Just Call it No Oaks

Hey, guess what? Just four months after Giant vacated Tall Oaks Shopping Center Stucco Wasteland, the center may be on the verge of announcing an awesome new anchor tenant. Here's the thing, though: It probably won't be Bloom, it might not even be a grocery store, and it'll likely require a few teensy tiny site modifications to make the shopping center more visible from Wiehle Avenue, like cutting down a whole slew of trees.

KLNB Retail's Julie Cyphers, who oversees the leasing of Tall Oaks, said she “anticipates there being [an announcement] soon,” but would not elaborate because nothing has been signed.

With that store filled, Cyphers said she is optimistic about the remaining vacancies in the shopping center, which combined with the Giant space total 49,366 square feet of empty space, double the amount of occupied 24,634 square feet.

“We're talking to a number of folks,” she said about the center's other vacancies. “I feel like we'll probably pick up speed once the anchor store is in.”

After courting Bloom with an awesome postcard campaign and meetings with RA officials, it looks less likely that the awesome, less NASCAR-intensive Food Lion variant, is a viable option.

“There are some hurdles with Bloom,” said [RA CEO Milton Matthews]. “They would possibly want changes to the interior and exterior.”

Furthermore, Bloom's negotiations for new locations typically last a year, Matthews said.

“We don't want to wait a full year,” he said.

Yeah, that would be a bummer. Of course, those issues might be the same for any grocery store, and we all want easy access to leaky jugs of 2% milk and hilarious seasonal novelties, right?

Tara Coonin said she hopes above all else that any new tenant in Giant's old space would indeed be a grocery store.

“As long as it's a grocery store, we don't care. That's just my worst nightmare because that space would be perfect for a large gym,” she said.

We certainly don't want Tall Oaks' massive, empty parking lot filled with 'roid rage-fueled pickups, do we? So that brings us back to those, um, tall oaks:

Coonin said negotiations with Bloom raised this concern as well, with Bloom concerned that the center simply wasn't visible enough.

Part of the solution may be removing some of the trees behind the stores on Wiehle Avenue, a move that the RA would likely support.

“The association owns a lot of easements, we're committed to them getting more visibility to the stores in there,” Matthews said.

The RA actually supporting the wholesale removal of trees? Check the sky for flying pigs. And bring on the Agent Orange!