(We are having some technical difficulties getting the Retail Roundup column loaded to the new roanoke.com, so unfortunately I don’t have a link to the column. When I do I’ll include it in this post.)

Last week you might have read here that Haverty’s furniture store is closing at the end of May. The store’s closure opens up a very large building in a busy retail hub that is mostly built-out and landlocked by the airport, neighborhoods and Interstate 581.

I sought to find out what would happen with the 40,000 square-foot building. I learned from Roger Elkin, of Hall Associates, which is handling the leasing of the building, that the building has not been leased.

Because of its size, it might be split up to accommodate several tenants, Elkin said. There are very few retailers, he said, that need 40,000 square feet.

Elkin expects to see the building leased quickly, and said there has already been interest.

“Valley View is the absolute retail hub of Western Virginia,” he said.

“There are very few spaces like this in the market,” Elkin said. “It’s a really unique property.”

Also in the column, I reported that Freedom First Federal Credit Union is moving its branch at Towers. The current branch is just inside the shopping center on the upper level. The branch is moving a few doors down, to a larger space next to the Verizon store.

A former English teacher-turned-salesman is marrying his two professions by opening a used bookstore in Roanoke’s Wasena neighborhood.

Steve Padgett plans to open The Main Street Bookwormwithin a month, he said.

The small shop sits on Main Street near the Brandon Avenue intersection in a space that is familiar to Padgett.

His mother operated a dog grooming business in the building for 30 years. (The business was sold to Padgett’s aunt, and later his sister, who moved it just down the street where it continues to operate.) The building has been vacant since the grooming business moved.

Padgett and his wife, Penni, are voracious readers, and Padgett said he is frequently called upon by friends to recommend books. Those friends encouraged him to pursue the bookstore.

“I had always wanted to have a bookstore,” he said. “I just finally decided that I’d do it.”

Padgett initially will stock the store mostly with books from his own bookshelves.

“I’ve bought thousands and thousands of dollars’ worth of books over the last few years,” he said.

In addition to fiction and nonfiction, he plans to carry a large selection of children’s books.

Owning a business is new to Padgett, but his work as a teacher and currently as a sales manager forMcNeil Roofing and Sheet Metal has prepared him for owning the bookstore, he said.

Padgett hopes to have the store open soon. He’s already put down new flooring, coated the walls and ceiling with fresh paint and ordered the bookshelves, which are in storage.

Also in Sunday’s Retail Roundup column, a Roanoke County chocolatier is turning her passion for candies into partnerships with other local businesses, and a cabinetry store that started in a Vinton warehouse more than two years ago has moved to Salem where it now has a showroom.

There is still hope that Roanoke will once again see an independent bookstore selling new releases.

Christine Hastings, longtime manager of the former Ram’s Head Book Shop at Towers Shopping Center, is still working toward opening a smaller version of the store that closed more than a year ago.

“I haven’t given up,” Hastings said. “It’s just been a little more challenging than I thought.”

Ram’s Head closed when the store’s founders, John and Lolly Rosemond, decided to retire after 47 years.

Hastings said at the time that she wanted to reopen the store. She began researching the process, but put her plans on hold last fall because she didn’t want to open during the holidays or winter months.

Now she is back to plotting, but her biggest hurdle remains funding, she said. She needs a substantial amount of money to purchase stock, because Ram’s Head’s inventory was liquidated.

If Hastings’ plans come to fruition, she’d like to reopen at Towers, maybe this summer, she said.

She hasn’t decided whether she would keep the Ram’s Head name or go with something slightly different.

Hastings has been working at Too Many Books in Grandin Village and said she still believes there is a market for physical books, and independent bookstores, in the digital age.

Independent bookstores such as Too Many Books, Paperback Exchange and Givens Books, which all sell used volumes, have a better handle on what customers want than chain stores, Hastings said.

Working at Too Many Books has helped her keep in touch with the community’s reading habits, and she’s also noticed that even technology lovers put down their reading tablets in favor of ink on paper.

“There is a place for real books,” she said. “Even people who have Kindles are still using real books.”

Also in the column, the owner of the Ivy Market site in Roanoke is still talking with interested developers, and Salem’s Parkway Brewing Co.’s beers are available at many restaurants in the area. 

An established Roanoke restaurateur plans to open a Mexican-Caribbean eatery this spring in Grandin Village, across the street from his current restaurant.

Rocky Byrd, who with his wife has owned and operatedRockfish Food and Wine on Grandin Road since 2005, will open the new restaurant, Nopales, where Surf ‘n Turf closed in December.

“Grandin Village needs some ethnic food,” Byrd said.

Byrd named the restaurant after a cactus that is found in Mexico and is used in cuisine there.

He lived in Mexico for several years and said he will bring to Roanoke authentic dishes from the Yucatan and Baja peninsulas.

“I know the cuisine, I like it, and I miss it,” he said.

The menu will include dishes such as ceviche and grilled and fried fish tacos.

If Byrd is granted an ABC license, he wants to stock a collection of rum and tequila and sell drinks that call for those liquors. He will also sell beer and wine.

Byrd has been looking for a space to open a Mexican restaurant for several years but was unable to find the right spot until Surf ‘n Turf closed; the former owners cited the economy and rising food prices as reasons for shuttering.

Byrd said he was sad to see the seafood restaurant close, but he plans to transform the interior so that “it won’t be recognizable as Surf ‘n Turf when you walk in here.”

He will, however, use the same kitchen equipment that Surf ‘n Turf left behind.

When the restaurant is open, Byrd plans to continue leading the wine program at Rockfish, but he will otherwise focus on Nopales.

Byrd plans to open Nopales in mid- to late April.

Also in the column, read about how retailers are preparing for Valentine’s Day, and an update on Sixteen West Marketplace.

Tucked away inside a Tanglewood-area shopping center, a high-end speciality clothing store, Frances Kahn, has been serving customers for 30 years.

“We’ve dressed three generations,” said assistant store manager Andrea Dixon, who has been with the company for 27 years, 16 of them at the Roanoke store. Store manager Rose Stavale has worked at the Roanoke store for 25 years.

Frances Kahn opened at Roanoke County’s Grand Pavilion in 1983 following the success of stores in Lynchburg and Danville, where the company was founded. Those stores have since closed. Frances Kahn also has stores in Richmond and Virginia Beach.

The business got its start in 1936, following the worst of the Great Depression. Founders Frances and August Kahn had only enough money to open in the bottom half of a two-story building in downtown Danville. The business slowly grew and expanded, and the couple’s daughter and son-in-law, Lorraine and Nathan Lester, took over in the late 1940s.

Their son, Rusty Lester, joined the family business in 1974 after working at Rich’s Department store in Atlanta. He introduced the store’s customers to names such as Calvin Klein and Perry Ellis.

Lester opened a second Frances Kahn store in Lynchburg in 1977. Many of its customers were Roanokers, prompting the opening of the Roanoke store in 1983. The
Danville store was sold that year.

The Richmond store opened in 1988 and Virginia Beach in 2003.

Stavale, who worked retail on New York City’s famed Seventh Avenue, got to know Lester as a customer at the store where she worked. Disenchanted with New York, she joined Frances Kahn in 1988. Dixon managed the Lynchburg store until it closed in 1996.

The women frequently traveled to New York to attend buyer meetings and returned with knowledge they shared with their staff.

They’ve watched as shopping has gone from a recreational activity to a rushed necessity, and they’ve seen the business through its ups and downs.

The onslaught of online shopping hurt business, but Stavale said the staff’s customer service is what kept the store viable.

“The one thing that separates us is our customer service,” Dixon said. “We are like personal shoppers to our customers.”

The recession also challenged the business, as customers cut down spending on luxury items.

Lester responded by introducing contemporary and less expensive lines such as Elizabeth and James, Alice + Olivia, Vince and Brochu Walker.

“Rusty got into lines that really helped carry the business through the tough times, and our customers changed along with it,” Stavale said.

Last year the women noticed that their customers were ready to spend money again. They are continuing to see more interest this year, they said.

Early last week, the store received nearly a dozen trunks via UPS in preparation for the store’s Lafayette trunk show, one of several they put on every year.

“It’s like bringing Seventh Avenue to the store,” Dixon said.

Also in the column, St. Pierre Salon and Academy has shut its beauty school and moved to a new location, and a Vinton eatery is planning to close. Click here to read more of the column.

This old Blockbuster Video store at Lake Drive Plaza in Vinton will soon become a Shoe Show. Photo by Amanda Codispoti

A new shoe store is planned to open in Vinton within the next two months.

Shoe Show, which operates stores under the Shoe Show,Shoe Dept., Shoe Dept. Encore and Burlington Shoesnames, is opening a Shoe Show store at Lake Drive Plazawhere Blockbuster Video closed.

Shoe Show, based in Concord, N.C., plans to begin working on the 6,400-square-foot space this week, said Vicki Ayers, a spokeswoman. The company hopes to have the store open in late February or early March if construction goes as planned.

Roger Hypes, director of the company’s real estate division in the Southeast, said Shoe Show has Shoe Dept. and Shoe Dept. Encore stores in the Roanoke and Salem areas, but not a Shoe Show store. The company chose the space on Hardy Road because it is near a Kroger and a Dollar Tree store, which generate a lot of traffic, Hypes said.

The store will carry more than 13,000 pairs of shoes, handbags and accessories.

To read the rest of the column, click here.

A bicycle shop that has made downtown Roanoke its home for several years is moving to Grandin Village.

Starlight Bikes, a shop that sells and repairs bicycles and accessories, will move from its store at Second Street and Kirk Avenue to a space next to Too Many Books on Grandin Road.

“I think it is going to be huge for our business,” owner Stratton Delaney said.

Delaney said he’s always wanted his shop to be in the Grandin area, but he hadn’t found the right space until now. The new location is where Designs on Grandin, a hair salon, closed in November.

He said he believes locating the business in the neighborhood will boost sales.

“People in Grandin Village are in the mood to spend money,” he said. “They aren’t downtown for work or because they are going to court.”

To read more about the bike shop’s move, read the rest of the column here.

Also in the column, a locally-owned fabric and upholstery store, French Thistle, has moved to Charleston, S.C., and the Lakeside Kroger in Salem will see a $2 million remodel.

Happy New Year readers!

I used Sunday’s Retail Roundup column to review some of the noteworthy and memorable retail events of 2012, such as the sale of two shopping centers and the coming of the cash mob trend.

I also talked with a local commercial real estate broker, John Nielsen of Thalhimer, who told me that 2012 was clouded by uncertainty among retailers.

“The general uncertainty due to the economy, the presidential election and the looming fiscal cliff did cause real estate decisions to be delayed or put off, and that created less opportunity overall,” Nielsen said.

He expects to see momentum picking up in the third and fourth quarters this year. The retailers he is speaking with ”are serious about their 2013 expansion plans,” he said.

You can read the column by clicking here.

Also, check out this interactive timeline of business closings and openings that online intern Katrina Tulloch put together.

What started more than 40 years ago as a small natural food store in the basement of a southwest Roanoke County couple’s home has grown into a member-owned grocery store that soon will have two locations and supply its stores with products from its own farm.

Roanoke Natural Foods Co-op announced last week that it is opening a second store on the Roanoke farmers market, in the space where Thomas Market closed earlier this year to accommodate Center in the Square’s $27 million renovation. Plans for the co-op’s 25-acre urban farm, Heritage Point, were finalized earlier this year.

“We’re excited to be in the position to grow our cooperative,” general manager Bruce Phlegar said in a news release announcing the store.

The co-op’s board of directors had been looking for several years for a suitable space to open a second store. In August,Center in the Square president Jim Sears approached the board about opening in the renovated Thomas Market space. The owner of the market did not renew the store’s lease, Sears said.

“I think it strengthens the economy of the market area,” Sears said. “It strengthens Center in the Square. It provides a service I don’t think we could have found anywhere else.”

Click here to read more about the co-op’s growth and an update on Ivy Market, the Roanoke shopping center where Ukrops closed several years ago.

This Family Dollar store is under construction on Melrose Avenue in Roanoke. Photo by Amanda Codispoti

Several construction projects are popping up around Roanoke.

Perhaps the most anticipated is the construction of Steak ‘n Shake, which broke ground about two weeks ago outside Crossroads Mall on Hershberger Road. The restaurant is expected to open in March if weather permits. Across the parking lot, construction of a Cook Out restaurant is proceeding rapidly. That restaurant is expected to open by the first of the year. Cook Out is also building a restaurant in Rocky Mount on Old Franklin Turnpike, next to Sheetz.

At Valley View, passers-by are sure to notice that the Flat Rock Grille and Texas Steakhouse buildings have been demolished. The shuttered restaurants were torn down late last month to clear the way for a 126-room Hampton Inn and Suites. Crews were beginning to lay the foundation last week, and the hotel is expected to open within a year.

Progress is also being made on three dollar stores, which have seen sales surge as consumers look for ways to save money the past few years.

A Family Dollar store is going up in the parking lot at the Roanoke-Salem Plaza on Melrose Avenue. Construction of the 8,271-square-foot store is estimated to cost about $886,500, according to a building permit filed in Roanoke.

A second Family Dollar store is opening at the Williamson Road Plaza at the intersection with Hildebrand Road. The store will combine three storefronts – the former Pet City, Commonwealth Collectibles and TLC Nails locations – to occupy about 9,000 square feet. Work to remodel the interior will cost $173,000, according to a building permit filed in the city.

Both Family Dollar stores are scheduled to open the first half of 2013, according to company spokeswoman Bryn Winburn. An exact date hasn’t been set.

Also on Williamson Road, a Dollar Tree is taking shape where Southern Manor Residential and Assisted Living was torn down in 2010. The construction of the 10,000-square-foot store is estimated to cost more than $1 million, according to building permits. The store is expected to open in April, according to spokeswoman Shelle Davis.

Also in the column, electronics retailer Hhgregg now sells furniture, the clothing store Babies and Children has set a closing date, and a store selling sport collectibles, Sports Haven, is open in Roanoke County.