OREM — Construction is underway to transform University Mall into University Place. Thursday, one of the major players opened its doors: RC Willey.
With stores in Utah, California, Idaho and Nevada, this new store becomes the company’s second largest.
Hundreds of employees, city officials and customers gathered Wednesday for a ribbon-cutting ceremony to mark the opening of the store, a two-story, 150,000-square-foot showroom, in the space formerly occupied by Nordstrom at 693 E. University Parkway.
“We’ve been in Utah County for about 25 years now, and this store is bigger,” said RC Willey CEO Scott Hymas. “You have to refresh your stores, and we’re excited (about) what we have to offer to the public.”
This store and its 180 employees becomes the sixth RC Willey in Utah. The 84-year-old company now has stores in four Western states, with more to come.
“We have three stores in Nevada, one in Idaho and one in California,” Hymas said. “We recently announced another store that will open in a couple of years in the Sacramento area.”
The Orem RC Willey is part of the Woodbury Corporation’s “phase one” facelift. The development, known previously as University Mall, has been an economic stalwart of Orem and surrounding communities since the then-family owned company opened it in 1973.
Construction is underway on a new underground parking garage. More than 400 residential units are now framed, with more to come.
When finished, Woodbury President Randy Woodbury said it will be a mixed-use development that will also have significant open space, and music and hotel venues.
“This is a redesign into a town center, densifying the project, bringing in all the other uses to allow a live, work, shop and play capability, right here on the project,” he said.
Long-time mall general manager Rob Kallas added, “You know in the last few years, retailing has taken on a whole new vision with the advent of the Internet and comparative shopping and things like that. It’s just that retailers are changing, and how they do their retailing in the mall is different than it used to be.”
An example is what RC Willey is doing this time. The company has always had stand-alone stores. This is the first time it’s been associated with a mall.
“It was new for us. We think it’s going to work, we were excited about the traffic,” Hymas said. “But we had to come in and retrofit, and our team worked really hard. I think to walk in, it doesn’t appear to be a retrofit (of the Nordstrom store). It’s a modern RC Willey, and we’re excited for the next 25 years at this location.”
The grand opening events will continue through May and include concerts, appearances from various local celebrities and gaming nights. The public is invited to take part in the free events going on until May 30. For more information, go to www.rcwilley.com/orem/
Though construction will continue for several years during the University Place facelift, all existing stores remain open.
Email: kmccord@deseretnews.com