The Steve & Barry's store opened at Marketplace Mall in May 2008 with much fanfare.
The trendy chain was seen as a savior for the mall on Peters Creek Parkway, bringing in new shoppers looking for good deals on fashionable clothes.
But that July, Steve & Barry's filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
And by December, the Marketplace store had closed, leaving a gaping 28,500 square feet for the mall to fill in a sour economy.
Now the mall has found a new tenant -- the Hefner Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Salisbury-- that has big plans for part of the space. The VA plans to open a branch clinic that will take up about 15,000 square feet.
The clinic is expected to open in early summer.
"It's something different for us, but in these economic times we're facing right now, landlords and such are having to look outside the box a little bit," said Tarron Coalson, the mall's general manager and leasing agent.
Coalson said he hopes that the clinic will generate exposure and customer traffic at the mall, which has a Hamrick's, a Dress Barn and a Dollar Tree.
He said he is looking for "like-minded" tenants to take over the remaining Steve & Barry's space.
With the addition of the VA clinic, the 172,000-square foot mall will be nearly full, except for about 15,700 square feet.
VA officials said in 2008 that they were looking for place to open a second Winston-Salem clinic, as traffic at the current clinic on Kimel Park Drive increased.
Officials said at the time that there was a critical need for the new health-care clinics because the VA now serves about 5.6 million veterans in North Carolina, compared with 2.5 million in the mid-1990s.
For its fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2009, the Kimel Park clinic had 30,345, a 12 percent increase over 2008.
Outpatient visits totaled 107,476, up from 94,378 in 2008.
"We've certainly seen a lot of expansion of our services," Carol Waters, a spokeswoman for the Salisbury medical center, said yesterday. "We need additional space."
The Winston-Salem VA clinic was moved to downtown Winston-Salem from Fayetteville in 1946. The clinic opened in its current 57,350-square-foot building at 190 Kimel Park Drive in 1998. Dr. Stephen Beuttel, the clinic's medical director, will also oversee operations at the Marketplace Mall branch.
The new clinic will offer primary care and some specialty-care services, and compensation and pension exams. It also will house integrated primary-care teams, including for mental health and women's health.
Waters said that the Winston-Salem VA clinic chose the Marketplace site because it has an outside entrance and adequate parking spaces near that entrance.
She said that parking is typically the biggest issue for veterans because many of them are in wheelchairs or use walkers. A bus stop is also nearby.
"One of our main focuses is always improving access for our patients, whether it's for services or just getting in the building," Waters said.
Charles Evans of Winston-Salem, a Vietnam veteran and member of the American Legion Post 55, said he likes the fact that the new clinic will be closer to his home than the one on Kimel Park Drive.
"I think it's a good idea because a lot of veterans in this town don't have a way to get around," Evans said. "They don't have transportation readily available."
fdaniel@wsjournal.com
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