We’re set to find out who won the “Small Shop Showdown” on Monday.
The contests sought entries from entrepreneurs who had big ideas for businesses but needed a little help, and some retail space inside Spoyslvania Towne Center, to get them going.
A press conference will be held at the mall at 10 a.m. where the winner of the competition will be announced, according to Joe Bell, a spokesman for the Cafaro Company that owns the mall.
The mall told Potomac Local News earlier this month that the competition is designed to attract the types of business owners and entrepreneurs that are shy when it comes to singing a mall lease agreement. At another Shop Small Showdown contest at another Carfaro shopping mall, in Ohio, a 3-D printing company took home the top prize.
At Spotsylvania, the winner will receive 26 weeks of free rent inside the mall and will be able to take advantage of a promotional package offered by the mall to include new signage, posters, and the business name in lights on the mall’s electronic marquee sign.
The contest comes as the mall is looking to reinvent itself in the wake of the retail apocalypse. In the last year, multiple stores have or have plans to close. Sears, an anchor store at the mall, will shutter its location inside the mall in February.
The Free Lance-Star reports Carfaro is considering demolishing a portion of the Sears building and building apartments.
