Biltmore Square Mall: Asheville, NC

Throughout the fall, I have been featuring several retail points of interest in the Asheville Series, and this post wraps up the set.  This is the last of the enclosed malls in Asheville, and it is also the newest.  Built in 1989, Biltmore Square brought real competition to then completely dominant Asheville Mall with anchors Proffitt's, Hess's and Belk, a movie theater and junior anchor Goody's.  Both Proffitt's and Hess's specifically were new to the city and the state, providing two shopping options very unfamiliar to Asheville shoppers.  It was then built by Simon and featured very elegant design on a pretty basic footprint.  The location was quite odd in that it was in a place with a lack of adequate buildable land for adjacent retail as it was close to the Blue Ridge Parkway and across I-26 from Biltmore Estate.  Also, the mall struggled to attract much attention as it got its start in the middle of a recession.  It was an interesting idea, but it was also cursed.  A combination of poor planning and the mall's slow start were warning signs of the future.

Biltmore Square has continued to struggle since it was built.  While the mall hung on, it was always a second-tier mall in an area easy to overlook.  The exit showing "NC 191: To Blue Ridge Parkway" is not the type of exit you would expect to find a mall and extravagant retail options on.  In fact, most of the new retail eventually found a home two exits down on much more heavily traveled NC 280, and the mall's fortunes would have been better if they had located there.  Whlie the city has always been popular with tourists and a hopeful destination for many to live in, the anti-growth atmosphere and general lack of jobs made it difficult for the mall to get a foothold.  It would have required significant suburban expansion for the mall to have really taken off, and this never really happened.  Most people in the city would rather not see sprawl anyway, because they want to protect views from the Parkway, Biltmore Estate and not be priced out of the city by a flood of newcomers with more money than them.

 

Two views along the entrance wing next to Belk, originally Proffitt's.  This part of the mall is in really, really bad shape.  Mall owners need to realize that we don't relish the death of malls that take pictures of them dying: we just want to capture them on film before they're gone.

 

The mall map is somewhat out of date still showing Steve & Barry's and Dillard's as anchors, yet Davis Furniture is shown in the former Goody's.  Biltmore Square lost 3 out of 4 anchors in early 2009.

The mall's design was also extremely outlandish and not in character with the city.  Having a mall full of palm trees, arched skylights and turquoise/pastel tones has never been an appropriate image for a city surrounded by mountains full of actual fir, spruce and hemlock trees.  Something just felt very gaudy about a mall that looked like Las Vegas in the middle of the Western North Carolina mountains.  The owners would have done much better to build a mall with more earthtones, possibly a German theme and lots of wood trim, but such designs were firmly and completely out of style in 1989 after the 60's and 70's overkill of it.  They could have at least tried to model it somewhat after the Biltmore House, but they failed in this category as well aside from many ornate touches found throughout.  People in the city have been asking for years why it was built.

 

To me, the most fascinating aspect of this mall is the variety of skylight features including high windows, domed skylights and overhead box skylights.  They truly went all out, and at the time it was built there was little concern about the older mall.  That plan did not work so well in the 90's as growth no longer followed the mall.

Some additional skylight details near the Belk (Proffitt's) entrance.

I guess this is supposed to be deer jumping through a neon (flaming?) hoop?  This mall had much attention to detail when it was built.

Palm trees, domed skylights and pastels...you'd think you were in Vegas.

After the mall opened, the anchors saw some shuffling, which Asheville has seen more of than most.  The first was in 1992 when Hess's, the northern  anchor of the mall, became Dillard's when the chain sold out.  It would have otherwise become Proffitt's, but Proffitt's already anchored the mall.  Proffitt's found a less than receptive market in Belk-centric North Carolina, and their bold attempt to expand into that market weakened the company, which is part of why Belk eventually bought it out.  Belk at the time was the mall's middle anchor with Proffitt's on the south end of the mall.

 

 

I have to admit, I really like the ironworks.  This particular structure in center court, which my camera did not seem to like, has a clock with "ASHEVILLE" on top and "BILTMORE SQUARE" underneath.  The clock had stopped at almost 1 o'clock and I was there about 7.  It's not a good sign that they don't even bother to keep the clock running.  The last photo is by Pat Richardson.

Here is a look at the mall's fountain.  Nice, but not terribly impressive.  The vegetation around it was nearly obscuring it.  The fountain is one thing it has the Asheville Mall doesn't.

The merger of Proffitt's and Belk is what has really wreaked havoc on Biltmore Square.  When Proffitt's was merged with Belk, Belk took over the former Proffitt's location leaving an empty anchor in the middle instead of opening a second store.  For a time, the old Belk was filled by Steve & Barry's University Sportswear, but the bankruptcy in the chain early in the year coincided with the downgrading of the Dillard's at the mall to a clearance store (next step closing).  Even before this happened, the mall was suffering from vacancies and was already pretty much dying.  In fact, there was already talk that the mall was going under before any department stores closed.  The lack of retail expansion around it suggested that it wasn't doing so well early on.  I was quite suprised in the 90's to see that not one thing had built near the mall since it opened.  Ryan's Steakhouse and Kmart on outlots makes the mall feel firmly trapped in the 80's, and it is.  To make matters worse, Goody's also went bankrupt and closed their location in the mall in early 2009. No struggling mall could have ever had a worse turn of events than losing two major anchors in a short time with the third nearly closing by downgrading to a clearance store.  I encountered a similar scenario when I visited Century Plaza in Birmingham, which closed only two years after I visited and took the pics for an earlier post.

Beyond the fountain, the mall starts looking more lively.  From the center court to Dillard's, the mall still has quite a few businesses in operation.  Waldenbooks is still in the mall when this photo was taken.

 

 

The food court is really nice if you're looking at design alone.  The reality is that less than half of it is full.  A Chick-Fil-A holds on in the background, but it definitely has customers.

Mall entrance near the former Dillard's.  Garfield's Restaurant used to be on the left.

In all, Biltmore Square has had terrible luck in 2009.  The mall is now going from struggling mall to a mall in very serious trouble.  What major tenants do remain are likely just filling out their leases.  Most of the tenants in the mall are B-tenants including Davis Furniture, which moved from Westgate Shopping Center to fill the old Goody's.  Traffic is low in the mall, and people in the mall are in marvel at the sudden dramatic decline of the center.  Shoppers in the mall carrying Belk bags seem to be the major business in the mall, but they are finding little beyond it other than mom and pop stores such as irreverent "I Got Balls" selling, you guessed it, golf balls at the edge of the food court.  The movie theater is still hanging on, though, and it is still featuring first run movies.

 

Some of the oddest shops show up in malls that have difficulty keeping chains.  Once upon a time, this was part of the food court.  Today, you can...ummm...get balls here.  Eunichs need not apply.

 

This is the mall entrance close to Belk (Proffitt's).  Dollar Tree does not have an inside mall entrance.

This is the mall entrance closest to Dillard's.  The red building used to be Garfield's Restaurant.

Biltmore Square's main sign out on NC 191.  "Over 50 stores open for business" is sadly intepreted as "Please don't stop shopping here!"

In all, there really is not anything positive I can say about the mall.  The thing is, when malls die, they generally die quietly.  For awhile, nobody wants to admit they're dying.  The town who makes money from it and faces blight, the owners who don't want to go under and the shopkeepers in the mall who are losing business.  The tenants just quietly leave as the mall withers away until one day the doors are locked forever.  A dying mall is like cancer.  It is usually fatal, and sometimes it can be cured but more often than not it tends to come back.  Sometimes you can save them, but generally the owners just let it go and try to build something new where it was before as if it never existed.  As for Biltmore Square, I don't know, but I do know that the people are right, it should never have been built.

 

Belk (former Proffitt's) mall entrance.  The store seems to be holding on fairly well.  Belk carries an exclusive "Biltmore" line of products that are of course a perfect fit for this mall.  The second photo is by Pat Richardson, which brings out a bit more color in the mall entrance.  Teal was by far the trendiest color around at the time of Nirvana and Umbro soccer shorts.

Originally, this was the Belk mall entrance.  Steve & Barry's took over the spot when they took over the old Proffitt's.  Steve & Barry's had such a tacky logo...even worse than Burlington Coat Factory.  Everybody thought when they got going a few years ago they would save many of the dead anchors in the malls.  However, the poor locations in ailing malls combined with the poor quality merchandise did not set too well with the public, which led to the rapid death of the chain.

 

The mirrored entrance to the Dillard's Clearance Store here is frightening, because it sneaks up on you.  I did not even notice it until I was practically on top of it.  This store opened as Allentown, PA based Hess's.

Goody's mall entrance jumped out of the side of the Belk wing looking like an inline tenant.  If not for the white sign frame, I would not have even guessed this was a former anchor.  

Personally, I never did like the idea of a mall that close to Biltmore Estate, and the mall looks terribly dated now since it has never once been renovated since the day it opened.  I cannot even give any shadow of hope for it.  It is obvious there is no way it can be saved other than total redevelopment.  It is also a totally boring mall in comparison to Asheville Mall, and the new lifestyle center development at Biltmore Village has lured away many of the upscale shoppers as well.  The best course of action for the mall would be to tear everything down except for the Belk.  In its place, put up a new multi-screen movie theater, a decent grocery store to compete with Ingles and lay it out somewhat like a lifestyle center.  If not that, find some community or government use for it.  Regardless, no matter what happens the place is a goner, and no matter what the reason I hate to see a mall go.  It still had a respectable 20 year run, but I hope that next time that they will build something more appropriate.

Belk (former Proffitt's) at the mall.  More and better pictures can be found on Live Malls. The second picture is by Pat Richarson highlighting that teal again suggesting a good selection of flannel shirts to grunge out to.

 

The original Belk location, last operating as Steve & Barry's University Sportswear.  The second photo is by Pat Richardson showing the same on a sunnier day.

 

 

Dillard's sign was still in place and working, but it was not open when I visited, so I thought it had shut down.  In the second photo, I took the sign in reference to the rare Carolina Hemlocks planted on the corner.  I wondered why more retail in Asheville area did not feature Carolina Hemlocks as part of their landscaping, since it is native to the area.

Former Goody's entrance.  Davis Furniture did little to disguise its former function.  Photo by Pat Richardson.

 Cinnebarre sounds like a place to buy cinnamon rolls, not a place to watch movies.  I have never heard of it before, but I think I heard it was added recently in hopes of drawing more traffic to the mall.  It is drawing traffic, but unfortunately not in the mall itself.

The Last Disco Ingles: Hendersonville, NC

Since the late 1990's, Ingles has been feverishly replacing their aging stock of stores. For a long time, they actually pretty much owned their markets since they were located in small towns otherwise void of any significant competition. Most other supermarkets in these towns were made up of locally-owned stores with higher prices and an extremely limited selection. Meanwhile, most big city chains snubbed these towns in favor of the higher margins found in the suburbs. Discount store competition was also no threat as Ingles often anchored shopping centers with the earlier and smaller Wal-Mart, Rose's, Lay's and Sky City (and possibly Kuhn's Big K) who were all at the time tiny, cramped stores with a very limited selection in grocery items.  Occassionally, they also anchored Kmart shopping centers as well, such as the case with two stores in Acworth, GA.

Ingles just south of downtown Hendersonville, NC in September 2009.

This all changed when Wal-Mart emerged as a retail superpower. Wal-Mart began replacing their old, tiny stores with their supercenters, and these new stores of course offered a grocery section that rivaled Ingles in both selection and price. At that point, Ingles could no longer rely on tiny stores that looked very dated by the mid-1990's. This is when Ingles took action. At this point, they closed weaker stores and markets while tearing down and rebuilding more successful ones.

Walking in the door, the overhang reminds me of a carnival.  The floor goes from this brown linoleum with raised circles to alternating white and green diagonal striped tile.

 

Left entrance and dairy section.  Cheese here describes the color of the whole section as much as what's underneath the sign.

The closure of the older Wal-Marts, however, actually played in the favor of Ingles.  The advantage Ingles had in locating in shopping centers with discount stores was that when they closed, they had an opportunity to purchase and tear down the old discount store nobody else wanted and build a new, larger store on that same footprint or in the same shopping center. Otherwise, they went and rebuilt on site, demolishing the existing store and replacing it with a larger modern store. The abandonment of many 80's models of Wal-Mart and the closure of Sky City left many ample opportunities to upgrade their stores in the framework of an existing shopping center, eliminating the cost of grading and building a whole new site.

"Best Meat in Town" was oddly not as prominent in this section.  Usually, this was put at a 45 degree angle repeating along the length of the wood overhang, but not in this case.

Of course, the "Green Grocer" made up for that with this very funky style repeating the words over and over.  It's so amazing this place was most likely built in the mid-80's in lieu of the 70's, which it looks like.  All the ones I knew of like it were built in 1984 and 85.

Of course, this conversion of Ingles to a more modern store format is not entirely completed. While most stores have either been reshaped or left behind, a few classic stores remain in operation. The best preserved specimen is the store at the intersection of US 25 and US 176 in Hendersonville, all pictured here. This store features all of the classic designs inside and out. I took this series of photos to let people see what these now rare stores looked like inside and out.

"Thank you for shopping at ingles".  No, thank you for preserving this cool freaking store long enough for me to get these photos.

The bakeries in the original stores were quite small.  In the background, a labelscar for "Wine" is visible.  Apparently they removed their wine department, but the Innsbruck store still featured a "Wine Cellar" until the last.

This store is ironically one of about 3-4 different Ingles stores in the town. In fact, a recently opened newer model is located only short distance down US 176, and a Harris Teeter is next door! I really wonder how this store makes it with so much market saturation, but I guess this is why this relic has held out so long is because it as more profitable to maintain an older store than to simply abandon it.  I wonder if the CVS has anything to do with it, because it is interesting they are still in that shopping center. A new Harris Teeter (correction on Kroger) under construction across the street replacing the existing next door may be the straw that broke the camel's back. The Hendersonville Ingles joins the now-closed Innsbruck Mall store as reflections of Ingles early days and the end of the first generation stores, but luckily a few are still around.

A look at the checkout area.  Track lights abound!

The word repetition continues into the small magazine and book area shown as "Reading Center".  I wanted a closer picture, but a store employee was standing where I was not able to do so, so you instead see it behind the checkout lines.

Now looking at the adjoining CVS, which I am reasonably assuming opened as Revco.  The small CVS sign to the right of the door suggests it covered up the famous Revco medicine jar logo.  Revco typically anchored Ingles shopping centers in the 80's.

Lou Corsaro took these last two pics for me back in 2007 of the sign and front of the store.  At the time, I did not think I would make it back before the store was gone.  Luckily, it held on a little longer for me!  Mr. Ingle, please do not change this store!

Blue Ridge Mall: Hendersonville, NC

It is funny sometimes how towns get malls that are neither big enough to support them nor are they in a good position to have one.  Less than 20 miles south of Asheville, Blue Ridge Mall is definitely this, but nevertheless it found years of success as a second-tier mall in a second-tier market.  Opened in 1983 and renovated in 2000, the mall is definitely one of the smaller malls of the era at little over 300,000 square feet.  Nevertheless, it is still not dead, anchored today by Belk, JCPenney and Kmart with a Sears hardline store as a junior anchor.  It is also conveniently located on US 64 just west of I-26 between Asheville and Spartanburg, SC.

Aside from these facts, all is not well with Blue Ridge Mall.  The mall has a major vacancy problem, and it is today around 50% vacant.  The mall has no restaurant, it is very plain and simple and it seems to attract a lower income crowd.  The mall has had such little love for it that when Belk Simpson converted to plain Belk, they didn't even center the Belk logo when they took the "Simpson" off the mall sign.  Interestingly, the Kmart actually looks to be an afterthought in the mall.  In fact, there is no access to Kmart except IN the mall!  I am guessing a Sears might have once been planned there.  One interesting note, though, is a Game Stop at the mall that is accessible only from the outside on the front of the mall.

This mall is pretty much a straight shot.  I am standing outside Belk (Simpson) looking toward Kmart.  You wanted a mall?  You got a mall, said the mayor to the townsfolk.

 

Center court is kinda, sorta nice.  Now let's add some planters and fountains, please?

 

Looking in the third court toward Kmart.  I haven't noticed Kmart helping malls much, so why did anyone ever think it was a good anchor?

The vacancy rate at Blue Ridge Mall seems to be very sudden.  I noticed that several stores that had closed in the mall look to have done so recently, and the mall did not even have a chance to cover them up.  Stores included a Hallmark and some kind of children's store as examples.  A Waldenbooks was holding on, but with the planned round of closures, I have to wonder if this and Biltmore Square are both next.  The mall has no food court, no second level and nothing design-wise to draw you to the place.  It seems to me that this mall should have looked more like Three Star Mall and that one look like this one.  The fact is, the mall is owned by Hull Gibson Storey...a mall group that owns a lot of small town malls, many of which are struggling to hold tenants in an increasingly deflating economy in towns with fewer jobs and less money to spend.

This is about as basic of a three-anchor mall as you can get.

 

McGuffey's Restaurant was once here.  On the outside, it had a greenhouse area.  I am not sure when they went out of business, and I know there at least used to be one of these at Asheville Mall.

 

Looking towards the rear main entrance to the mall.  JCPenney and center court are behind me.

 

 

Here is the Kmart mall entrance from two angles.  Note on the last photo the entrance in the background.  Entrances come into the mall from both sides, and these serve as the only entrances to Kmart.  I guess Kmart works not having an outside entrance since their hours pretty much match the mall hours.

 

Penney's features diagonal cut wood painted over with white paint and black trim.  I suspect this wasn't painted over before the 2000 renovation.

 

Waldenbooks hangs on in the mall.  These intrigue me a bit lately since they are apparently an endangered species as Borders attempts to phase them out to save themselves.  Barnes & Noble similarly has shed off B. Dalton and Cole's over time.  I expect them to be gone by next year in this mall.

 

Belk _.  Something just seems very sleazy about Belk refusing to re-center the Belk logo after the Simpson family was bought out of the deal.  This mall entrance is freaking ugly, too.

I really do not know what to say in regards to this mall.   Theories abound in why it is not doing well.  The opening of Biltmore Square 20 years previous I am sure did not help either.  I suspect that both malls are cannabilizing each other.  Hendersonville is a nice town, but it is not a very large town either.  It is more industrial than Asheville, and it really has not had the growth to support a regional mall.    The owners would do well to tear down and redevelop the mall, leaving JCPenney and Belk.  Otherwise, both anchors are likely to leave the mall for a lower-key strip mall or lifestyle center.  The Belk was virtually empty when I visited, and the only tenant that seemed to be doing well was Kmart.   In all, I don't know why Blue Ridge Mall is dying, except that is too small, too close to Asheville, has a boring layout and most of the tenants in the mall are the kind that found they could do better in a strip mall.  I really cannot say what the future of Blue Ridge Mall is, but I do not expect it to last long in its current state.

 

Two angles of the same mall entrance between Belk and Penney's.  The first shows a Game Stop with an outside-only entrance.  The second is the greenhouse that went with McGuffey's.  I remember the time when greenhouses were all the rage.  Now, places that still have them generally front scary Chinese restaurants and title pawn places.

 

Belk Simpson here with a very scary looking combination of 70's architecture and creek stones.

 

Penney's looks 100 percent tacky on the outside.  I'll give it a D+ for a solid design.

 

This mall entrance was drastically modified at some point.  I seem to remember it previously just said "MALL" in big red letters.  I only recently noticed it had a name, and I wonder if that is a recent development.   I think "White Rock Mall" would be a better name, anyway.  It looks like a big, white rock to me.

 

The back entrance did not lose its late 70's/early 80's trappings.  Mansard roof?  Check.  Plain, dough colored brick?  Check.  Sickly, lonely tree?  Check.

Ingles at Innsbruck Mall

While not the first Ingles, the Ingles at Innsbruck Mall is one of the very first of the stores in the chain featuring elements now rarely found in modern Ingles stores.  It dates to an era when supermarkets as a whole were much smaller with more limited selections, vibrant colors and ease of convenience compared to todays much larger stores that are close in size to the 1980's Wal-Mart stores that they so often replaced.  Ingles these days has quite a huge market and completely dominates grocery retailing in Asheville. This is why a few classic treasures have been allowed to remain, and this one was nothing short of a gem.

This photo I took in late 2005.  The store looked in remarkably good repair at that point.  The mall attached to it had an exterior renovation around that time as well.

Ingles states that their very first store opened in Asheville in 1963, which according to a poster "Ken" in my previous blog actually opened in Biltmore Village.  I am placing the opening of Innsbruck Mall about 1965, so this seems about right to me. Looking at the store inside and out, this leads me to wonder if this store was ever renovated once at any time in its history. While their design was never really updated much for 20 years after it first opened, this one was distinct in how incredibly tiny it was. I've seen a few other mini-Ingles left in operation, including one in Franklin, but this one had all the retro goodies inside and out.

Yes, it's cramped, but it looks so cozy and tacky and old fashioned like they looked when I was a child.  I really miss that.

 

You can tell its old when frozen foods are found on a side wall instead of the center of the store.  I kind of like that actually.

No special pattern or design here.  Just plain font and colors mark the Green Grocer and Wine Cellar.  I have not seen anything like this on the newer stores.  I don't even remember it in the later "disco" stores.  You can see these areas better on my photos of the store closed, but without all the lights and charm.

It was sad to see this store go. When I photographed it, the new free-standing store next door was nearing completion. That is why I took these photos. Unfortunately, my camera back then was not as good and I found it difficult to discretely photograph much of the store. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoy seeing these pics of one of the last operational classic-era supermarkets.

Here is a look down a random center aisle towards the check out area.  Those overhead signs are very, very old.  In the stores built like in the mid-80's, they never updated those unless the store was rebuilt and expanded.