A sprawling, long-empty box at Carolina Pavilion is finally getting a tenant. 2nd & Charles, the used-and-new books, media and collectibles chain, plans to open at the South Boulevard shopping center in early spring 2027, filling part of the space left behind when Conn's HomePlus shut its doors.
Scott Kappler, executive vice president of operations for Books-A-Million — the Alabama-based parent company of 2nd & Charles — confirmed the Charlotte location to WhatNow Charlotte. The store will sit at 9567 South Boulevard, inside part of the footprint that Conn's HomePlus once occupied before closing. No specific opening date has been announced beyond the early spring 2027 target, according to the same report.
The move is part of a larger effort to rework that anchor space and strengthen Carolina Pavilion's tenant mix, per WhatNow Charlotte's reporting. Property owner CTO Realty Growth confirmed the broader strategy in its own disclosures, saying it subdivided the roughly 40,900 square feet formerly leased to Conn's and signed leases with both Cavender's and 2nd & Charles, according to a filing reported by CTO Realty Growth via GlobeNewswire. The Western boot and apparel retailer Cavender's is taking another portion of the same vacated space, as first detailed by the Charlotte Business Journal, which described the pairing as part of an effort to evolve the tenant mix at the shopping complex.
What 2nd & Charles Actually Sells
For shoppers unfamiliar with the brand, 2nd & Charles trades in an ever-changing inventory of new and used books, music, games, toys, collectibles, décor, accessories and pop culture merchandise, according to a press release from Orange Park Mall in Florida, where another location was announced earlier this year. The chain also runs a buyback program, letting customers bring in gently used items in exchange for cash or store credit, per the same release.
Books-A-Million owns the 2nd & Charles brand, which now counts 46 locations across 19 states, the Advocate reports. The company has been expanding steadily this year: a new store opened in Baton Rouge's Siegen Marketplace in late July, taking over the former Joann Fabrics and Crafts space at more than double the size of the location it replaced, according to the Advocate's reporting.
A Shopping Center Reworking Its Mix
Carolina Pavilion has been described as a retail complex of more than 700,000 square feet undergoing changes to meet retailer demand and improve its merchandising strategy, per reporting cited by the Charlotte Business Journal. Reported figures for the center's exact size vary — TSCG has put it at 700,529 square feet, while Business North Carolina described it as a 691,000-square-foot open-air center when CTO Realty Growth purchased it for $94 million.
Occupancy figures tell a similarly mixed story. TSCG reported the center as 100% leased at one point, even while noting that both Big Lots and Conn's had announced closures, while Business North Carolina separately pegged occupancy at 93%, anchored by tenants including AMC Theatres, Floor & Décor, Nordstrom Rack, Ross and Burlington. CTO Realty Growth has pointed to adding strong tenancy, bringing rents up to market rate, and increasing occupancy as near-term opportunities for the property, according to Business North Carolina.
Charlotte's Tight Retail Market
The push to fill the old Conn's box comes against the backdrop of an unusually tight Charlotte retail market. Citywide retail vacancy sat at just 2.88% in the first quarter of 2026, the third straight year it has stayed below 3%, according to a Colliers market report. South Charlotte's submarkets, which include the Carolina Pavilion corridor, were even tighter — a collective vacancy rate of 2.43% and just 624,424 square feet of vacant space spread across three submarkets, per Colliers' data.
Colliers also noted that constrained land availability and high costs for ground-up construction are driving more landlords toward adaptive reuse — repurposing existing big-box space rather than building new. That dynamic lines up with what's happening at Carolina Pavilion, where a single vacated anchor is being carved up to serve two very different retailers at once.
