Retailers hope new Statesville development will keep shoppers local

STATESVILLE, N.C.,None — The walls started coming up this week on a new Statesville retail center next to the Home Depot on Turnersburg Highway that is slated for completion by June.

The $8 million project – which will include PetSmart, Michaels, Staples and T.J. Maxx – is one of the biggest retail developments to come to town in years.

The retailers chose Statesville as the best place to set up shop, something that hasn’t happened as often as it perhaps should, said Shawn McCleskey, Planning and Engineering Services Director for the shopping center’s developer, RealtyLink Development Properties of Greenville, S.C..

In some ways, McCleskey said, Statesville reminds him of Florence, S.C. It is a regional area where interstates converge, and has easy access to multiple locations.

In Statesville’s case, Interstates 77 and 40 give residents access to regional retail locations like Birkdale Village in Huntersville, Hanes Mall in Winston-Salem and Valley Hills Mall in Hickory.

But, for the most part, retail traffic hasn’t flowed both ways along those interstates, McCleskey said.

“You don’t see as much of that in Statesville,” McCleskey said.

Large retailers are going to look at the quality of the investment over time, traffic patterns and certain demographics, said Julia Wilson, vice president of G.L. Wilson Building Company, which is the general contractor for the new shopping center.

For instance, Target’s customer base has a median age of 40; median household income of $64,000; 43 percent have children; and around 57 percent have completed college.

A recent editorial in The Salisbury Post indicated the county seat for Rowan County faces similar challenges. It has easy access to the interstate, which freely allows its local residents to go shopping in Concord.

Within the city limits of Statesville, the population reached 24,532, according to the 2010 U.S. Census.

Salisbury’s city population is actually closer to the town of Mooresville’s. Salisbury ended up with 33,662 residents, while Mooresville had around 32,711 people. Both these populations are lower than Concord, which has 79,066 people.

McCleskey said population is just one factor. Another is median income. The higher the median income of a town, the more attractive it is, he said.

In Statesville, the median income is $33,426, which was very similar to Salisbury’s.

Mooresville’s median household income was $52,865 in 2010, which was still higher than Concord’s $47,726.

Based on the demographics published by Target, Concord and Mooresville’s median household incomes would fit the retailer’s criteria.

It is almost a cookie-cutter approach, said Greater Statesville Chamber of Commerce President David Bradley.

“They know how it’s going to work and they aren’t going to go to a play until they know its going to work,” he said.

A few years back, Bradley said the chamber and others in the city were trying to recruit a restaurant or another retailer for the land near Outback Steakhouse and Marquee Cinema. They found that many of the companies were already familiar with Statesville’s numbers.

Bradley believes some retailers are responding to market changes by reducing the size of their buildings and moving into retail centers like the one now being built.

Staples, for example, will move from its 24,000-square-foot space next to Lowe's Home Improvement Center to its new 15,764-square-foot facility in the third quarter of 2013, said Staples Spokeswoman Carrie McElwee.

She said Staples had a market footprint in the larger store, but the company was moving into the smaller store to match the size of the market to the size of the store.

PetSmart’s space will be just over 14,000 square feet and Michaels is slightly larger at 14,293 square feet.

T.J. Maxx, which will take up 23,600 square feet, will be the anchor for the new shopping center near Home Depot.

Wilson said the parcel of land isn’t large enough for any outlier businesses.

This center was one of the first retail projects G.L. Wilson has worked on in Statesville in several years, Wilson said.

“It is an indication of our economy and how things are becoming more positive,” she said.

WSOC