A long-time employee of Hudson Belk just assured me that our earlier story is, indeed, a "done deal". Hudson Belk’s men’s department will be filling both levels of the former Lord & Taylor space in February of 2007. If anyone from Crabtree Valley Mall would like to refute this information, please feel free to join with the on-top-of-it Coyote Ugly people and set us straight! Here’s the story we ran last week concerning this topic:
Ever since Lord & Taylor pulled out of the South, and thus Crabtree, many theories have swirled about how Crabtree will fill the two-story anchor space. We’ve reported the rumor of Bloomingdale’s possibly filling the space, and discussed plans to change the space into additional ordinary mall space. Renderings of that plan are still online.
One of our readers, however, insists that Hudson Belk is going to move their Men’s Department to at least some of the old L&T space. While this is a sad scenario, it is plausible. The space is a relatively small space for a major anchor, however the entire ground floor is slightly larger than the collective men’s departments at Hudson Belk. Given the bludgeoning that brick-and-mortar retailing is receiving from internet competition, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Crabtree have/choose to stick with one of their tried and true, original tenants. The second story could be developed into more mall space, a new food court, or whatever.
