WASILLA -- Volunteers from the Crossroads Community Church arranged chairs and cleaned windows Wednesday in a former grocery store inside the Cottonwood Creek Mall, preparing for a weekend of faith-based seminars and the arrival of a healing evangelist.
A few yards away, shoppers perused new shoes and hot pretzels.
This mix of religion and retail may soon become a fixture in the only traditional mall in the Valley. For more than four years, Cottonwood Creek has watched the busy Parks Highway with two black eyes -- empty retail spaces on either side of the building.
Those spaces are reserved for big tenants, the anchor stores that draw big crowds. The Crossroads Church wants to fill one of the gaps by buying the whole mall.
The congregation at the nondenominational Crossroads Church grew so quickly that its leaders have been unable to build a proper venue for services. Sunday services are held instead in a middle school gymnasium. Crossroads members multiplied from 200 to at least 1,200 since it launched in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough in 1995, elder Ken Kincaid said.
Rather than spend years planning and building a new church, Crossroads is now deep in negotiations to purchase the mall, more than 200,000 square feet.
Despite vacancies in two of three mall anchor spots, the small shops inside the 20-year-old mall report a steady climb in sales.
At one end, the frayed outline of "PayLess Drugs" can be seen in relief against the tan walls. This storefront has been empty since 1998. An Alaska Marketplace grocery that occupied the opposite end of the mall closed in 2000.
Shoppers never saw new retailers move in those locations because the owners of the mall -- an Outside collection of more than 30 investors -- were still getting paid on long-term leases. The mall occupies a spot along the commercial heart of Wasilla, between Fred Meyer and the site of a future Allen & Petersen appliance store. Gottschalks occupies the third anchor spot in the mall.
The Alaska Marketplace lease expired in December 2004. Crossroads would likely move into that space, or even the old PayLess spot, if the deal goes through, Kincaid said.
He said Crossroads could buy the mall as early as June. The church signed a purchase agreement and committed money to the deal that it will lose if the sale falters. Kincaid declined to say how much the church agreed to pay for the mall. The borough has assessed the property at close to $13 million.
Sale of the building to a church will not result in an overall property tax exemption, Kincaid said. Only the square-footage used by the church, about 15 percent of the mall, would become tax exempt, he said.
Crossroads will get a chance to test drive the building starting today.
The church is hosting a statewide conference along with Northwind Global Ministries, also of the Valley. A well-known healing evangelist, Randy Clark of St. Louis, is expected to speak Saturday and Sunday. The church has registered hundreds of people to attend a series of seminars, event coordinator Kathy Conn said.
The tenants, meanwhile, have heard rumblings of negotiations between their landlord and the Valley church for weeks. The rumors raised questions. Would the church fill both ends of the mall? What are its long-term plans for the building?
Kincaid, a former real estate appraiser, said that if the church moves into one end of the building, it could recruit a new tenant for the other empty anchor space, ideally lassoing a big-name national retailer such as Best Buy, Barnes & Noble or The Sports Authority.
If anything, Kincaid, says, the church wants to see more businesses in the mall.
"Our vision for the mall is to re-establish it as the community center for the Valley," he said.
Crossroads Community Church considers itself one of the biggest in the borough, and the Cottonwood Creek Mall is the only shopping mall in the Valley.
A group of Seattle investors built it in 1984. According to the borough, the mall was foreclosed on in 1996 and purchased by a group called the Cottonwood Creek LLC around the same time.
The mall is 29 percent vacant, said general manager K.B. Tompkins. That includes the empty space where Rite Aid, which absorbed PayLess Drugs, will keep paying rent for at least a few years.
The lineup at Cottonwood Creek includes familiar mall tenants, businesses such as Foot Locker and Zales Jewelers. Independent retailers, including a Christian bookstore, a lingerie shop, a nail salon and pull-tab spot, occupy other spaces.
Contact reporter Kyle Hopkins at khopkins@adn.com or call 1-907-352-6710.
