River Ridge Mall in Lynchburg, VA: The Mall Liberty University Bought One Building at a Time

River Ridge Mall is the enclosed shopping center at 3405 Candlers Mountain Road in Lynchburg, Virginia, near where U.S. 29 meets U.S. 460.

It opened September 24, 1980 with brick floors, indoor plants, and Thalhimers and Miller & Rhoads as its anchors.

Sears and Leggett followed in 1981, JCPenney in 1983. Miller & Rhoads closed in 1990. Montgomery Ward took the space, then Value City, then a demolition crew, then a 14-screen Regal.

Thalhimers became Hecht's, then Macy's, then a cleared lot in 2021. Liberty University began with one building.

It paid $6.9 million for the Sears in 2012 and filled it with 675 university employees, 39 offices and a television studio.

In 2016 Liberty bought 75 percent of the mall, and in August 2017 it bought the remaining 25 percent for $9 million.

The Sears that Liberty converted into offices was demolished, and a Dick's Sporting Goods opened on the site in October 2020.

Again and again, this mall's history turned on what happened to the anchor boxes.

River Ridge was planned as Lynchburg Centre

By August 4, 1978, the 80-acre tract off Candlers Mountain Road was nearly cleared. Grading had been under way since June.

On the plans the project was called Lynchburg Centre, and it carried a price of $50 million.

River Ridge Mall is the enclosed shopping center that came out of that ground, at 3405 Candlers Mountain Road in Lynchburg, Virginia, near where U.S. 29 meets U.S. 460.

Henry Faison's Charlotte real-estate organization built it.

Faison had moved into multi-anchor regional malls during the 1970s, with Eastland Mall in Charlotte and Cross Creek Mall in Fayetteville already behind him.

What opened on September 24, 1980 was one level, fully enclosed, with department stores set at intervals around a common concourse.

The public areas were built to read as a village street: brick floors, storefronts at pedestrian scale, plants inside.

Thalhimers and Miller & Rhoads, two Virginia department-store names, opened with it.

One record here predates opening day.

The Salvation Army dates its first Lynchburg Angel Tree campaign to the 1979 holiday season, run with mall management using cards that carried children's names and clothing sizes.

It clothed more than 470 children in 1979, a full holiday season before River Ridge's official opening date. The dates still don't line up.

Five department stores in three years

Sears and Leggett opened in 1981.

Sears had been selling in Lynchburg for decades by then, downtown and later on Memorial Avenue, and the mall store became its suburban location in the city.

Leggett, a Southern chain, took the space that would eventually say Belk. JCPenney opened in 1983.

Miller & Rhoads had moved its Lynchburg operation into the mall as part of the chain's push into suburban centers.

The Thalhimers building was late-1970s department store from the outside in: grooved concrete block, anodized aluminum trim, dark tinted glass, angled forms.

Inside were parabolic light fixtures, enclosed escalator wells and separate selling rooms rather than one open floor.

The store also carried the service and dining functions a full-line department store was expected to have in 1980, including a hair salon, a fur salon and a Scottish-themed restaurant called the Sword & Kilt.

Five department-store names sat under one roof by 1983, three of them Virginia companies and two of them national chains.

The names on the buildings kept changing

Miller & Rhoads closed its River Ridge store on February 28, 1990 as the chain contracted.

Montgomery Ward opened in the 70,000-square-foot space five months later, on July 20, and stayed until December 31, 1997.

Value City moved in during 1998.

The other end of the mall turned over more quietly. May Department Stores bought Thalhimers in 1990 and began retiring the name.

The tearoom closed January 7, 1992, the name came down at the end of that month, and in February the store became Hecht's.

After Federated bought May, the same building became Macy's in September 2006.

Leggett became Belk in 1997 after Belk bought the chain.

That store was remodeled and reopened November 2, 2005 with 113,400 square feet of selling space.

The mall itself was renovated in 1996 and again in 2000, which brought a 1980 interior up to date twice in five years.

Under all of it the shells stayed where Faison put them, and shoppers kept learning new names for the same corners of the building.

A movie theater on the department-store slab

CBL & Associates Properties bought the mall from Faison on October 1, 2003 for $61.9 million.

What CBL bought was close to full.

In 2004 the property had 784,800 square feet of leasable space, a 94 percent leased rate, and mall stores selling $315 per square foot.

By 2006 those stores were at $331 and the leased rate was 95 percent.

Then Value City closed on June 30, 2008. The building came down that fall, taking with it the last of the original Miller & Rhoads box.

Regal opened a 14-screen cinema on the site on October 9, 2009: 57,000 square feet, more than 2,400 seats, stadium seating and 3D.

It put people on the property after the stores shut for the night.

The operating numbers still slid.

Mall-store occupancy dropped to 69 percent in 2009, and mall-store sales fell from $331 per square foot in 2006 to $295, then $276 in 2010.

A 15,500-square-foot former movie-theater space inside the mall became a Planet Fitness around 2012.

The $1.2 million conversion involved heavy demolition: the sloped floors came out, the subgrade came up five feet across 13,000 square feet, and 4,000 square feet of mezzanine went, including six 40-foot steel I-beams.

When Liberty University bought a Sears

Liberty University's first piece of the property was a single building: in 2012 it paid $6.9 million for the 112,000-square-foot Sears store.

Sears closed in January 2013.

The office conversion took five weeks.

On June 17, 2013, 675 university employees began moving into 39 offices, 11 conference rooms, two break rooms and two bathrooms.

Liberty University Online ran enrollment operations out of a former department store, and the School of Communication & Creative Arts put a television studio in part of it.

A regional civic center with a conference center and hotel was proposed for the site that same year and never built.

In March 2016 Liberty bought a 75 percent interest in the mall, contributing $33.5 million in cash plus the Sears parcel it already owned, valued at $7 million.

CBL kept 25 percent and kept running leasing and management.

The box was wanted for demolition, so 600 call-center employees were scheduled out of it within two months.

Macy's closed in March 2017. That August, CBL sold its remaining 25 percent for $9 million, and its management contract ended September 30.

Liberty now controlled a mall with roof leaks, two former department-store buildings and an interior that still looked like the 1980s.

Belk and JCPenney owned their own parcels then, and both stores still operate there.

JLL took over leasing and management in October 2018 and runs the property today.

Center court, an aquarium and a food hall

The interior work started that summer at center court, planned as a two-year program with the stores open throughout.

The middle of the mall became a place to sit: amphitheater-style seating, a food-and-drink kiosk, charging points and a fireplace.

An ocean-themed children's play area with tunnels, climbing elements and ramps opened July 19, 2019 near T.J. Maxx and JCPenney.

SeaQuest opened to the public on October 18, 2019 in 20,000 to 22,000 square feet, with more than 1,200 animals from five continents and a large tank used for aquatic encounters.

PETA had asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture three weeks earlier to pull the operator's exhibitor license. It opened anyway.

SeaQuest closed in October 2024 for the change to Hill City AquaZoo, and the mall directory now lists it as AquaZoo.

COVID-19 arrived mid-project and disrupted dozens of tenant deals still under discussion; the construction ran well past its two-year schedule.

The rebuilt food hall opened October 18, 2021 with three concepts run through Liberty's dining contract with Sodexo: Grounded, Zaza Stonefire Pizza and Mein Bowl.

That gave the hall five food options where there had been three; indoor-outdoor seating and a garage-style opening to the outside followed as the work finished.

Macy's came down and the West End went up

In January 2021 the mall announced that the former Macy's would be demolished that quarter.

The building was still the 1980 Thalhimers shell underneath, so the demolition took out the last physical trace of the mall's original west anchor.

What replaced it faces the parking lot.

The West End District put taller storefronts, restaurant patios and event space on the outside of the building, so a customer could park, eat and leave without walking the concourse at all.

The cleared Sears end got the same treatment.

Dick's Sporting Goods signed a lease on December 2, 2019 for 45,000 square feet with its own exterior entrance, 50 percent larger than its old Wards Crossing store, and opened the weekend of October 3-4, 2020.

Tenants filled in behind it: Papa Gallo, Windsor and Aerie in 2022, HomeGoods in January 2023, Duck Donuts that March, Ulta Beauty in July, then Torrid and Born United.

By July 2022 the renovation had cost $80 million, with more than $10 million in qualifying investment under Virginia's Enterprise Zone grant program and additional support through Lynchburg's Local Redevelopment Program.

Then the Dick's lease turned into a federal lawsuit.

What's open at River Ridge now

The lease let Dick's pay reduced rent until two more tenants filled the redevelopment area, one of at least 25,000 square feet and one of at least 16,000.

HomeGoods came in at 25,018. Ulta came in at 10,067, nearly 6,000 short.

The mall told Dick's in October 2023 that the condition was satisfied; Dick's kept paying the lower rent.

On July 2, 2026 a federal court in the Western District of Virginia dismissed the mall's case with prejudice and left the attorney-fee question for separate briefing.

Construction hasn't stopped for any of that.

In May 2025 the city reviewed a site plan for West End Park on 2.1 acres of the west parking field: three new buildings, a stage and a synthetic-turf standing area.

Liberty's 2026-27 budget funded quick-service restaurants on three outparcels there, without naming the brands.

The directory listed 59 active entries that month, a count that includes management and businesses on the property.

Belk and JCPenney are still open under their own names, and Dick's, HomeGoods, T.J. Maxx, Regal, Planet Fitness and AquaZoo hold the big spaces.

The rebuilt common areas get used for holiday programs, cancer-awareness events and outdoor auto shows as much as for walking between stores.

Palmetto Moon opened March 28, 2026, the South Carolina chain's first store in Virginia.

JCPenney has been open in the same spot since 1983, the only one of the mall's first five department stores still trading under the name it arrived with.