typing your email address in the "subscribe" box under my picture along the left hand side of this window (be sure to confirm your address when the service sends you their email).  If there is anything else you would like for me to find out, leave a comment and I'll see what I can do!

(In the meantime, take a look back through the other updates for this project on this blog:  5/15/07 and 6/15/06)

UPDATE: The Shops at White Oak Village

Since there have been so many inquiries to my blog regarding The Shops at White Oak Village (see previous entries on the subject from 5/15/07 and 6/15/06), I thought it was time for an update.  Considering the time between each posting on the shopping center development, maybe I should consider labeling this as an annual update...

Now there is an official website for the project, and there are confirmed tenants listed:

• Circuit City (I suppose it will be one of the new "The City" stores)
• Hyatt Place
• JCPenney
• Lowe's
• PetSmart
• Red Lobster
• Sam's Club
• Target
• Ukrop's

Here's a factoid that I knew but had forgotten -- the developer for The Shops at White Oak Village is the same developer that put together Short Pump Town Center and River Lofts at Tobacco Row, Forest City Enterprises.  Of course, given the confirmed tenant mix so far, White Oak will be a very different shopping center than Short Pump is.  That doesn't mean it won't be a good mix, just that it will be different -- hopefully different in the way that reflects the needs and wants of the surrounding demographics.

It looks as though the project is still on target for a grand opening in Fall 2008, but we'll keep an eye out for any updates to that -- and maybe another update before a full year passes...

[EDIT (10/13/08): Click here for the latest update on the Shops at White Oak Village.]

[EDIT (10/31/08): Click here for pictures and a post about the grand opening today!]

Latest Plans for the Boulevard

A short but very interesting article in this morning's RTD discusses the redevelopment plans for the area around the Diamond on Boulevard.  The focus of the article was more on the deadline yesterday for developers to submit their bids on the project, but I found the details of the City's plans for the area to be more interesting than the names of the developers

(Although, it is interesting that Douglas Development Corp. has bid on the project.  That's the firm owned by Douglas Jemal.  They are firmly entrenched in DC and Maryland, and have been buying up properties downtown over the past couple of years.)

Per the advertised qualifications for the bids, the City has outlined their vision of the redevelopment:

• a new 8,000-seat baseball stadium closer to I-95 -- When I first read that,  I couldn't imagine it being very much closer than the Diamond is now, but it could be moved back towards the I-95 South entrance ramp.
• redevelopment of the Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control headquarters, perhaps to include the relocation of the Richmond Coliseum to this site
• demolish the Diamond, using the 27-acre site for a mixed-use development
• demolish the city maintenance complex, resulting in another 27-acre site for redevelopment
• build a parking deck beside the Arthur Ashe Center

It will be interesting to see it all move forward, and to see the renderings that the chosen developer presents.  If anyone has further insight on the project, I would love to hear more!

Chesterfield Town Center gets facelift

The former movie-theater at Chesterfield Town Center is finally being redone, with the move of Barnes & Noble from across the street, the opening of a new Red Robin Gourmet Burgers, and a brand new Coldwater Creek retail store.  In addition, the mall's owners will be updating the front of the mall that faces Huguenot Road.

(see "Renovation for Chesterfield mall" from the RTD for the source story)

Cinemas, Cinemas....Everywhere!

There's a recent growth spurt in the cinema sector here in Richmond lately, or at least in the plans for new cinemas.  In today's RTD, "Lease signed for cineplex" lays out the plans for Regal Cinemas to open a 16-screen digital theater complex at Westchester Commons, at the intersection of 288 and Midlothian Turnpike.

As I'm counting (and I may be missing a theater or two, please chime in if you know of one that I've missed!), that makes four either announced or opened within the past year. 

The others that I know are:

• Regal's 16-screen cineplex at Southpark Mall, which opened in July 2007
• "Movieland" at Boulevard Square (the old Richmond Steel facility)
• unknown branding or official naming, but the location is at the corner of Mechanicsville Turnpike and Creighton Road -- across Creighton from the Kroger/American Family shopping center

And of course, each of these cineplexes have the accompanying retail and sometimes residential component coming along with them. 

In the case of the Westchester Commons theater, it is part of a much larger development being developed by Zaremba Group, Watkins Center, which will contain more than a million SF of retail space, 1,600 residential units, and 2 million SF of office space (per Zaremba's website).  The entire development is scheduled to be open for business in spring of 2009.  Here are the plans for Westchester Commons, as supplied by Zaremba Group.

UPDATE: New Shopping Center in East Henrico

More information has been released and has been reported by the RTD regarding the plans for The Shops at White Oak Village.  With all of the comparisons to local area shopping malls, I thought this was going to be a "lifestyle center" like Stony Point Fashion Park or Short Pump Town Center.

The article in the RTD ("Sam's, Penney plan new stores") from this past Friday, however, highlighted a number of the stores going into the shopping center planned to open in latter part of 2008 near the Laburnum Avenue exit off of I-64 (the one in the East End, not Northside).  These are not your typical "mall" stores, but more like one of these big box strip centers (a la the strip centers that pop up around the big shopping malls).

Target, Lowe's, Ukrop's, Sam's Club, and J.C. Peney have all been confirmed as new tenants.  The site is 136 acres, and is planned to house a total of 913,606 square feet of retail, as well as a 150-room hotel.  Other possible tenants (not confirmed) are Red Lobster, Circuit City, Panera Bread and Ruby Tuesday.

June 2007 is the expected start date for construction.

UPDATE: "Chippenham Place" (Cloverleaf Mall)

Last week, the Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors approved Crosland's initial plans for the redevelopment of Cloverleaf Mall.  The plans include at least 500 residential units and 200,000 SF of commercial space.

From an older report, the outparcels that have been consistently active will remain, and Kroger has signed on to build out their largest store yet in the Richmond-metro area.

This certainly sounds like it is moving along nicely, and it will help the area turn around after years of decline.

For a more thorough report of the announcement, read "Cloverleaf's Newest 'Place'" on Richmond.com.  Here is a clip from that article that I found gives us some insight on the timeframe we are looking at for the redevelopment:

“It’s not unrealistic for a project of this size to be absorbed over a period of four years perhaps even until build out,” [James Downs, vice president for Crosland’s retail division] said. “The commercial component, however, we see moving forward immediately.”

(For previous posts about this topic, see Something's Moving at Cloverleaf Mall on 12-28-06)

Something's Moving at Cloverleaf Mall

This bit of news slipped by me when it hit the RTD a couple of weeks ago, but thanks to the Chamber of Commerce pointing it out I'm all up to date! 

After a long period of silence about the status of Cloverleaf Mall, there is movement.  In January, Chesterfield County officials expect to have a signed purchase agreement from Crosland Inc., who will be redeveloping the site.  The buyers have been involved since May 2006, and have several versions of a proposal that calls for redeveloping the aged mall into a mixed-use development.

Several plans have been proposed since Chesterfield purchased the property in 2004, all of which include a "pedestrian-friendly community that blends residential and business components".  The county has said that it will be subsidizing the redevelopment, in order to make it work.

Effects of VA Sales Tax Holiday

The sales tax holiday here in Virginia had a great turnout this past weekend.

For those of you who don't know, an annual sales tax holiday was approved by the General Assembly to begin in 2006, being held on the first full weekend in August.  Only certain items are exempt from the sales tax (per the Virginia Department of Taxation website):

During Virginia's Sales Tax Holiday, purchases of school supplies selling for $20 or less per item, and articles of clothing, including footwear, selling for $100 or less per item, will be exempt from sales tax. All retailers selling these items MUST participate in the Sales Tax Holiday. Sales tax exemptions do not apply to items selling for more than the amounts listed.

For items that are not exempted, retailers had the option to pay the sales tax themselves.  Many local retailers exercised this option, and used it for a great promotion.

Of course, everyone loves saving money.  This weekend (the sales tax holiday ran all day Friday, through midnight on Sunday) proved to be very successful for area retailers.  It looked like Christmas-time in the shopping mall parking lots.

The Richmond Times-Distpatch reported that Wal-mart benefitted quite a bit, with the "sales of boys and girls apparel...[rising] more than 200 percent at Richmond-area stores".

It's good to hear that the super discount retailer did well, but I was really more interested to hear how the independent retailers fared.  From reports from the Retail Merchants Association, they did well, too: "31 percent of the retailers surveyed said their sales jumped 30 percent or more."