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BLACKSBURG - A planned mixed-use development on South Main Street could become much larger if Gables Shopping Center is added to the project. Jeanne Stosser, who is acting as a broker for partners who in December paid $4.2 million for 25 acres on South Main Street, confirmed Monday that the partners last month arranged a 90-day option to purchase Gables Shopping Center. The partners also bought 15 acres behind the shopping center, a property often referred to as the Rugby Field. The Gables center would better connect the two areas and add another 13 acres for a development that Stosser described as a place for people to "work, live and play." Though far from having finished plans, Stosser and others involved in the project have described creating a new gateway into south Blacksburg with a blend of retail, office, entertainment and residential uses. Town officials have welcomed the project, at least in its preliminary outline, and earlier this year amended Blacksburg's comprehensive plan to shift the recommended future use of parts of the planned development from office to commercial. Mayor Roger Hedgepeth said Monday that as described so far, the project should enhance the town's economy, especially because it would replace the faded commercial strip that begins south of the Gables center. "The key word is redevelopment. It would redevelop South Main Street," Hedgepeth said. Bob Pack - whose family built Gables in the 1960s, sold it in the 1980s, then reacquired and renovated it in the 1990s - said that while the shopping center had not been on the market, he and his partners liked Stosser's offer. Pack is one of the partners who is building the mixed-use Kent Square development about a mile up South Main Street from Gables. There are more than a dozen businesses at Gables and most have five- or 10-year leases, Pack said. The longest lease is held by the center's anchor tenant, a Kroger supermarket whose lease could extend another 30 years, he said. The assessed value of the two parcels that make up Gables shopping center was $7.6 million, according to Montgomery County's online GIS system.
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