Commercial Confidential: Park Road Shopping Center

Editor’s note: “Commercial Confidential” is a Mecklenburg Times profile of a commercial property in the Charlotte area. 

Park Road Shopping Center opened in 1956 in south Charlotte as the first open-air shopping center in the city and the biggest center between Atlanta and Washington D.C.

Easily recognized by the huge red sign that greets shoppers, the center has been almost 100 percent occupied for its entire history, according to a website operated by Edens, the Columbia, S.C.-based property management company that owns the shopping center.

But when Edens purchased Park Road for more than $80 million in 2011, the company knew they had to update the retail hub if that success was to continue.

The company’s plans include making changes to the center that encourage more pedestrian activity, as well as making it more conducive to night shopping.

The strip-mall nature of the center – the shops are arranged in a linear pattern rather than the clusters that have been popularized by more modern mixed-use shopping centers – along with the broad asphalt parking lots discourage foot traffic.

Park Road Shopping Center is blessed in its location, however, surrounded by some of the wealthiest areas in Charlotte. Less than three miles from Southpark Mall, the average household income around the center is just more than $75,000. The average income throughout Charlotte is just more than $52,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Edens reports that the center currently has a vacancy rate of 1.5 percent, showing that the change in ownership hardly affected the tenants.

Only time will tell, though, if the changes being made to one of Charlotte’s first shopping centers will affect the older charm that the center has become famous for.

Center name: Park Road Shopping Center

Address: 4201-A Park Road

Square feet: 425,408 square feet

Year built: 1956

Architect: unavailable

Developer: A.V. Blankenship

Center owner: Columbia, S.C.-based Edens

Management company: Edens

Leasing company: Edens

Vacancy rate: 1.5 percent, according to Edens

Major tenants/square feet occupied: Blackhawk Hardware (54,189), Harris Teeter (35,219), Michael’s (23,000), Regal Park Cinemas (20,580)

Did you know? Fun fact about the building(s): James Cash Penney attended the grand opening of Park Road Shopping Center, as it was also the opening of the first J.C. Penney store in Charlotte.

GUION can be reached at [email protected], (704) 817-1344 or on Twitter at @paytonguion.