Southlake Mall is a

shopping mall A shopping mall (or simply mall) is a North American term for a large indoor shopping center, usually anchored by department stores. The term "mall" originally meant a pedestrian promenade with shops along it (that is, the term was used to refe ...

located in

Morrow, Georgia Morrow is a city in Clayton County, Georgia, United States. It is part of the Atlanta metropolitan area. Its population was 6,445 at the 2010 census, up from 4,882 in 2000. It is the home of Clayton State University. History The community was nam ...

, United States. The mall is in

Clayton County Clayton County is the name of two counties in the United States: * Clayton County, Georgia in the Atlanta Metropolitan Area * Clayton County, Iowa It was also the former name of Clay County, Arkansas Clay County is a county located in the U.S. ...

and its trade area includes Henry County, one of the fastest-growing areas in Georgia. The mall is located along

Interstate 75 Interstate 75 (I-75) is a major north–south Interstate Highway in the Great Lakes and Southeastern regions of the United States. As with most Interstates that end in 5, it is a major cross-country, north–south route, traveling from S ...

and

State Highway A state highway, state road, or state route (and the equivalent provincial highway, provincial road, or provincial route) is usually a road that is either ''numbered'' or ''maintained'' by a sub-national state or province. A road numbered by a ...

54, also known as Jonesboro Road.

History

Southlake Mall opened in 1976 to serve the needs of the growing southside of Atlanta. When Southlake opened, its anchors were Rich's,

Davison's Davison's of Atlanta was a department store chain and an Atlanta shopping institution. It was the major competition to Rich's and it took the Macy's name in 1986. Founding Davison's first opened its doors in Atlanta in 1891 and had its orig ...

Sears Sears, Roebuck and Co. ( ), commonly known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald, with what began a ...

, and

JCPenney Penney OpCo LLC, doing business as JCPenney and often abbreviated JCP, is a midscale American department store chain operating 667 stores across 49 U.S. states and Puerto Rico. Departments inside JCPenney stores include Mens, Womens, Boys, Gir ...

. Rich's eleventh suburban store debuted at the mall in August 1976. The two-story, 230,000-square-foot store also had a restaurant and snack bar. The first major change was in 1986 - when the

nameplate was changed to its parent company,

Macy's Macy's (originally R. H. Macy & Co.) is an American chain of high-end department stores founded in 1858 by Rowland Hussey Macy. It became a division of the Cincinnati-based Federated Department Stores in 1994, through which it is affiliated wi ...

. This lasted until 2003 - when

closed all the older

stores in Atlanta and consolidated to

Rich's-Macy's Rich's was a department store retail chain, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, which operated in the southern U.S. from 1867 until March 6, 2005 when the nameplate was eliminated and replaced by Macy's. Many of the former Rich's stores today f ...

. The standalone Macy's location closed in January 2003. The Rich's-Macy's store, once a standalone Rich's, lasted until 2005 - when it became a standalone Macy's. The only major renovation to the center was in 1999. The updates included a relocation of the food court to the lower level and the addition of a carousel. The

escalators An escalator is a moving staircase which carries people between floors of a building or structure. It consists of a motor-driven chain of individually linked steps on a track which cycle on a pair of tracks which keep the step tread horizo ...

were moved to either end of the mall rather than only one near the center. The fountain was removed from the downstairs area in front of

and

Radio Shack RadioShack, formerly RadioShack Corporation, is an American retailer founded in 1921. At its peak in 1999, RadioShack operated over 8,000 worldwide stores named RadioShack or Tandy Electronics in the United States, Mexico, United Kingdom, Austra ...

to accommodate one of the escalators. In January 2011, it was announced that JCPenney would close its store on June 1 of that year. On February 5, 2013, the mall fell into

foreclosure Foreclosure is a legal process in which a lender attempts to recover the balance of a loan from a borrower who has stopped making payments to the lender by forcing the sale of the asset used as the collateral for the loan. Formally, a mortg ...

- after several years of decline. Anchor spaces were not included in the foreclosure.

General Growth Properties GGP Inc. (an initialism of General Growth Properties) was an American commercial real estate company and the second-largest shopping mall operator in the United States. It was founded by brothers Martin, Matthew and Maurice Bucksbaum in Cedar Ra ...

, then the mall's owner, which had just emerged itself in 2010 from

bankruptcy Bankruptcy is a legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts. In most jurisdictions, bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor ...

, released its interests in the mall - citing its new focus to concentrate on stronger performing properties. The mall's mortgage was supervised for a short time in 2012 by C-III Asset Management before being sold to B Properties - a subsidiary of Bayer Properties that specializes in rehabilitating struggling malls. On May 31, 2018, Sears announced that it would be closing its location at Southlake Mall in September 2018 as part of a plan to close 72 stores nationwide - leaving Macy's as the only anchor left. The mall was sold to a joint venture between two New York real estate companies, CityView Commercial LLC and Jacobs Real Estate Advisors in January, 2019. The seller was Vintage Capital Group of Los Angeles.

References

{{Shopping malls in Georgia (U.S. state) Shopping malls in the Atlanta metropolitan area Buildings and structures in Clayton County, Georgia Tourist attractions in Clayton County, Georgia Shopping malls established in 1976