The Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles' move is official.

The Roanoke office has been making plans for months to exit its longtime spot at Crossroads Mall and shift its operation to Valleypointe business park on Peters Creek Road. This month, the state signed a 15-year lease at the park, with August 2009 as its scheduled opening.

In the meantime, consumers shouldn't worry about where to go for license renewal and other DMV services. The state office at Crossroads isn't closing yet. Though its lease expires Aug. 31, it will have a month-to-month lease there until its move to Peters Creek Road.

The DMV is leaving Crossroads because of maintenance issues inside the building and in its parking lot and "complaints from customers about not being able to find a parking space," said Melanie Stokes, a DMV spokeswoman.

It also needs a safer area to perform road tests, she added.

The new 15,300-square-foot facility under construction has all of the elements that DMV needs, including 145 parking spaces, 20 teller windows and 13 testing stations.

Crossroads DMV employees will move to the new office.

For $416,562 a year, the state will lease the free-standing structure from local developer Steven Strauss, who also is an owner of the 2.9-acre site under ARS-DMV, his company.

Structures Design/Build, a company that Strauss also owns, is the general contractor and architect for the job. Strauss did not offer a project cost estimate because those details are not yet final, he said.

While the move brings more parking and better access to DMV, it shorts Crossroads a large tenant.

DMV, housed in a nearly 16,370-square-foot space, opened its offices in the back of the mall in 1993, after consolidating branches on Peters Creek Road and Tanglewood Mall.

Though plans for the future of the DMV's space haven't been worked out, Crossroads plans to continue shaping one area of its center into an office complex, said its owner, Chris White.

Crossroads is splitting its center into two sections, with new names and fresh marquees to mark each one. The right side of the center, which houses Advance Auto Parts' corporate headquarters, is Crossroads Business Park.

The left side, which is primarily retail space, is Crossroads Shopping Center.

With Advance Auto and several small offices, including Small Smiles, Crossroads is heading in the direction of an office center, though "things are not moving as quickly as I have preferred," White said. His firm, Southeast Real Estate Investment Corp. of Alabama, purchased Crossroads in 2004 for $18 million.

Apparel retailer Goody's closed its Crossroads store in 2007, and the space still is vacant, though White said that soon could change. He's in negotiations with an office tenant to take over that location, though the details aren't final.

There are some other vacancies in Crossroads' enclosed section. The retail portion, which includes Kmart and Books-A-Million, is 100 percent occupied, White said.

As for DMV's space, it's too soon to begin marketing it because the office will be there for another year, White said. Future plans could involve splitting up or enlarging the area to ready it for more offices.

"Anything that's available, we will proceed to renovate and release to office users," White said.

Staff writer Duncan Adams contributed to this report.