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Dillard's as a company is on some shaky financial ground and the Chapel Hill store is nearly 40 years old and somewhat undersized without a lot of options for expansion. Still, it's not a dying retailer and the store seems to do reasonably well considering it's kind of by itself in a mall that either trends higher or lower depending on which tenant you compare them to.

A library would solve Madison Marquette's immediate needs to fill space with a more stable anchor, but the traffic boost they're imagining isn't going to happen. It's a library for goodness sake! Even a really hopping library would not attract the crowds a department store does.

I think the person in the article who stated that Chapel Hill's development processes could be holding it back from replacing University Mall with a more appropriate development hit the nail on the head. This is a '70s mall. A really, really '70s mall. A contemporary shopping center would require a massive redevelopment that could land the site in limbo for an extended period of time trying to appease all the stakeholders.

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Also, I'd think that national chains can typically pay higher rents than locally-owned stores, and that national chains considering leasing space in a mall would look to have mall anchors that are reputable national chains.

Having a library and a Rose's as the mall's anchors surely would get national chains to drop University Mall from their "must consider" list.

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I think alot of this hinges on being able to reach an agreement with Dillard's, I think they are trying to tempt them with "an early out" clause of some sort. I've searched a few articles on the subject and although it says that the mall owners would want them to vacate by June 2011 it doesn't say when their lease actually ends, and with dept stores it could be years away. I recall hearing a situation about the time when Belk left and they were trying to renovate the mall. They were able to convince the cafeteria to move to an outlot so Bear Rock could take their spot but they weren't able to get Roses to move so a theater could be built in it's place. I can't imagine Dillard's wanting to close unless the store was losing money as it literally has no competition not only in town (a city of almost 60,000 ppl with just 1 department store) but also it's the only department store in all of Orange County. I also doubt that Chapel Hill would make it easy for them to move to another location in town giving their zoning...it would probably take the town years to approve a modern 100,000 sq foot department store new from the ground up.

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I don't think any of the stakeholders in this realize what they have. This is a prime piece of land in a high traffic area and it's being wasted because no one has the guts to redevelop this property. What I think should happen is modern stores for Dillard's, Harris Teeter, and A Southern Season, a movie theater, maybe some condos and offices with retail and restaurants at street level.

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I don't think any of the stakeholders in this realize what they have. This is a prime piece of land in a high traffic area and it's being wasted because no one has the guts to redevelop this property. What I think should happen is modern stores for Dillard's, Harris Teeter, and A Southern Season, a movie theater, maybe some condos and offices with retail and restaurants at street level.

That would be ideal. Admittedly, It would be weird not having a department store in Orange County. One could argue that Durham is "close enough," but I've heard residents and students alike say that they don't always like driving to Durham, though.

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Looks like University Mall finally managed to push Roses out of it's 40 year old home. As the mall has been upscaling itself over the last few years the Roses certainly did not fit into their new image. Once the store closes in June Chapel Hill will no longer have any department stores (Roses is considered a discount dept store) as Dillards also closed a few months ago...

 

http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/04/02/3752642/roses-chapel-hills-last-department.html?sp=/99/104/

 

post-3026-0-55473100-1396564221_thumb.pn

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^^^ and incidently more expensive than Kroger (or even in some cases Target) while offering inferior selection. It defies logic how family dollar stays in business. My best guess is by opening up shop in small podunk communties where the nearest true grocery or retail store is over ten or fifteen minutes away and just relying on people's laziness or inability to drive to better alternatives. It's actually downright predatory when you think about it. 

Edited by NikOnder
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