RETAILER LEAVING VALLEY CENTRAL CIRCUIT CITY TO OPEN SHOP IN NEW PALMDALE CENTER.

Byline: Jim Skeen Staff Writer

PALMDALE - Circuit City will relocate from Lancaster to a new shopping center in Palmdale in an effort to be closer to the heart of its market, company officials said.

The new Circuit City store will be part of the Amargosa Commons shopping center being developed on the west side of 10th Street West, south of Rancho Vista Boulevard and across from the Palmdale Marketplace shopping center. The move is tentatively set for November.

``What we do is look at the markets and see if the trade areas are shifting,'' said Circuit City spokesman Bill Cimino. ``We found a large number of our customers going to the store were from Palmdale.''

Circuit City is the latest large retailer to announce plans to move out of Valley Central Shopping Center, Lancaster's largest shopping center.

Costco is expected to relocate to its new site on Avenue L and 10th Street West in late February. House2Home, formerly Home Base, closed its Valley Central store last year.

The Palmdale Circuit City will be roughly the same size as the 34,000- square-foot Lancaster store, but it will have more internal floor space for sales. The Lancaster store, built in 1990, has a larger warehouse than what is planned for the Palmdale store, officials said.

The smaller warehouse is the result of a shift by Circuit City away from large appliances, which had been part of their product mix when the Lancaster store was built.

The 18-acre Amargosa Commons shopping center is expected to have more than 200,000 square feet of sales floor space. The center is expected to contain about 15 stores, including Bed, Bath and Beyond; T.J. Maxx; Shoe Pavilion; Petsmart; and Dress Barn.

To make the development possible, a storm drain is being built for the normally dry Amargosa Creek. The storm drain will run under the shopping center's parking lot and connect to a culvert that runs beneath 10th Street West and under existing shopping centers.