SOUTH CHARLESTON, W.Va. — South Charleston Mayor Frank Mullens says the opening of the new Starbucks in the city is the second piece to the 500,000 square foot shopping center that’s coming to the area, and will be yet another major economic driver.
The new Starbucks opened Thursday along MacCorkle Avenue in South Charleston, right next to Chick-Fil-A that opened it’s doors a couple of years ago as the very first tenant of the oncoming Park Place Plaza shopping center that will soon house a Menards store, a Kroger Marketplace, as well as a host of other smaller retail stores and restaurants.
Mullens said it’s great to now welcome the second tenant to come to the future shopping center location.
“It’s awesome, it’s nice to get our second store down there, and as I said yesterday, I can’t imagine having a better one-two punch to get things started than Starbucks and Chick-Fil-A,” said Mullens.
Mullens said overall the developments are coming along nicely at the site of the future shopping plaza.
He said Kroger announced they would start construction on their new Marketplace store at the site in early April of next year. It’s the first Kroger Marketplace to come to the state of West Virginia.
Mullens said Menards expects to start construction on its store either before or right around that date as well.
He said those two stores will be the centerpiece of the shopping center.
“So, they should be the next two, the really big box stores, because one is like 175,000 square feet and the Kroger is like a 130,000 square feet, so those are two really huge stores,” he said.
Mullens said while looking over at the future site of the plaza now, it may not look like much activity is going on in the huge, empty lot, but he said that’s because most of the initial work of flattening out the land to prepare for the construction of the stores has already been done.
He said currently they are just waiting for the settlement and compaction of the land to finish to get the site ready to build on.
In the meantime, however, Mullens said Starbucks is already showing to be a good fit for the initial development of the plaza.
“We’re thrilled to have Starbucks in there, I drove by this morning on my way into work and there’s already a line all the way through the drive-thru, so that’s what we hope to continue to see and I’m sure we will,” he said.
Mullens said they expect to have another four to six restaurants being built at the plaza with the rest to be additional retailers whom they will soon announce the names of.
He said the overall project is already starting to be a major economic boost for the city.
“We’re already starting to see a domino effect before things even start to get up and running, we’re already showing property around Park Place, we’re showing property around new Jefferson Road, so this is just the beginning and I’m excited about our future,” Mullens said.
Mullens said Park Place’s construction plans are nearly already full of businesses. He said by the spring of next year, every business wanting to move into the area to start construction can do so.