Hobby Lobby moving to Columbus Park Crossing
Columbus Park Crossing has snagged yet another major retailer in a store relocation from a smaller shopping center off Airport Thruway.
Oklahoma City-based Hobby Lobby, which sells a variety of arts and crafts and home items, will be moving to a site adjacent to Ashley Furniture HomeStore and the hhgregg electronics store off Whittlesey Boulevard near the eastern side of Columbus Park Crossing.
Construction on the 55,000-square-foot Hobby Lobby store is just beginning, with the property expected to be completed and occupied by spring of next year, said Stella Schulman, executive vice president of The Jordan Company, the Columbus-based real estate firm that negotiated the deal.
“They’re a great fit for us at Columbus Park because they’re a quality retailer,” she said. “They offer a very wide selection of affordable merchandise that appeals to a diverse group of shoppers. And we feel that’s just a great integration to the depth and the quality of the shopping variety that we already have at Columbus Park.”
Hobby Lobby has been at its existing 60,000-square-foot location at Britt David Shopping Center since April 2001, when it renovated a now-defunct Home Quarters warehouse outlet. The company signed a 10-year lease at that time with two five-year options.
General manager Mark Meharg said while Hobby Lobby has done well on Airport Thruway, the move to a brand new structure with plenty of other well-known retailers nearby should generate more traffic and sales. A Jo-Ann Fabrics and Crafts store also does business at Columbus Park.
“Hobby Lobby is up for the year. They increased (revenues) last year even with the recession,” he said. “And I’m doing better than the company average here at this location. Once we move over there, yeah, we’ll be blowing the doors down. It’s going to increase dramatically.”
The existing store employs 32 people, said Meharg, who anticipates he will need more on the payroll when the new location opens.
Hobby Lobby was launched in 1972 in Oklahoma City. It has grown to 456 stores in 39 states. Its stores stock a wide variety of arts and crafts items, and products for hobbies, furniture and home accents, picture framing, jewelry making, fashion fabrics, floral, cards, party supplies, wearable art and seasonal goods.
The Christian influence of Hobby Lobby’s owners can be found in the fact that the privately owned company’s stores close each Sunday, just as the Atlanta-based restaurant chain Chick-fil-A does on orders from its Christian founder Truett Cathy.
Columbus Park Crossing, meanwhile, appears to have weathered the recession well. The shopping, dining and entertainment hub on the city’s north side has had very few vacancies and landed the Havertys furniture chain out of Atlanta in June. The 125-year-old retailer is now renovating a former Circuit City site into a 30,000-square-foot-plus furniture showroom, with plans to open by Thanksgiving.
“We do continue to talk with other retailers and do feel optimistic that there’s more activity now in those conversations, and some are more serious about looking and expanding than we sensed a year to a year and a half ago,” Schulman said. “So that’s very encouraging for us.”
The first phase of Columbus Park Crossing opened in the fall of 2002 on 380 acres of land near the intersection of U.S. Highway 80 (J.R. Allen Parkway) and Veterans Parkway. Atlanta-based real estate development firm Ben Carter Properties and The Jordan Company have filled more than 1.7 million square feet of space since then. That leaves about 600,000 square feet of potential commercial space available.
“The vision that we all had back in 2000 and 2001 for this 380-acre master-planned, mixed-use development, where we wanted to try to integrate shopping and dining and living nearby, really does continue to be fulfilled,” Schulman said.
This story was originally published September 16, 2010 at 1:54 PM with the headline "Hobby Lobby moving to Columbus Park Crossing."