New mall to open next year in state
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Edward Klump
3/19/2004
A $100 million enclosed mall anchored by Dillard’s, J.C. Penney and Target is to open next year in Jonesboro, developers said Thursday.
The Mall at Turtle Creek will feature 750,000 square-feet of retail space and will be among the largest retail developments in Arkansas. It is being touted as a regional attraction for northeast Arkansas and southeast Missouri. The mall is expected to open in the fall of 2005.
Marty Belz and Bruce Burrow of Belz-Burrow Development Group, as well as David Hocker and Talmage Hocker of David Hocker & Associates, are developing the project.
Burrow said Jonesboro area residents often go shopping in Memphis or Little Rock.
“This project will bring that kind of shopping to the community,” he said.
The Turtle Creek developers are putting together The Shoppes at North Hills, an open-air retail and entertainment project planned for North Little Rock. The North Hills project is to include a Bass Pro Shops. Some of the roughly 866,00 square-foot development is to open by late 2005.
Besides the three main tenants, Turtle Creek will include a Barnes & Noble booksellers, Circuit City and Bed Bath & Beyond. There will be more than 100 retailers in the development. The mall’s layout will allow customers to enter each of the six major tenants from the outside as well
as from the inside.
The mall site is at Stadium Boulevard and Highland Drive. Annual retails sales are projected to be $225 million for the mall, which the developers said would create the full-time equivalent of about 900 net jobs.
The Dillard’s planned for Jonesboro is the second new Arkansas store location the Little Rockbased chain has announced this year.
The other is a store planned for Rogers. And speculation continues that Dillard’s is considering a new location in the Little Rock area, although the company has declined to comment.
If Dillard’s and J.C. Penney were to close their existing Jonesboro stores it would leave Indian Mall, which is owned by Warmack & Co. of Texarkana, Texas, with just Sears, Roebuck and Co. as an anchor.
Matt Lukas of Warmack & Co. said his firm believes that Indian Mall still is a good retail location.
He said the company also views its land in southwest Jonesboro as a good place for future retail development.
Indian Mall has about 325,000 square feet of leasable area, Lukas said. Regarding the Turtle Creek project, Lukas said: “We believe that all development’s good for Jonesboro.”
Gov. Mike Huckabee praised the Turtle Creek project in a recent letter.
“In these times of economic pressure, it is truly exciting to see a group of people willing to invest in the future,” Huckabee said in the letter.
Belz of Memphis and Burrow of Jonesboro have worked on other project in Arkansas, including the development of the Peabody Little Rock hotel and the renovation of the Hilton Little Rock.
The Hocker firm is of Owensboro, Ky.
Burrow said he was pleased to finally be able to make an announcement about The Mall at Turtle Creek.
“We’re excited,” he said. “I’ve been working on this project a long, long time.”
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