Cary at a crossroads.

• Author: Hetzer, Michael
• Position: Debate over construction of the Crossroads Mall in Cary, North Carolina

Cary at a crossroads

Sometimes, less is more. That's what Joel Murphy, senior development officer for New Market Development Co. Ltd., is counting on.

That's because what he wants to build on a 109-acre site in Cary is much smaller than the massive and much-ballyhooed Crossroads Mall, which an Australian developer had planned to put on the property [Real Estate, November 1987]. The Atlanta-based New Market has offered to buy the land for an undisclosed amount, and it plans to put a "power center" there - an open-air, regional shopping center about as large as a mid-sized mall.

The company will have to deal with locals who are disappointed that Cary will not be getting the state's largest mall after all. Instead, it looks as though it's getting just another shopping center - a characterization Murphy doesn't like.

"I think that's a natural human reaction," he says. "But it isn't really fair."

Once a feather in Cary's cap, the now-defunct Crossroads Mall project has been a thorn in the city's side since LJ Hooker Corp. filed to reorganize under Chapter 11 of the Federal Bankruptcy Act in September. The insolvent developer left behind a mountain of debt and eight uncompleted malls across the country. It finished only one project, Forest Fair Mall in Cincinnati.

More important to Cary, Hooker's grading for the project left a pitted landscape off Cary-Macedonia Road where red Carolina clay washed away with each rainfall. Cary residents nicknamed it "the mudhole."

Hooker originally said it would open Crossroads Mall this fall. But it had trouble finding tenants. Then, a series of postponements ensued: First, it was spring 1990. Then, it was bumped to fall 1990 and later, to spring 1991. Finally, the developer cancelled the project. The delays, Hooker's eventual Chapter 11 filing and the erosion troubles - later corrected - led Cary residents to alternately praise and ridicule Mayor Koka Booth over the past two years.

"Everybody wants to shoot at you," Booth says, "sort of like [Jim] Valvano," who's now under fire for problems in N.C. State's basketball program. "I know just how he feels."

New Market's contract with Hooker is subject to approval by a New York bankruptcy judge, but Booth, who says New Market's was the best of four offers Hooker recieved, calls it a "done deal." Hooker would not comment.

Comparing New Market's plan with Hooker's is a lesson in contrasts. Hooker planned a 1.7 million-square-foot supermall; New Market's Crossroads...