Update: The eastern outlet mall did in fact fail, never reaching full occupancy when it opened, and was bought and rebranded as The Factory, Chesterfield Outlets and the Main Event.
Awesome! I can’t wait until two competing outlet malls, two miles apart, and right across the interstate from the partially vacant Chesterfield Commons and just a stone’s throw from Chesterfield Mall, open in Gumbo Flats!
My parents and I drove out and took some pictures of the eastern outlet mall site, and we joked that we should take before, during and after photos of the mall, since it undoubtedly will be demolished in our lifetimes due to shoddy construction and vacancy. Why do we keep spreading the same amount of peanut butter on an increasingly larger and larger piece of bread?
And yet – these outlets will be so promising and profitable they have asked for tax relief from the City of Chesterfield… What brave entrepreneurs!
And Chris – thanks for continuing to refer to CV as Gumbo Flats, its true name!
My story – when it was first being referred to as CV, I was railing against the name in my store one day to a long-time customer (kinda like my opposition to the push to rename Hog Hollow Road to some white-bread name back in the ’70s). The customer was Tommy Shaw (Jr.), who had proposed the name and was one of the developers. He took offense and never walked in my store again…
Because of greed and developers just want to fallow the public funds . I wish One of the developers would forget building more unneeded sprawl and just rehab and restore the arcade building and develop the old mall in side it.