Williamsburg Pottery to move into new retail complex

WILLIAMSBURG
To attract new shoppers and bolster sagging sales, the owners of Williamsburg Pottery unveiled a plan Tuesday to construct a "European market" and relocate the giant retail complex along Richmond Road in James City County.
Williamsburg Pottery Inc. will spend about $20 million to add almost 147,000 square feet in three buildings to house its retail operations. The current store - a longtime tourist attraction - sprawls across an old warehouse packed with housewares, decorative items, nursery-grown plants, dried flowers, gourmet foods and framing services.
The Pottery needs a refurbished image to draw more traffic, said Peter Kao, the company's executive vice president. Its annual sales have slipped from about $50 million in its heyday in the 1980s to about $15 million now, he said.
Competition from online
retailers and big-box stores cut into the Pottery's business in recent decades. By 2008, the recession furthered the decline, dropping sales from about $20 million to their current level, Kao said.
"We're committed to change," Kao said before unveiling the project. "Here's our new era of Williamsburg Pottery."
The project includes the demolition of the aging, vacant outlet stores that front the road. In their place will stand three large structures, each designed to look like multiple "individual and unique storefronts," said Tom Tingle, president of Guernsey Tingle Architects, which is handling the design.
Renderings show Dutch Colonial facades with details such as awnings, window boxes and wrought-iron balconies. Signs hanging at each "store" will indicate different product categories - glass, chocolate, kitchen supplies - though each building will encompass one large showroom.
Similar to "lifestyle centers" favored by many retail developers today, the new Pottery buildings will face a pedestrian plaza with benches, a fountain, cafe tables and flowers along Richmond Road.
Pottery shoppers will no longer have to cross the CSX railroad tracks to reach the store, which now sits toward the center of the 1,300-acre property.
The Pottery has about 100 employees and will add at least 60 more, Kao said. They will help staff a new online operation, as well as the existing Pottery businesses.
For example, its ceramics factory supplies all of the pottery for Colonial Williamsburg and other clients. The Pottery also operates a commercial greenhouse that grows geraniums, petunias and other plants.
The original renovation plan for the site, approved by the James City County Board of Supervisors in 2007, would have brought new retailers to the development. The outlook for attracting such tenants dimmed during the economic downturn, Kao said.
"Commercial real estate is so bad," he said. It forced the Pottery to "create opportunity" on its own.
Construction is scheduled to begin late this year, with a grand opening set for April 5, 2012, on what would have been the 100th birthday of Jimmy Maloney, the founder of the Pottery. Maloney, who died in 2005, started the operation in 1938 as a roadside stand to sell his ceramic works. His wife, Kim, is now president of the Pottery.
"The Pottery was never a fancy place," said Anne Monaghan, the Pottery's spokeswoman.
Shoppers come with a sense of discovery, willing to overlook the dust for a great find. Consumers today, however, have grown more discerning, she said.
"They've become more accustomed to a more deluxe shopping environment."
 
Carolyn Shapiro, (757) 446-2270, carolyn.shapiro@pilotonline.com