The I-70 Business Center at the edge of North Lawrence bears signs of a thriving shopping mall — Murra Restaurant, Sonny Ballard Sports Outlet, Publishers Warehouse, Antique Bazaars, Ltd. and Liz Claiborne.

Two miniature automated rides — a carousel and a “Flintstones” car — sit in front of the mall. But the rides go unused, and the signs serve only as relics of businesses that have either moved or failed in the past few years.

The I-70 business center in North Lawrence has struggled to keep retail spaces occupied with tenants. While it no longer serves as a major retail shopping area, the center is used as a North Lawrence bus stop.

The only store now operating at the I-70 Business Center is one that has no permanent sign, the Office Furniture Warehouse, which opened in early March. A few other tenants have office space there — LKS Management, the Calvary Church, Kansas Highway Patrol and Department of Motor Vehicles. NCS Pearson also maintains a lease on some of the property, but the company is not using the space.

John Pauley, owner of the Office Furniture Warehouse, said the traffic from the DMV kept the center from seeming too desolate.

“We don’t actually feel lonely,” he said.

In fact, Pauley said business had been better than expected so far, despite the inactivity at the center.

“We use marketing to pull people in rather than location,” he said.

About 50,000 square feet of the property sits vacant, out of 88,000 total. A company could lease anywhere from 3,000 to 38,000 square feet contiguous, said Tom Moses, the leasing agent for the center.

The facility opened in 1993 as the Tanger Factory Outlet Center, with 22 stores, but by 2000, when the mall was purchased by a group of local investors, most of the stores had failed.

Moses, of Cohen-Esrey Real Estate in Topeka, said the outlet mall concept was now probably outmoded.

“You don’t see too many outlet malls anymore,” he said.

The new owners renamed the facility the I-70 Business Center and opened it up to “mixed-use” development rather than purely retail, said Moses.

But so far the strategy has met with little success.

“We’ve been trying to appeal to office users, and the office market is still pretty slow,” he said.

Some retailers have decided not to lease space at the site because the area is more sparsely populated than others in Lawrence. Moses said he had been close to striking a deal with a grocery store, but the company decided against it after determining there weren’t enough “rooftops” in North Lawrence to ensure a steady stream of customers.

He remains optimistic, however, partly because North Lawrence is growing. Moses said the grocer wanted to review the possibility of setting up shop at the center in the near future.

“Certainly our residential population is growing in the northwest section,” said Lynn Parman, vice president of economic development at the Chamber of Commerce.

The Chamber has assisted in marketing the property by placing a listing on its “Sites and Buildings” database, which was designed to match properties in Lawrence with potential tenants. Parman said the proximity to the Interstate was the Center’s strongest selling point.

“It is a great location,” she said.