Lake Wylie Walmart slates opening date

The new Walmart supercenter in the Clover-Lake Wylie area - at 175 S.C. 274, near the S.C. 49 intersection - is tentatively scheduled to open September 15, the company says.

The store is seeking full- and part-time employees and recently opened a hiring center in preparation for the debut, in the Lake Wylie Business Centre at 252 Latitude Lane. It's open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays. The majority of employees will start work next month, Walmart says.

The Lake Wylie store is one of two Walmarts scheduled to open in the coming months in Charlotte's South Carolina suburbs, as the world's largest retailer continues to expand its local presence. A new store on U.S. 521 in Indian Land, in Lancaster County, just south of the Ballantyne area, is expected to open around the same time.

Mountain Island Walmart holds grand reopening

Major renovations continue to ripple across area Walmarts, with the latest overhaul set to be unveiled tomorrow (Friday) at the Mountain Island location, at N.C. 16 and Mount Holly-Huntersville Road in Charlotte.

The store will mark the completion of the three-month project with a ceremony at 10 a.m., plus free samples and demos from vendors. As with other remodeled Walmarts, the Mountain Island store will sport the retailing giant's latest look, with a new layout, wider aisles, brighter colors, new signage and lower-profile shelving for improved sightlines.

The electronics department has more than doubled in size, reflecting the company's increased push to gain market share in that area, and will offer a more hands-on experience, with interactive Blu-Ray, video game and portable electronics displays. The store will also house an improved digital photo lab with banner and poster printing capabilities, as well as a new department called Celebration Station, featuring party supplies. The pharmacy will have a completely new format, the company said.

The outside has also been spruced up, with a new paint scheme and signage, a restriped parking lot and an expanded garden center. The store employs about 400, including about 45 positions added as a result of the renovations. 

The West Gastonia Walmart also recently wrapped up a revamp, and work is under way at the East Franklin Boulevard location in Gastonia, which is on track for a July completion.

New-look Walmarts on the way

Walmart's expansion in the Charlotte area marches on - as passers-by have seen firsthand on U.S. 521 in Indian Land, S.C., just over the state line, south of Ballantyne. The new supercenter going up there is slated for an August grand opening, the company says, for inquiring minds who might wish to know. 

But the world's largest retailer isn't standing pat on its existing locations, either, some of which have begun to look more dated on the inside compared with newer layouts. At least two local supercenters are now undergoing major overhauls, and others are likely to follow, as part of a nationwide renovation effort slated to hit 70 percent of the company's U.S. stores by the end of 2012. The effort is intended to boost returns at existing stores by introducing the latest store designs, which are based on customer feedback.

Work is now in progress at the Mountain Island Walmart, at N.C. 16 and Mount Holly-Huntersville Road in Charlotte, and the West Gastonia location on N. Myrtle School Road. At Mountain Island, the work is expected to wrap up in June, while the Gastonia store is aiming for a May finish. The stores are remaining open during construction, the bulk of which will be done in overnight hours. Improvements include a new layout, wider aisles, low-profile shelving, bright interior paint schemes, enhanced lighting and easy-to-read signage - the very things you'll also see in the newest Walmarts locally, such as the store on Thunder Road near Concord Mills.

Rug and furniture store opening in old Kannapolis Target

Asheville-based Rug & Home is fond of interstate highways. How fond? If you've driven along I-85 or I-4o in recent memory, you've surely seen the retailer's billboards, touting its stores and, naturally, the highway exits - in Asheville and Gaffney, S.C. - at which you can find them. Now, Charlotte residents can expect to see even more roadside ads popping up, because Rug & Home this month is opening its third store, in a former Target in Kannapolis. It's at 3333 Cloverleaf Parkway - in other words, and as signs will surely blare, I-85 exit 58.

Rug & Home Wholesale Outlet, as it'll be called, is set to sell rugs, furniture, accents, artwork and home accessories and decor. At 96,000 square feet, it will be the company's largest store; Target vacated the property when it opened a new SuperTarget at Afton Ridge shopping center, a couple of exits south on I-85, in the fall of 2006.

The store will employ between 45 and 50 part- and full-time workers and is slated to open soon, though a spokeswoman said the date was not yet finalized. A grand opening will take place April 23. 

Rug & Home spent upwards of $500,000 renovating the building, with work that included lighting redesign, the addition of hardwood floors in some areas and painting and restoring the facade, chief operating officer Aanchal Agarwal said in a news release. "We were looking at the Charlotte market for a long time," she said. "Kannapolis' close distance to Charlotte's city center and Greensboro, along with the opportunity it presented us to renovate and occupy the abandoned Target building, proved the perfect fit for us."

The project received three years of incentive grants from the city of Kannapolis, according to the Cabarrus Economic Development Corp. They equal 85 percent of the new taxes generated by the company, projected to be just over $9,000.

Owners Rakesh and Dolly Agarwal, Aanchal's parents, founded Rug & Home in 1994. The other stores draw from about a 100-mile radius, the company said.

Best Buy does the Independence shuffle

You can soon add Best Buy to the list of retailers that have moved farther out on Independence Boulevard - away from downtown and into Matthews, leaving behind a potentially empty box at an older shopping center. 

The electronics store currently at Independence Square, 7421 E. Independence Blvd. in Charlotte (pictured at right), is slated to relocate to the former Circuit City at Sycamore Commons, 2185 Matthews Township Parkway at Independence Boulevard in Matthews, where a grand opening is scheduled for April 23. It will be the second time this year Best Buy will be pulling up stakes for a space last occupied by its erstwhile rival: The Best Buy at University Place moved to the former Circuit City at Concord Mills a couple of months ago. 

The Sycamore Commons space is roughly four miles away and newer than the Independence store, which according to property records was built in 1987. And it's also situated in a shopping center full of familiar big-box brethren, including Michaels, Dick's Sporting Goods, Bed Bath & Beyond and Old Navy. In fact, Circuit City itself had relocated there from a stretch of Independence near the existing Best Buy.

The loss will likely be a blow for Independence Square, one of many shopping centers along closer-in stretches of Independence Boulevard stung by the departure of big-name tenants. The shopping center is owned by Kimco Realty, which has not yet responded to a request for more information; the Best Buy building appears to be owned separately, by a lawyer in West Virginia. Over the years the center has also lost Michaels and CVS, and the Bi-Lo there closed a little more than a year ago. As those tenants left, more discount-oriented stores have moved in, leaving Best Buy in less familiar company. In that context and given the history of big boxes on Independence, every time I drove by the Best Buy, I got the feeling its days were numbered. Sure enough, they now are. International grocery store Super Global Market, or Super G, is filling the Bi-Lo vacancy. 

The Best Buy space opened as a branch of the now-defunct Lechmere electronics chain and later housed a SportsTown store. Best Buy opened there in 1994 and, like the University store, was one of the chain's first locations in the Carolinas, according to Observer archives. 

Sparser times at shopping center central

My esteemed colleague Kerry Singe and I ventured forth yesterday to the International Council of Shopping Centers' annual Carolinas IdeaExchange, a daylong get-together for retailers, developers and others in the shopping center business to network and learn. I visited the event for the first time two years ago, and upon arrival was handed a hefty spiral-bound book listing attendees and sessions such as "It Will Be Fine in '09, But What Is My Fate For '08?" This year's conference directory, by contrast, was a much smaller, stapled packet, with fewer sponsors listed - so, in other words, it was yet more evidence of the recession's toll on the retail industry.

Two years ago, a sea of exhibition booths took up an entire, expansive room at the Charlotte Convention Center. Not in 2010: Attendees we spoke to said they saw about half as many exhibitors as in the boom days, and fewer people in attendance, too. A number of the new shopping centers that display boards and brochures promoted two years ago still didn't appear to have progressed very far, if at all, and more signs than before touted opportunities to fill empty big boxes. Still, the room was thick with professionally dressed men and women shaking hands, chatting and exchanging business cards. As we circulated up and down the aisles, we overheard snippets of conversation about weathering the downturn, both rueful and optimistic. DJ Wight, president of Retail Lease Trac, a database company that helps landlords find retailers looking to expand, noted that while attendance might be lower this year, he had actually been doing more deals than in 2009 and 2008; he had the impression that those left in the business are more serious and less likely to be simply dabbling or speculating than those who dove in during the boom.

Another trend: Discount retailers and fast food chains have proven relatively resilient in the recession, and they abounded in the exposition booths, looking for new opportunities. Big Lots, Dollar Tree, Family Dollar, Burger King, McDonald's, Subway, Sonic and Cato were represented, among others. 

Speaking of shopping centers: If you have one you're wondering about, in terms of vacancies, redevelopment or other issues, let us know and we'll do our best to check in on it. 

Are big-box vacancies filling in?

The new Ollie's Bargain Outlet opening tomorrow in Matthews is just the latest instance of a curious and fairly recent trend that likely isn't unique to Charlotte: New retailers filling in big-box (or, at least medium-box) space left vacant by bankruptcies a year or so ago, when the exits of Circuit City, Linens-n-Things, Goody's and Steve & Barry's left about 25 big ol' voids in shopping centers across the region.

Now, at least six of those spaces have either welcomed a new tenant or soon will. The new Ollie's, for instance, is in the former Linens-n-Things at Matthews Corners, 2308 Matthews Township Parkway, near Independence Boulevard. Another branch of Pennsylvania-based Ollie's will contribute to the pattern, too, opening in April in the former Goody's in Mooresville. Other recent examples include the new Big Lots in the former Circuit City on University City Boulevard and the Nordstrom Rack slated to open in 2011 in the former Circuit City at Carolina Pavilion on South Boulevard, near Interstate 485. (Ollie's also moved into the old Goody's shown above, on U.S. 70 in Hickory.)

You'll notice that most of the incoming retailers have something in common beyond the type of space they're occupying: They're discount stores, about the only kind of retail chain growing in the current environment. Fueled by bargain-hungry shoppers, such stores are taking advantage of the depressed real estate market to grab locations that weren't available before, and you can see the effects across the local landscape. Though they almost certainly aren't paying as much in rent as the previous tenants did, the new arrivals still bring benefits to the shopping centers, giving consumers more options and helping landlords by paying rent and attracting traffic that will spill over to neighboring tenants.

At least in one case, though, a move to fill a vacant big box simply perpetuated the retail hopscotch that's left gaps across the region for years: Best Buy last month closed its store on J.W. Clay Boulevard in University City to move to a much more visible location at Concord Mills, leaving behind an empty space just down the plaza from, yes, another empty space, a former Walmart that shut down when a new supercenter opened on North Tryon Street last June.

On a related note: It appears that a new tenant is also headed for the former Toys R Us at 6070 E. Independence Boulevard, next to an old Circuit City that's now a carpet store. Kaplan College, which offers career-oriented associate degree and diploma programs targeted at nontraditional students who need a flexible schedule, is currently overhauling the building and plans to open in the space in the late spring or early summer, spokeswoman Abby Hunt said. It's part of the Kaplan company also widely known for its test preparation offerings, but those won't be available at the roughly 30,000-square-foot Independence Boulevard site, she said. It will be the first Kaplan College in North Carolina; there are about 70 nationwide. The Toys R Us closed in early 2006, and the year before played a role in a bizarre crime story that illustrates another potential use for empty big boxes: A prison escapee was discovered living in the then-vacant Circuit City next door, living off of items he stole from the Toys R Us.

Speaking of Ollie's: The Matthews branch of the closeout chain opens at 10 a.m. Wednesday. CEO Mark Butler will be there, and Hall of Fame pitcher (and N.C. native) Gaylord Perry will be signing autographs and meeting with fans. Beginning at 8:30, 250 tickets will be given out on a first-come, first-served basis for the Perry meet-and-greet; ticket holders will also receive a limited-edition Perry card and can get their photo taken with Perry inside the store after the grand opening ceremony. The store opening will also feature live music and refreshments.

Big boxes: Coming to a quaint Christmas village near you!

I’m not sure if this qualifies as art, but it's definitely at least a case of tchotchkes imitating life: After setting up shop and moving in on mom-and-pop merchants across much of the country, at least a couple of major big-box chains are now taking the same approach on a, um, smaller scale. Wal-Mart and the Home Depot, for instance, are selling miniature, ceramic versions of their stores as part of their Christmas village lines, situating themselves amid the quaint homes, churches and Main Street, U.S.A. businesses that generally characterize such offerings. Wal-Mart's little supercenter, which I've spotted in local stores, comes complete with Salvation Army bell-ringers posed in front, while the Home Depot's depicts Christmas trees for sale and festive wreaths on the store doors. And, on its Web site, at least, Sears, which owns Lands’ End, is selling a rustic-looking “Lands’ End Outfitters” and a tool shop selling (of course) Craftsman brand products as part of its Christmas Village array.

In classic big box fashion, the Home Depot and Wal-Mart Christmas village pieces also appear to be aiming to succeed by undercutting the “competition” on price – they’re cheaper than most other comparably-sized pieces in the collection.

So is it a sign of the times? Evidence of the inexorable commercialization of everything? A quirky way to include a store you like in real life in a generally fictionalized, idealized holiday setting? I’m open to the possibilities, not to mention just plain amused.