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No more walking down The Avenue One of the Rogue Valley Mall's original stores, The Avenue, is hitting the road -- a victim of the mall's efforts to woo The Gap. The retail clothing store will close Saturday and reopen this fall elsewhere in Medford. Store officials said the company is looking at the Bear Creek Plaza but couldn't confirm whether a lease had been signed for a specific spot. "We just want a bigger space," said store manager Stacey Sims of the move from the upper-level spot The Avenue has occupied since February. Before the February move, The Avenue had a bigger space -- a large, lower-level spot it had occupied since the mall opened in October 1986. The Avenue and Lerner (both owned by the same company) shared 8,966 square feet of retail space. But mall officials opted not to renew The Avenue's lease on the lower-level space because a more attractive -- and profitable -- tenant was eyeing the spot. "We had to put The Gap in," mall General Manager Jeff Barber said when asked why The Avenue was leaving. The Gap required a large space and opened in the one long held by The Avenue and Lerner's earlier this month. Barber said he's sorry to see The Avenue go, but that moving the store out of that place was necessary. "We would have loved to have kept them, just not in that space," he said. Officials of The Avenue's parent company, United Retail, could not be reached for comment. Bear Creek Plaza officials could not be reached either. Today's Business Index Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA