Crabtree Valley Mall

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Mall facts and statistics
Crabtree Valley Mall


Location	Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
Opening date	1972
Owner	Plaza Associates, Inc.^[1]
No. of stores and services	Over 220
No. of anchor tenants	3
Total retail floor area	1,366,110 square feet^[2] (GLA)
Parking	Parking deck surrounding 2/3 of the mall
No. of floors	2
Website	www.crabtree-valley-mall.com

Crabtree Valley Mall is a regional mall located in Raleigh, North Carolina. At 1.3 million square feet, it had been the largest enclosed mall in the Triangle (Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill) area prior to 2002, when both Triangle Town Center and The Streets at Southpoint opened.

Crabtree Valley boasts over 220 stores, including the largest Belk east of Charlotte, Sears, and Macy's. Other high-end stores with locations at the mall include a Brooks Brothers store and The Cheesecake Factory. Crate & Barrel was formerly had its exclusive North Carolina location at the mall, however, they plan to open a store at SouthPark Mall in Charlotte, NC in November^[3].

Parking at the Crabtree Valley Mall is fairly unusual; there is very little at-grade parking. A multistory parking deck surrounds four-fifths of the mall. The mall's petruding anchor tenants force drivers to take many turns in the parking deck to get to their desired destination. Valet parking is available at the mall's northeast entrance.

The Hecht's was reopened as a Macy's on September 9, 2006.^[4]

1 History
2 Flooding Risk
3 External links
4 References

[edit] History

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Crabtree Valley Mall opened in 1972 at the intersection of US 70/NC 50 (Glenwood Avenue) and the I-440 Beltline. Original anchors were Hudson Belk, Sears, Miller & Rhoads and Thalhimer's. The mall also included G.C. Murphy and Piccadilly Cafeteria.

From the start, the mall pulled shoppers from all over central and eastern North Carolina. Many of them came to the 251,000 square foot Hudson Belk, which is still the largest store in the complex and serves as a Belk flagship. The mall was remodeled in the mid 1980s and added many upscale specialty stores. If faced remarkably little competition in its market until the 1990s, when Cary Towne Center in nearby Cary doubled in size and spawned a companion mall, Crossroads Shopping Center.

To combat the threat of an expanded Cary Towne Center stealing business, Crabtree embarked on a major expansion starting in 1992. G.C. Murphy, Miller & Rhoads, and Piccadilly all closed down during this period. Thalhimers converted to Hecht's, and began planning for a new,larger location at the mall. Sears closed its Crabtree store in 1994 and built a new location adjacent to it that same year. The old Sears became small shop space and connected to a new, larger Hecht's which also opened in 1994.

The final piece of Crabtree's 1990s renaissance was the opening of North Carolina's first and only Lord & Taylor in late 1995 in the former Thalhimers/Hecht's. However, the store was closed in February, 2006 as part of the reorganization of Federated Department Stores that began in 2003. ^[5]

[edit] Flooding Risk

Crabtree Valley Mall is situated next to Crabtree Creek, a tributary of the Neuse River that begins near Morrisville and winds through Umstead State Park as well as western and north central Raleigh. As the watershed around the mall become increasingly covered with impervious parking lots, the creek floods easily following major storms. Heavy rains caused by the remnants of Tropical Storm Alberto flooded the lower level parking lots of the mall on June 14, 2006 , forcing the mall to close for the day. [http://www.wral.com/news/9364241/detail.html 1 A similar situation occurred with Hurricane Fran back in 1996, when flood waters flowed through the first floor of the mall and caused a few stores to remain closed for nearly two months.