If the shoe was on the other foot, Vincent Pierce might have handled things differently.
Pierce and his wife, Danita, have owned George’s Shoe Repair since 1989. In May 2021 — at the height of the pandemic — the Pierces learned their business’s home in Virginia Beach’s Fairfield Shopping Center was slated for demolition. Vincent Pierce said he heard the news from a fellow tenant that his five-year lease was not going to be renewed, but he could maintain a month-to-month lease.
John Lineberger, associate developer with Crosland Southeast, said the company was intentional about de-leasing tenants in Fairfield Shopping Center to prep the shopping center for a roughly $2 million redevelopment.
“We relocated a number of them to different spaces,” he said. “And some ended up taking space in other shopping centers.”
The Charlotte, North Carolina-based real estate development company purchased the center in 2019 as part of a joint venture. The majority of the buildings date back to the late 1970s.
The company made the financial decision from the start to improve the spaces and figure out other uses for the land, Lineberger said, referring to the storefronts as old, small, without good visibility and attracting some non-desirable tenants.
An 80,000-square-foot self-storage facility is being built where the line of stores — including George’s Shoe Repair — once sat in the center’s back left corner. It should be completed by the middle or end of 2026, Lineberger said.
The double-loaded buildings that sit perpendicular to Providence Road are now undergoing demolition.
“That will open up more parking and sight lines,” Lineberger said, adding the company is in talks with tenants interested in the site.
Lineberger anticipates the outparcel storefronts to be completed by the beginning to middle of 2026. Before the demolition, the shopping center had about 225,000 square feet dedicated to retail. After the redevelopment, it will have about 180,000 square feet of retail space available for lease.
Chase Bank signed a lease for a building and conversations are ongoing with other prospective tenants for more freestanding buildings, but nothing else is finalized yet, Lineberger said.
“We’ve really appreciated the community interest and support, and we hope that when it’s all said and done, we’ll be delivering something the community is going to love,” he said.
With industrial equipment, countless pairs of shoes and two turtles to move, Vincent Pierce did his due diligence to find a new spot — not too far away — for his business.
“I didn’t have time to wait; I needed to get out and get set up,” Pierce said.
Twenty days shy of his lease expiration, the couple signed a lease on a storefront at 4734 Princess Anne Road in Larkspur Square in Virginia Beach.
Coincidentally, that’s the same road the shoe repair business had relocated to in 1965 after its start by George Bryant in Norfolk’s Five Points section in the late 1940s. The Pierces moved the shop to Fairfield in 2001 and to a smaller shop in the same shopping center in 2006.
After the move, George’s Shoe Repair had to find an electrician to convert the electrical outlets from 110 volts to 220 volts. But that change was one of many for the Pierces.
“People hate change and I hated it, too,” Vincent Pierce said. “But now that I’m here, it really was a blessing in disguise.”
Sandra J. Pennecke, 757-652-5836, sandra.pennecke@pilotonline.com