CWCville Shopping Center
CWCville Shopping Center, sometimes called the CWCville Mall, located at the center of downtown CWCville, is the location of Chris's Mayoral Office and a temple to consumerism in CWCville. It also lies in Chris's version of his beloved Charlottesville Fashion Square, where he is not banned but rather is welcomed and employed there.
Chris designed the mall as a CADD project in college, and since no good school project goes unrecycled and unpublished, went and put the design in the comics. The plans were in the Scrapbook of Fail,[1] and Chris's original AutoCAD files were leaked.
Chris also built a rudimentary model of the mall with Lego. In 2014, the old Lego mall having been destroyed in the house fire, Chris dreamed of recreating it at a much grander scale, a "stud-to-stud replica." This was such a compelling vision that he started a Kickstarter campaign to raise $5000 for this project. Of course, nothing came of this.
Chris has said that the city of CWCville owns the mall,[2] while most real-life malls (even ones that are close to dead) are owned by real estate companies such as Simon Property Group, former owners of Charlottesville Fashion Square. Furthermore, Chris has included several stores that either don't exist in real life, or used to exist but no longer do; the store placement, selection, size, and other fine details are all over the place. Among other things, the mall features a disproportionately large number of restaurants and even a Big Lots, an off-price retailer that almost never locates in malls.
Placing a mall downtown isn't entirely unfeasible; there is, however, no excuse for putting the fucking Mayor's office in the mall (except perhaps if the government's finances are in such a dreadful condition that they need to in order to save on rent). Chris may have done this as a reference to the Adult Swim show Tom Goes to the Mayor.
History
Between 2019 and 2020, CWCville Shopping Center presumably lost its original anchor tenants, other than The Pokémon Center: Sears left Charlottesville in March 2019, followed by JCPenney in November 2020. It is unclear whether Chris found replacement anchor retailers.
Mall Stores
Take note of how many of the stores featured here have either been long since defunct or renamed.
Floor and orientation information are according to the archived CAD plans: for example, “1 W” means the western side of Floor 1, and “1+2 E” means the eastern side of Floors 1 and 2. Stores in bold also appears/appeared in the Charlottesville Fashion Square.
| Store | Floor | Status | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Abercrombie & Fitch | 1 W | Extant | Even after this. | |
| Aeropastale [sic] | 2 W | Extant | ||
| American Eagle Outfitters | 1 NE | Extant | ||
| Arcade World (Video Games) | 1 SW | That is not a typo. Chris wrote 'Video Games' beside it, despite arcades not usually having that. | ||
| Bath & Body Works | 1 W | Extant | [3] | |
| Books-a-Million | 1 W | Extant | abbreviated as BAM! | |
| Burger King | 1 W | Extant | ||
| Cellular One | 2 W | Defunct | Merged into Verizon in 2005.[4] Presumed to be closed, because there is a separate Verizon location in the Mall. | |
| Chick-fil-A | 1 SW | Extant | ||
| Christopher & Banks | 2 W | Extant | ||
| Christopher's Pizza | 2 NE | |||
| Circuit City Express | 1 NE | Defunct | Dissolved on 8 March 2009, but revived as an online-only retailer since 2018. | |
| Coffee Beanery | 1 NE | Extant | ||
| Collector’s Heaven | 2 SW | Defunct | Defunct since circa 2020.[5] | |
| Comic, Game & Hobby Place | 2 W | Defunct | Closed in 2014. | |
| Country Cookin | 1 SW | Defunct | Dissolved on 18 October 2020. | |
| Create-A-Critter | 2 SW | Extant | A brand of Build-A-Bear Workshop. | |
| Cutco Outlet | 2 SE | Extant | ||
| CVS | 2 NE | Extant | ||
| Dairy Queen | 1 SW | Extant | ||
| Dollar Tree | 1 NE | Extant | ||
| Foot Locker | 1 SE | Extant | ||
| Footaction USA | 1 NE | Extant | A brand of Foot Locker: the Fashion Square Mall did have separate locations for Foot Locker brands.[3] | |
| GameStop | 1 W | Extant | ||
| Gap | 1 NE | Extant | ||
| Gap Kids | 1 W | Extant | ||
| Great American Cookie [sic] | 2 SE | Extant | ||
| Hallmark | 1 NW | Extant | ||
| Hot Topic | 1 W | Extant | ||
| JCPenny [sic] | 1+2 NW | Defunct | Still around as a company, but left the Fashion Square in November 2020. | |
| Kay Jewlers [sic] | 1 W | Extant | Subsidiary of Sterling Jewelers.[3] | |
| KB Toys | 1 SE | Defunct | Dissolved on 9 February 2009. | |
| Kohr Bros. Frozen Yougurt] [sic] | 1 W | Extant | Presently at the Woodbrook Shopping Village.[6] | |
| Lady Foot Locker | 2 NE | Extant | A brand of Foot Locker. | |
| Lego Outlet | 1 NE | Extant | ||
| Limited Too | 1 W | Defunct | Merged into Justice in June 2010, before closing on 17 December 2020. Now online-only. | |
| MasterCuts | 1 SW | Extant | Subsidiary of Signature Style.[7] | |
| McDonald's | 1 SW | Extant | ||
| Pacific Sunwear | 1 W | Extant | Currently trading as PacSun. | |
| Payless Shoe Source | 2 W | Defunct | Dissolved in May 2019, but revived as Payless, an online-only retailer. | |
| The Pokémon Center | 1+2 NE | Unsurprisingly, this is given two floors and roughly 14 times the retail space of most of the other stores. | ||
| RadioShack | 1 W | Defunct | No longer in Charlottesville: mainly online-only since 2017. | |
| Red Robin | 1 NE | Extant | ||
| Sbarro | 1 SW | Extant | ||
| Sears | 1+2 E | Defunct | Left the Fashion Square in March 2019, although an appliance repair office still exists.[8] | |
| Spencer Gifts | 1 NE | Extant | Currently trading as Spencer's. | |
| Starbucks | 1 SE | Extant | ||
| Suncoast | 1 W | Extant | Only three stores remaining in Ohio, Texas and North Carolina. | |
| T&C Nails | 1 SW | Extant | A real nail salon in the Fashion Square.[9] | |
| Taco Bell | 1 W | Extant | ||
| Tokyo Shogun | 1 W | Virginia-based Japanese mall cuisine. Likely refers to a restaurant of the same name located within the Chesterfield Towne Centre, which closed ca. 2006. | ||
| The Toy Place | 2 W | |||
| Verizon | 2 SE | Extant | ||
| victoria's [sic] Secret | 1 SE | Extant | ||
| Waldenbooks | 1 SE | Defunct | Dissolved on 18 July 2011. | |
| Wendy's | 1 W | Extant | ||
| Western Sizzlin' | 1 SE | Extant | ||
| YesAsia.com Outlet Store | 1 W | YesAsia is an online-only retail company: they later opened an outlet store called YesStyle in San Francisco, but it did not last long.[10] | ||
| Zales Jewelry | 1 SE | Extant | ||
| Zany-Brainy | 1 NE | Defunct | Dissolved in 2001. |
- Anna Joy's (local bridal shop)
- April's Sports (local sporting goods)
- Big Lots
- Blue Ridge Sports (defunct since 8 February 2016)
- Cache [sic] (defunct since 2015)
- Carlton Cards (American Greetings subsidiary; 2 separate ones)
- Champ's [sic] Sports
- Cinnamonster
- Claire's Boutique (Known simply as Claire's)
- Disney Store
- Finish Line
- F.Y.E.
- GCN (? - second floor, he may have meant GNC)
- Glamour Shots
- Hat World (currently operating as Lids)
- Journeys
- LensCrafters (listed twice beside each other)
- Limited (defunct since 2017; currently exclusive to Belk)
- Motherhood Maternity
- Mrs. Field's [sic] Cookies
- Paint & Play (exists, but no website for Virginia chain)
- Pearl [sic] Vision Express
- Ritz Camera (liquidated in 2012 and online-only now)
- Rock Star Body Jewelry
- Sam Goody (defunct since 2006)
- Stride Rite
- The Briar Patch (website is dead, presumably defunct)
- The Happy Cook
- Things Remembered (closed in 2022, online-only since 2013)
- Trade Secret (defunct since 2010; no relation to the Aussie company)
- Victoria's Art Gallery
- Warner Bros. Store (only online since 2001)
Non-Store Facilities
- Bank of America ATM
- BB&T ATM (Merged into Suntrust in 2019, now Truist)
- CWCville Mayoral Office
- Mall Security/Customer Service
- Restrooms [Multiple]
- Wachovia ATM (Acquired and absorbed by Wells Fargo since 2008)
Sources
- ↑ Blanca E-mails, 20 August 2008 5:27 AM
- ↑ Mailbag 13
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Fashion Square Directory, archived 22 March 2021.
- ↑ In 2020, Cellular One operated in Louisiana and Texas, as well as in parts of Arizona, New Mexico, and New York.
- ↑ Google Maps entry, accessed 1 February 2021.
- ↑ Location list at the Kohr Bros. website, accessed 2 June 2021.
- ↑ Official website of Signature Style, accessed 31 January 2021.
- ↑ Google Maps entry for Sears Home Services (one of the remnants of Sears), accessed 1 February 2021.
- ↑ Google Maps entry
- ↑ Google Maps entry.
See also
- Charlottesville Fashion Square - The IRL version of the CWCville mall.
