Stars Fall Into Line After Years Of False Starts And Delays, Spokane Valley Mall Is Set To Debut

Ads on billboards and buses for Spokane County’s newest mall urge shoppers to “Come. See. Shop.”

It’s a long-awaited enticement.

With nearly two decades of promises and postponements behind it, the Spokane Valley Mall will open Wednesday.

The 750,000-square-foot mall at Sullivan and Interstate 90 will create an entertainment core, with three major department stores, 75 shops and restaurants and the flashiest movie theater ever to hit Spokane.

“The Valley finally has its bright shiny centerpiece,” said Ray Murphy, president of the Spokane Valley Chamber of Commerce.

The $80 million mall will shake up the competition and churn more than a million dollars yearly in sales tax revenues into county coffers.

JP Realty Inc., the mall’s Salt Lake City-based owner, said the mall will create 240 full-time managerial jobs and hundreds more full- and part-time positions.

“It creates a retail hub,” said Rex Frazier, president of JP Realty. “The other retailers that have gravitated to that area, it’s because of the mall.”

Indeed, the Sullivan corridor has become one of the county’s busiest, rivaled perhaps only by Division, on the city’s North Side, in the number and type of retailers moving in.

The nation’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart, opened in June just across Interstate 90. Toy industry leader Toys ‘R’ Us, is building a store next door to Wal-Mart. Electronics giant Circuit City and sporting goods leader Gart Sports are building 30,000-square-foot stores next to the mall. Canada’s largest electronics dealer, Future Shop, opened farther south on Sullivan in November.

They’ve been drawn, in large part, by the mall.

“It’s definitely long overdue,” said Valley resident Julie Arnold, 21, while attending the grand opening of the mall’s Bon Marche store July 31. “Ten years later, we finally get a mall out here.”

When JP Realty first began looking at the site where the mall now sits, the area was far from the retail core it has become.

JP Realty began negotiations with property owner R.A. Hanson in the late 1970s, Frazier said. The developer took an option on the property in 1984, finally purchasing the 85-acre site in 1990 for $7.9 million.

Three times along the way, the developers announced the beginning of construction, only to face postponements.

The project was delayed because of tenant uncertainty and market instability, Frazier said.

The mall originally planned to have such anchor tenants as Mervyn’s, Target, and Frederick and Nelson. F&N subsequently went bankrupt, Mervyn’s lost a substantial share of the market and Target, which later opened a store on East Sprague, couldn’t wait, Frazier said.

The national decline and devaluation of the real estate market in the late 1980s also delayed the project, he said.

In January 1994, JP Realty became a publicly traded company, which infused new capital into its real estate projects, including the Valley Mall.

“It was kind of like lining up the stars,” Frazier said. “All the ingredients have to line up at the same time.”

Now the stars - namely anchor tenants The Bon Marche, Sears, J.C. Penney - are firmly in line. They’re joined by a 12-screen movie theater - and 75 national, regional and local retailers.

The movie theater, fronted by hip, flashy neon signs, offers the latest in cinema technology, with three types of digital sound, stadium seating and the most acoustically pristine auditoriums available. The theater will offer free movies Wednesday and Thursday to kick off grand opening festivities.

The mall will open 60 percent leased and promises 90 percent occupancy by Dec. 1, in time for the holiday shopping season.

Frazier predicts that the mall will generate $140 million in annual sales, which earns about $1.68 million in sales tax revenues for the county.

It’s not the biggest mall in the area. NorthTown - which generated $250 million in sales last year and contributes about $4 million annually in sales tax revenues to the city - has 1 million square feet of retail space and 168 tenants.

Still, comments comparing the two are common, and it’s obvious the new mall will be a worthy competitor.

“If it has everything they do, I won’t go to NorthTown,” said Jerry Huffman, a Coeur d’Alene resident who traveled to the Valley with her daughter to shop at The Bon Marche.

“I don’t want to pooh-pooh NorthTown, but people don’t want to drive up there,” said Cheryl Sieveke, who is opening a Cartoon Classics store at the new mall. Sieveke and her husband, Bill, have three other stores, including one at NorthTown.

Comments like that don’t seem to faze Sabey Corp., the Seattle-based owner of NorthTown. Executive Vice President Laurent Poole said NorthTown still will be the region’s pre-eminent retail presence.

“By virtue of NorthTown’s prominence and 65 percent larger collection of stores, NorthTown will continue to be the dominant shopping venue serving the Inland Northwest,” Poole said.

The opening of the Valley Mall, he said, attests to retailers’ belief that the market will support North and Valley locations. Poole pointed to Target, Fred Meyer and ShopKo as examples of retailers who have stores in both areas.

Both malls also plan expansions. NorthTown has said it will grow to 1.2 million square feet by doubling the size of its Bon Marche store and adding a large bookstore and cafe. The Valley Mall will add 200,000 square feet of space, including another anchor tenant and more stores.

Shoppers will find plenty to buy at the new mall Wednesday. From bath towels to Birkenstocks, jelly beans to Gen-X clothing, it’s all there.

An eerie wrought-iron spider web doorway beckons teenagers and 20-somethings into Hot Topic, a fast-rising retail star that caters to the M-TV crowd with vinyl clothing, black nail polish and rock ‘n’ roll T-shirts.

On the mall’s first level, the pink walls of Victoria’s Secret promise sexy silky lingerie and plush velour robes.

Rows and rows of compact discs and tapes cover the bright yellow walls of Sam Goody, across from the food court on the mall’s second level.

The food court entrance demonstrates the convenience of the mall’s design. It’s on the second floor, but patrons can walk outside directly into the parking lot or down to the nearby Spokane River. Sloping parking lots surrounding the mall lead directly to second-floor entrances in several locations. The parking lot has space for 4,131 cars.

The mall stores are arranged in a line, with Sears at the west end, The Bon Marche to the east, and J.C. Penney in the middle. All three stores have two levels, accessible from inside and outside the mall.

“It’s probably the best set-up of any mall I’ve been in,” Sieveke said.

Also dressing up the mall are: a glass elevator in the mall’s center court, a fountain that spills water down a statue of three children washing a dog, and a row of 30-foot palm trees.

The palm trees - called “embalmed palms” because they are gutted, preserved, then re-topped with palm fronds - create an almost tropical look. The 13 trees form a row down the center of the mall’s first floor, their silky leaves peeking up at customers strolling along the second level.

“It’s gorgeous. It reminds me of the malls I’ve seen in Arizona and California with the plants, tile and the atrium effect,” said Lara Hollingshead, who’s opening her third Lotions and Potions store in the mall.

The mall walls are white, and lined with potted plants. The ceilings are high, and skylights are plentiful. Neon signs and sculptures shine at the food court and cinema.

“It’s lighter and brighter. It’s easier to see from the first level to the second level,” Frazier said. ‘It’s a visual issue of trying to make it less overbearing to the shoppers, to make it a comfortable place to be.”

That’s a big change from a decade ago, Frazier said, when malls were “brown, brick, wood and dark. Now it’s more steel, white and light.”

The mall’s retailers hope that shoppers will find the new mall as exciting as they do. National chains with deeper pocketbooks have less to lose, but 20 percent of the mall’s tenants are local companies who are hoping the new mall will mean big bucks.

Downtown Spokane hasn’t been cutting it for Michele Dirks, who opened her first de Rika store in 1995 in the Crescent Court. She followed with a store at Silver Lake Mall in Coeur d’Alene, which is doing well. She’s hoping the Valley mall will provide a needed boost.

“I’ve tried to keep a stiff upper lip for two years, but it just doesn’t seem to be doing it,” she said of her downtown Spokane store.

Sieveke said the same of her former store at University City Shopping Center. She moved her Cartoon Classics store to the new mall from there because she said she couldn’t wait for the redevelopment project promised at U-City.

“There’s not enough happening there,” she said. “I know from experience, if it’s ‘in the works,’ it’s years off. It’s too bad because U-City was a great location.

“The average retailer can’t wait around for someday,” she said. “When opportunities like the Spokane Valley Mall come along, we have to jump on them.”

The mall might shift more than store locations. The three major anchors all have locations at NorthTown, and two, J.C. Penney and Sears, have Coeur d’Alene locations. That means there’s been a shifting of employees - some Valley residents who want to work closer to home and others who just want to work in the new mall.

In fact, 20 percent of the employees at the new Sears store are transfers from the other two regional locations, said Glen Seely, general manager.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Photos (1 Color)

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: VALLEY MALL TENANTS Here are the tenants who have leased space in the Spokane Valley Mall as of Aug. 6. The mall will open Wednesday with 60 percent of its space filled. By Dec. 1, 90 percent of the space is expected to be leased.

ANCHORS ACT III Theaters The Bon Marche JC Penney Sears

CLOTHING AND SHOES Athletic Fitters The Buckle Brauns Fashion Champs Sports de Rika Euro Comfort Famous Footwear Footaction Jay Jacobs Just Sports Footlocker Hamer’s Homestead Birkenstock Kids Footlocker Kinney Kids Kristina’s Lady Footlocker Lane Bryant Mariposa Mr. Rags RC Boot Barn Victoria’s Secret Zumiez

SPECIALTY Aphrodite’s Flowers and Gourmet Gifts Bath and Body Works The Candleman Card Farm Cartoon Classics Claire’s Electronic Boutique Glennie’s Hallmark GNC GTE Wireless Hi-Tek Nails Homeworks Hot Topic Kay Bee Toys Kiddie Kandids Kit’s Cameras Lotions and Potions Marketplace Gifts Piercing Pagoda Pilgrim’s Nutrition Radio Shack Sign of the Times Spencer Gifts Street of Dreams Sunglass Hut Things Remembered Visual Spectrum Waldenbooks

JEWELRY Ben Bridge Jewelers Fred Meyer’s Jewelers Gordon’s Jewelers Kay Jewelers Zales

MUSIC Musicland Sam Goody

OPTICAL LensCrafters Vista Optical

HAIR SALONS Fantastic Sam’s MasterCuts Regis Hairstylists Trade Secret

FOOD All American Yoghurt Auntie Anne’s Pretzels Cinnabon Courtside Deli Edo Japan Flaming Wok Great Steak and Potato Co. Mario’s Pizza Orange Julius Quizno’s Subs Surf City Squeeze Spokandy Sweet Factory Taco Time Thomas Hammer Coffee Co. Wendy’s

OTHER Tilt (Arcade)