Business View City & Municipal | August 2022

95 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 3, ISSUE 7 To help achieve their life-long learning and economic development initiatives, Lynchburg has joined with Liberty University to form a public- private partnership to create a new lifestyle and entertainment venue called River Ridge Mall, which will function as the city’s town center. River Ridge Mall was a former enclosed, classic 1980s-style mall. It was anchored by Sears and Macy’s department stores, which eventually closed down, giving the property an abandoned feel. Years of inattention left the mall with few stores and lots of water damage. Liberty University purchased River Ridge Mall in 2017 with plans to reinvent it. “Our goal was to really turn it into a town center,” says Craig Pettitt, Vice President of Real Estate for Liberty University. “Although there are little venues around the city, we feel like, ‘location, location, location’ is key. River Ridge is centrally located, and it’s a great venue for reinvention.” Renovations began in 2019 to turn the mall LYNCHBURG, V I RGINI A into an open-air shopping center with urban storefronts, a lifestyle area, modern food hall, cinema and space for shopping, dining and entertainment. The mall’s centerpiece is a large aquarium run by SeaQuest. “We went in and kind of created a power center,” Pettitt says. “We intentionally didn’t want it to look like a typical mall. Our center court is open and inviting.” The mall includes three anchors – one being Dick’s Sporting Goods. Home Goods is about to sign a lease as another of the anchors, and River Ridge have a lease out to a cosmetics operator that is not currently in the Lynchburg market. They also have eight new stores under contract to open within the next year. “It’s been quite the turn around,” Pettitt says. “Our goal is to create an opportunity here that’s really like no other. Maybe we will bring in people from other adjoining communities, whether it’s Roanoke, Charlottesville, and Danville up to the property.”