Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Advance Auto to expand Crossroads presence
The Roanoke-based auto parts supplier will house 900 employees at new digs in the Crossroads Mall area.
Photos by Kyle Green | The Roanoke Times
Steve Grubish, from Parsons Electric, looks over a manual for a new Caterpillar diesel generator. The generator is one of two generators that were delivered for Advance Auto's new data center, which is being built as part of the company's expansion.
Advance Auto in Roanoke plans to expand into an empty area of a mall that has been partly redesignated the Crossroads Corporate Business Center.
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Advance Auto Parts will expand its Roanoke headquarters by nearly 60 percent with a multimillion dollar office project on Airport Road as it combines two offices into one.
The company plans to drop $4.5 million on new office space at its 600-employee headquarters in Crossroads Mall, which has been partly redesignated Crossroads Corporate Business Center after the loss of several major stores.
Once the new offices are ready, Advance intends to close an office at 5673 Airport Road with 300 current employees, who will relocate to create a 900-person office.
Advance, which also employs 400 at a Roanoke distribution center and more than 200 at area stores, released the construction plans Tuesday. The company is in the midst of a profitable year, having earned nearly $174 million through mid-July.
Advance, which was founded in Roanoke, entered Crossroads in 2005, supporting the shopping center's partial transition to an office complex as various retailers moved out. Its chief executives work out of offices built within a former Waccamaw kitchen and household furnishings store and a Circuit City electronics shop.
When the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles left Crossroads earlier this month, that freed up additional space that Advance has claimed with a long-term lease. The lease includes several vacant store locations in the center's interior.
Advance, whose motto is "Keep the wheels turning," is almost single-handedly tackling the physical revitalization of the corporate area of Crossroads. When the newly announced offices are finished, Advance's headquarters will have grown by 90,000 square feet, to 246,000 square feet, company spokeswoman Shelly Whitaker said.
The Crossroads Corporate Business Center is 300,000 square feet in all, leasing agent Jake Copty of Thalhimer said.
Other business center tenants -- who moved into a former Goody's store this month -- are the Virginia Department of Social Services, Department of the Blind and Vision Impaired and the state's Roanoke Workforce Center. There is additional space for lease.
In spite of the mall's transition to cubicles and conference rooms, Crossroads continues to offer shopping at retailers including Kmart, Books-A-Million and Rugged Wearhouse, according to Copty. The retail side measuring 175,000 square feet has 16,000 square feet for lease, Copty said.
Crossroads is owned by Crossroads Investors II LLC, which Copty described as a group of investors in New York City that bought the complex in March.
Meanwhile, Advance has a $4 million project already under way in its existing Crossroads space.
A new information technology department to house relocating employees and an employee cafeteria at headquarters is being designed and built by Ryan Companies US Inc. of Minneapolis, where Advance maintains a regional office one town over from the hometown of CEO Darren Jackson.
Advance has not chosen a contractor for the next job, Whitaker said.
