I know it's been a few months for this thread, but I just had a buddy tell me about this today. I am a local Roanoker and remember this mall well. What I can say to those who asked how they could just wall up an entire area is the mall was no longer a mall. There used to be a K-Mart with an inside mall entrance right next to the Time Out arcade, and when Time Out closed in 1992, they dry-walled over the storefront to close it up, presumably to wait for a new tenant. Of course, since the mall was already practically dead, they never got a new tenant. I have some memories of sitting on the steps right outside of the old Time Out (you can see those steps in one of the pics) wondering what was behind the wall where Time Out used to be. Now I guess I know.
Eventually, K-Mart bricked up their inside-mall entrance, leaving that part the mall closed off. I think a main mall entrance still may have existed for a while, but looking at Google Street View, even that was sealed off and replaced with exterior facing store fronts at some point, sealing off that entire area except to the escalators that went to the lower level at the other end of the mall.
Over time, the other end of the mall had the DMV move in (never a good sign for a mall when a government agency moves in), and I remember during that time, they sealed off the old escalators from below that went up into that part of the old mall. Eventually, the DMV moved out, and that entire half of the mall was taken over as corporate offices for Advance Auto parts. This led to what must have been a pretty cool sealed up time capsule - a small piece of a mall from years past nestled inside a big building between corporate offices, and a dying K-Mart store. As I recall, there would have been a couple of dead restaurants in that area too, including one I remember that went into a really cool looking, yet dungeon-like downstairs restaurant somewhere in there (or maybe that was in the lower level?)
Fast forward to the present: K-Mart closed down last year, and now that entire half of the mall was razed, which I'm sure is what led to this discovery. The original cause of death of Crossroads Mall was that a much larger mall (Valley View Mall) opened in 1985, just a mile or so away. For the record, Valley View Mall also had an arcade named Mindboggle, which probably helped speed the demise of Time Out in Crossroads. Mindboggle arcade closed down maybe in the late 1990's, or early 2000's.
So what of the old location of K-Mart and the Time Out? Now demolished and being replaced with a BJ's Wholesale Club. It's progress, I guess, but a bit sad at the same time. Still it was really cool to see the old Time Out, just the way it was, way back in 1992 when it closed.
Feeling a little nostalgic here...