“I think it’s location, location, location,” said Julia Gearhart, who operates the family-owned 25,000-square-foot Vandalia Shopping Center on the south side of National Road, just west of the Interstate 75 interchange. “It’s close to the interstate. We’re in the hub of everything. We’re just in a great area.”
Others cite the stability of the market.
“It seems like Vandalia is just a stable market from a population standpoint,” said Comtech Realty’s Mike Baughman, who rents space at the 57,500-square-foot Imperial Shopping Center, about a mile west of the Vandalia Shopping Center.
The VSC’s one opening was created when an antique dealer left in March.
Imperial has three small openings; the largest is 2,400 square feet from a pizza parlor that left.
Each shopping center has a mix of pharmacies, restaurants, dry-goods sellers and money lenders.
The Shoppes of Northwoods — an area still developing on Northwoods Boulevard, one exit north of National Road — built around a Kroger grocery, has one small opening.
City manager Rob Anderson cites previous city managers and councils that did not overbuild, when retail in the north centered on Trotwood’s Salem Mall and at several locations in Huber Heights.
“Retail was exploding in the 1990s and early 2000s,” Anderson said. “We were kind of the donut hole (between Trotwood and Huber Heights). We didn’t really see the need to build new.”
The Imperial and Vandalia shopping centers are the second and third largest in the city. The newer Shoppes at Northwoods (built in 2002) is the largest with more than 89,000 square feet.
The Vandalia Shopping Center initially opened in the late 1950s, before I-75 was built. Harold Brussman, who operated the Highway Inn and Cafeteria at the northwest corner of National Road and Route 25 (now Dixie Highway), bought the land.
Gearhart and her brothers David and Bill Brussman added the final 5,000 square feet, in 1986, centered on a Subway restaurant.
The Brussmans also own and operate the Rib House across the street, and sold the cafeteria long ago. That area is now a medical-building community.
Imperial Shopping Center was built in 1964 and has stabilized around a pharmacy.
Baughman said one unusual situation in his Imperial shopping center is that only one of the stores (Family Dollar), is “the only real national tenant.
The rest are mom-and-pop tenants, and they’re usually “the first to go.”
Being across the street from the airport is a help, and losing the American Trapshooting Association several years ago hurt the summer “bump,” but didn’t put anyone out of business.
Anderson said residents ask him about the possibility of luring a book store or Trader Joe’s grocery, but places like that, he said, “really only look at demographics. While I think they would be successful here, we can’t make it past the first cut.”
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2157 or mkatz@Dayton DailyNews.com.
About the Author