Quote:
Originally Posted by CRWMSPPGH
yes its interesting. The way the pitch book is worded, it seems the city has acquired the Sears building. Maybe I'm reading it wrong. A real boost to the mall would be to entice another department store to take the Macys space and make sure the Sears property was only used for a convention center hotel. There are dozens of other locations for a Homewood Suites around town. If Wheeling was able to lure a Boscovs department store and Beckley,Bluefield and Parkersburg all have a Belk........what is the problem here?
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I have been making inquiries for all of the questions raised in this thread the last two days, but I can answer why there is no Belk's at Charleston Town Center. Macy's Department Store had veto power on the decision. Belk's wanted to come to CTC several times over the last 20 years. They made their first offer when Montgomery Ward went out but the city wanted Dillard's instead. That was at a time when Macy's did not own the anchor, it was a Kaufman's Department Store back then.
The city told Belk's thanks, but no thanks and then they haggled with Dillard's who knew they were the target and kept raising the cost to come to Charleston. By the time the city realized it was not going to get Dillard's, the economy was turning sour and Belk's wanted to wait on further expansion. I was told it was not because Belk's did not want to be in Charleston, they did. But they wanted the city to come after them like they did Dillard's and the city made no effort beyond an initial set of phone calls.
During this time Bob Evans came and went, more or less and the property was a black eye on the mall. Also during this time BrickStreet was suffering under a lot of demand to meet state contracts and citing massive overhead, they pulled out of the 14-story DMC tower in Kanawha City, officially saying it was that the building had slow elevators. In any case, Brickstreet got a steal deal in their lease of the old anchor.
Then when Sears was having issues, Belk's called to inquire on the property but this time Macy's was given a veto and told the Mall that if Belk's came in they were going out. It must be noted this was at the time that Macy's was paying no rent on the building, paying no rent on the land, paying nothing for utilities and not paying the mall fee all retail outlets pay based on classification and sales square foot.
Belk's would have paid all of that.
Now here is the odd thing that I have uncovered. I do not know if the two things are one thing but they 'feel' like they are.
According to news reports, the Sears property was sold for 2.5 million on May 9 2018. According to later news reports Poca Valley Bank bought the Sears 'properties' and neighboring lots for 2.5 million in August of 2018.
The Sears store should cost a lot more than the Sears Auto Center if for no other reason that of it's attachment to the mall and the fact that the Sears Store has asbestos that must be cleared. The paperwork for the removal was included in the sale and that cost some money to obtain. A team had to go in and check pretty much the entire building for density and location of the material. That took several skilled men a while to perform and that is never cheap.
So, are we to believe that both Poca Valley Bank and KM Hotel each bought a portion of the Sears footprint for the same price or is that one price the price for it all? When you go to the KM Hotel sources they list the address of the new hotel under construction in Charleston as 1004 Quarrier street. That is the address of the old Holly Hotel.
Their site is terrible, it is never up to date and it looks like someone is setting it up and trying to learn how the internet works at the same time. So, it could be an error, they seem to be common as my other thread attests. People take no pride in excellence any more.
*Shush all you people harking on my bad typing, poor spelling and unplanned missing words.*
I do know that US Bank is trying to fire sale the mall. They have probably had engineers in there and they have come to the realization that if they don't tear it down it is going to fall down. Not like it will kill any one, customer or employee, there is no one in there. But the cost to REBUILD not repair the mall is huge.
At a minimum the garages must be torn down and replaced. I honestly have no idea what Embassy will do at that point. Try to buy the land and build their own I suppose or just buy it and pave, which seems to be the Charleston way by making a big ugly, weed-infested and trash strew asphalt lot.
I looked through the links provided and all of those properties have 75% or more rooms that the 126 rooms proposed in Charleston. I found the franchise agreement for Charleston in the KM Hotel files and the property has to be no less than 121 rooms and 12 million dollars. So what we are getting here is a Hampton Inn, maybe one more floor than the one across Elk River with a Homewood Suites name on it...
IF
IF
IF
If we are getting any hotel at all. It looks very much like Poca Valley owns the site and KM Hotels has no decided to go there. In any case, they can't do anything until the asbestos is removed and that has not happened. That will be a big mess on a building this size and this late in 2019, I am going to predict it will not be this summer or fall. Maybe next winter, dunno. Asbestos suits are hot and bulky and the store is no longer attached to power, so no heat.
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