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The Valley Shopping Center is looking a little different. On Thursday, Marshall’s opened its Valley location in the center. Five Below opened next door a couple of weeks before. To celebrate the changes, the Chambers County Development Authority hosted an event with speeches, food trucks, and, of course, shopping. 

“We need to increase our shopping in the city. We’ve got eight or nine new businesses coming to our city over the next six or seven months. This is the third business in the last three months. We got four new subdivisions,” said Leonard Riley, Valley’s mayor. “Our community is growing.” 

Locals have not had to wait long for the remodel of the shopping center. The CCDA announced in May 2024 that four businesses would be coming to the center: Marshall’s, Five Below, PetSense and Express Oil. PetSense is still in the process of moving in. Express Oil moved in late last year but had to close temporarily due to a fire. It has since reopened. 

“The expansion will add 40,000 square feet of new retail space and represents an investment of over $10,000,000 and the potential creation of over 200 new jobs,” read the press release announcing the development. 

The CCDA has been working on the expansion for almost two years prior to the announcement. 

“This is a really important project in that it brings a need to the city that wasn’t there,” said Chris Busby, Executive Director of the CCDA. “We hear, ‘We want, we want, we want,’ now we have it…People were going elsewhere to spend their money, and now we have an opportunity to keep it here.” 

Busby added that this expansion is just the “first domino to fall” for the city of Valley.