The line for Steak ‘n Shake’s drive through spills out into Crossroad’s parking lot. Photo by Amanda Codispoti

The parking lot at Crossroads Mall has become rather congested with the opening of Cook Out and Steak ‘n Shake.

There is a steady stream of traffic making its way through the parking lot to each restaurant, and drive-through lines from both businesses snake out of the restaurants’ parking lots and into Crossroad’s parking lot. Add in the 2,000 people who work at the center (Advanced Auto has its headquarters on the far right side of the mall), and the parking lot is pretty busy.

“It’s one of the growing pains you get” with new businesses opening, said Jake Copty, a broker with Thalhimer, which manages the property.

“We knew that with the introduction of Cook Out there would be a large influx of traffic,” he said. “The owners and the property manager are aware of how tight the parking lot has gotten.”

They are looking at several options to help traffic flow, Copty said.

“It is kind of a good problem to have,” he said.

“We feel like the ongoing redevelopment of Crossroads is a great thing for that part of town.”

Steak ‘n Shake opened at Crossroads last week. Cook Out opened in December. Crossroads recently lost Books-A-Million, one of its anchor stores, but Copty said he has high hopes for that space.

The property owners, an investment group in New York, are open to tearing down the building in favor of new construction, Copty said.

But no deal has been struck, and it could be several months, if not longer, before an announcement is made.

Several brokers from Thalhimer were in Las Vegas this week for the International Council of Shopping Center’s global convention of realtors and retailers. Thalhimer brokers marketed the Books-A-Million space there and met with potential tenants, Copty said. He wouldn’t say which retailers have expressed interest.

He doesn’t expect the new tenant to be Trader Joe’s, he joked.

“It’s a long way from the people who are going to shop at Trader Joe’s,” he said.

The Radford Theatre will reopen under new ownership. Roanoke Times file photo

Four businessmen plan to reopen the beloved, single-screen Radford Theatre, and upgrade both its facilities and its offerings.

Paul Pallente, Josh Riggs, James Houston and Mohsin Kazmi are partners in the new venture, which if successful will save a landmark movie house that dates to the 1930s.

The business closed earlier this year, after former owner Frankie Kirk announced he wanted to retire. Kirk bought the theater in 1983 after spending more than 20 years working at the Lyric Theatre in Blacksburg.

The four new owners have already moved the theater into the social media sphere, establishing a presence onFacebook and Twitter and producing a video of the four of them announcing the reopening.

According to the Facebook page, the theater will be upgraded and will show not only movies, but present live music and staged theater productions.

Read more of the story by reporter Tonia Moxley by clicking here.

Roanoke restaurateur Rocky Byrd had hoped to have his Mexican-Caribbean restaurant, Nopales, open by the end of April.

But as happens with many restaurant openings, Byrd has run into a multitude of problems that have set back the opening a couple months.

“It’s been a little bit of a nightmare,” he said.

A big issue has been with the kitchen equipment that Surf ‘n Turf left behind when they closed in December. (A previous version of this blog post reported that Byrd was leasing the equipment from the landlord, but the equipment is not part of the lease.)

“Nearly every piece of equipment has had a problem,” Byrd said. He’s had to replace most of the equipment, which added a significant amount of wait time.

He also ran into problems with the building’s plumbing and electrical system.

But perhaps the most shocking setback was when he discovered what he estimates to be 100 pounds of grease and oil in ducts between the stove vent and chimney.

The ducts ran parallel to the floor (instead of straight up) for 17 feet, Byrd said, and two to three inches of “very volitile oil and grease” was trapped in them, Byrd said.

He believes it had been nine years since the vents and ducts were serviced. Contributing to the mess was the roof fan which wasn’t strong enough to pull everything out of the ducts.

“They guy who does that kind of work had never seen anything like it in his entire life,” Byrd said.

Byrd promised his 12-year-old daughter he’d be open by early July.

“I’d like to live up to that promise,” he said.

You can read more about the restaurant in this Retail Roundup column from February.

Tanglewood Mall management is working with a new commercial real estate company to bring retailers to the shopping center.

S.L. Nusbaum Realty Co. is now handling the mall’s leasing, said mall spokesman Brad Boothe.

Nusbaum, Boothe said, “seems to have a broader reach” than Thalhimer, which had been handling Tanglewood’s leasing.

Nusbaum has offices in Norfolk and Richmond, and manages over 5.3 million square feet of retail space, according to its website.

The mall’s most recent new tenant was Furniture Warehouse, which opened earlier this month. It filled a 36,000-square-foot vacancy inside the mall across from A.C. Moore.

The new store, which carries samples from High Point, N.C., furniture showrooms, has drawn new faces to the mall and is reporting strong sales, Boothe said.

Tanglewood last fall welcomed Woodwick Candle Company and Five Guys Burgers and Fries.

The Science Museum of Western Virginia, which had relocated to the mall’s upper level during Center in the Square’s renovation, vacated its space in March to prepare to move back into the Center. The Center held its grand reopeing this past weekend.

This Christiansburg Sears store will close in July. Burgs File Photo

In case you missed it, The Burgs reported that the Christiansburg Sears store will close in July.

From The Burgs’ story:

Sears department store and auto center, which opened with the mall in 1988, will close in mid-July, wrote Sears Corporate Communications Director Howard Riefs in an email.

The store’s lease was not renewed as part of a series of actions the company is taking to reduce expenses, adjust its asset base and accelerate the transformation of the company’s business model, according to Riefs.

Shoptimist Rebecca Holland has more on her blog about sales that are going on now at the store.

Keagy Village. Roanoke Times file photo

A political organization is the first new tenant at Keagy Village under its new ownership, and a fitness studio is expected to open there soon, bringing the southwest Roanoke County shopping center’s tenant count to five.

The political organization, Americans For Prosperity, opened its regional office in the former Scottstrade location in April. An unnamed fitness studio is negotiating a lease for a vacant space next to the space intended for a restaurant, said Matt Huff, a leasing agent with Poe and Cronk Real Estate Group. Huff did not want to disclose the name of the fitness studio because the lease has not been finalized.

Other tenants include Dunkin Donuts, Firehouse Subs and boutique clothing retailer Patina.

Huff said his first priority is to bring the shopping center an anchor tenant, such as a grocery store or a full-service restaurant.

“We have really good activity on both,” he said.

Huff said he believes the shopping center didn’t attract many tenants under the previous two owners – the developer and the bank that bought the property at foreclosure – because they were not proactive about leasing and rents were higher.

Kahn Development Co. started construction on the 130,000 square-foot shopping center at the intersection of Keagy Road and Virginia 419 in 2004. The shopping center attracted few tenants, and failed to land an anchor store. The property went into foreclosure in 2012, and was auctioned to TD Bank, the bank that financed the center’s construction The bank then sued the developer for $5.8 million.

Last fall a North Carolina investor bought the four-building shopping center. Ry Winston, a partner in Collett — a Charlotte-based real estate development, brokerage and management firm —  said in this story that the project was the victim of bad timing and he sees a lot of potential because of the location and the demographics in that area.

The shopping center’s location was key for Americans for Prosperity, a conservative non-profit that advocates economic freedom.

“It made the most sense for convenience,” said Dave Schwartz, state director for the Virginia chapter.  ”It is close to everything; Roanoke, Roanoke County and Salem.”

AFP’s lease is good through the end of this year, but Schwartz said they like the shopping center and want to stay longer.

“We hope to be there for a longer period of time,” he said.

Steak ‘n Shake is set to open Thursday. Photo by Amanda Codispoti

The wait is nearly over for Roanokers who have been craving a steakburger; the Steak ‘n Shake at Crossroads Mall opens Thursday.

It’s been a long wait. It was nearly two years ago that the franchisee, Steaks of Virginia, announced their intentions to build the restaurant at Crossroads Mall in Roanoke.

The restaurant, however, was delayed because of work going on at two other Steak ‘n Shake restaurants in Fredericksburg and Richmond, the franchisee has said.

Work on the Roanoke restaurant began in November.

The restaurant, which employs about 160 people, opens at 10 a.m. Thursday. Hours are 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. until May 22, when the hours will be 10 a.m. to midnight. Eventually the hours will expand to include breakfast, said Yianni Achilleos, a spokesman for the franchisee, which is based in Virginia Beach.

Steaks of Virginia is building at least two more restaurants in Virginia, Achilleos said. The next two will be in Hampton and in Virginia Beach, he said.

Big Lots will open in the former Food Lion building on U.S. 220 in Roanoke, according to a company spokeswoman.

The discount retailer recently finalized a lease for the 31,762 square-foot building, said spokeswoman Toni Fink.

The building will undergo renovations and should open in August, Fink said. An exact opening date will be determined closer to August.

The store will be the closeout retailer’s fourth location in the Roanoke-Vinton-Salem area.

Food Lion closed the Franklin Road store and one other in Fairlawn early last year, citing poor sales.

According to the city’s online real estate records, Food Lion LLC still owns the building. The property is on the market for $2.6 million (or $81.86 per square foot), according to this online posting.

Big Lots, based in Columbus, Ohio, operated 1,574 stores in the United States and Canada as of February, according to its website.

Photo by Joel Hawksley | The Roanoke Times

A business consultant for 17 years, Jeff Sluss probably would have never advised a client to buy a bankrupt company.

But that’s exactly what Sluss did in March when he purchased Apex Industrial Equipment in Salem, which designs and manufactures machinery and heavy equipment for industrial customers.

“I see opportunity here,” Sluss said. “I think there are things we can do in the near- and long-term to make this a successful company.”

Sluss is hoping to bring the company out of bankruptcy and stage a comeback by branching out with a line of residential outdoor furniture made of steel.

“If you don’t diversify your business, if you are going to simply survive off manufacturing, you’re not going to make it,” he said.

Apex’s shop manager, Darrell Breeden, said the company is already seeing the results of Sluss’ leadership and business plan.

Customers “are seeing the changes that have been made in the last couple of months, and we’ve been busy as a result,” Breeden said. “Right now we have more work than we ever have.”

Read the full column here.

Market Square team members John Nicholson (left), and Zach McRoy (right) put the final touches on the shelves. Photo by Jon Shup of the Roanoke Natural Foods Co-Op

The Roanoke Natural Foods Co-Op’s store in downtown Roanoke opened this morning, said co-op spokesman John Bryant.

The 1,225-square-foot store opened in the former Thomas Market space. (Thomas Market closed for Center in the Square’s $27 million renovation, which are complete. The owners of Thomas Market decided not to renew the store’s lease.)

The co-op’s store offers grab-and-go foods prepared daily at the co-op’s Grandin Road store and carries items similar to those offered at the Grandin store, but with a smaller selection.

The store is open seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

A grand opening is being planned for June, Bryant said.

The co-op started more than 40 years ago as a small natural food store in the basement of a southwest Roanoke County couple’s home. It has now grown to include two stores, and a 25-acre urban farm, Heritage Point, at the Roanoke Center for Industry and Technology. The farm is producing vegetables, fruit, free-range eggs, cut flowers and honey that will be sold at the co-op’s stores.