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By Jim Bohman DAYTON DAILY NEWS
Lazarus Department Stores agreed to be the fifth anchor store in Beavercreek's Mall at Fairfield Commons, Mark Cohen, chairman and chief executive of Lazarus, announced Monday.
Lazarus probably won't be boosting its retail presence in the Dayton area, however.
Once its Beavercreek store opens, Lazarus plans to shutter its Kettering store in the Lazarus Kettering Shopping Center, East Dorothy Lane at Woodman Drive.
Personnel at the Kettering store will be offered jobs at the new store, Cohen said.
With five anchors and four department stores, the Beavercreek mall is expected will rival the 1.2- million-square-foot Dayton Mall, which has three anchors.
The development underscores the growth occuring to the east of Dayton. There hasn't been a mall built in the Dayton area in two decades. Cohen said the planned store "will expand our customer base in this growing market."
Lazarus, a unit of Federated Department Stores Inc., a Cincinnati-based retailer, said its store is to open in mid-1994.
The mall's first stores are scheduled to open in August 1993, according to Glimcher Co. of Columbus, the developer.
The 1 million-square-foot shopping complex is being built near the Interstate 675 and North Fairfield Road interchange.
Other previously announced major tenants are Sears Roebuck & Co., J.C. Penney, Elder-Beerman Stores Corp. and Parisian. The mall also will have up to 150 specialty stores.
The Lazarus store will have 150,000 square feet of floor space, compared with 159,000 square feet at its store at the Dayton Mall. The Lazarus chain has 38 other stores.
The move to the Glimcher mall at North Fairfield and New Germany-Trebein Roads was forced on Lazarus last year after it had thrown in with arch-rival Elder-Beerman.
The two department store chains were to build stores in a separate Beavercreek shopping mall at Interstate 75 and Indian Ripple Road. But that Beerman Realty project fell apart when Beerman's own department store company, Elder-Beerman, announced last August, it was going into the Glimcher mall.
Financing problems have delayed work on the Glimcher mall. However, the company now says financing is secured.
Across the nation, malls with more than 800,000 square feet totaled 658 in 1991, up from 645 in 1990, according to statistics from the National Research Bureau.
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MALLS AT A GLANCE\ ****************************************************************
*Upper Valley Mall, Springfield, was built in 1971 by DeBartolo and is still owned by DeBartolo; it has 830,000 square feet of gross leaseable area.
*Dayton Mall was built in 1970 by DeBartolo and was sold in 1983 to JMB Realty of Chicago. Mall has 1.2 million square feet.
*Salem Mall, the oldest, was built in 1966 by The Rouse Co., Columbia, Md., and remains owned by Rouse. It has 830,000 square feet.
[EDITION] CITY [SOURCETAG] 9205120094