Gwinnett Place Mall; Duluth, Georgia

gwinnett-place-mall-23Located 23 miles northeast of downtown Atlanta, in sprawling Gwinnett County, Gwinnett Place Mall opened to fanfare in 1984. Its anchors – at the time of opening – were Rich’s, Davison’s and Sears. Because of its location – centralized within some of metro Atlanta’s fastest growing areas in the 1980s and also adjacent to I-85 – and its size – a two level mall with nearly a million square feet of selling space – Gwinnett Place Mall instantly became popular with shoppers throughout the entire Atlanta area, even drawing regular shoppers from as far away as South Carolina.

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Located 23 miles northeast of downtown Atlanta, in sprawling Gwinnett County, Gwinnett Place Mall opened to fanfare in 1984.  Its anchors – at the time of opening – were Rich’s, Davison’s and Sears.  Because of its location – centralized within some of metro Atlanta’s fastest growing areas in the 1980s and also adjacent to I-85 – and its size –  a two level mall with nearly a million square feet of selling space – Gwinnett Place Mall instantly became popular with shoppers throughout the entire Atlanta area, even drawing regular shoppers from as far away as South Carolina.

In 1986, Mervyn’s hopped on board, building an anchor store on the southeast side of the mall, and Davison’s became Macy’s through acquisition.  Gwinnett Place Mall enjoyed continued success as the top-tier retail destination for the northeast suburbs of Atlanta into and through the 1990s, even as anchors continued to shift and expand.  In 1993 Parisian joined the mall, and in 1997 Mervyn’s closed their Gwinnett Place store as they exited Atlanta.  Then, in 1998, JCPenney replaced the former Mervyn’s store, keeping the anchor roster complete.

gwinnett-place-mall-231999 and 2001 saw a definitive end to an era of retail dominance as two very large competing projects opened in Gwinnett – the behemoth Mall of Georgia opened approximately 10 minutes northeast of Gwinnett Place Mall along I-85 near Buford in 1999, and in 2001 the Mills Corporation opened gigantic Discover Mills just two miles from Gwinnett Place.  Surprisingly, though, the opening of these huge centers nearby has not had as detrimental an effect as it has with aging malls in similar situations – Gwinnett Place Mall took the punches and has emerged as a successful mid-tier center and remains successful today.

Despite the mall’s success in the face of increased competition, one of Gwinnett Place’s five anchors went dark in 2003 as Macy’s acquired Rich’s and consolidated its operations into the Rich’s store, becoming Rich’s/Macy’s- eliminating the Macy’s/former Davison’s location near the middle of the mall.  However, this anchor will fill in late 2009, as M International Market Place will become the first full-scale Asian department store to enter an anchor space a U.S. mall.

In 2007, Sears decided to use Gwinnett Place shoppers as guinea pigs for their new prototype/experiment store – an ‘upscale’ store with a ‘showroom-type’ atmosphere.  We reported on this back in 2007 when it opened, so it was really neat to see.  Upon our visit to the store in late 2008, we discovered a store with more modern and trendier amenities than a typical Sears mall location – modern lighting, an open floorplan, centrally located computers for accessing Sears.com, classier fonts displayed on blue awnings, snacks for sale at checkout, and more expensive display materials.  As far as we know, no additional Sears like this have opened in any other malls, making this store – and Gwinnett Place mall which houses it – unique, though some of the decor and branding are employed by Sears Grand locations.

gwinnett-place-mall-20Some of Gwinnett Place’s other distinct features include a glass-facaded Macy’s (former Rich’s) on the north end of the mall, and the mall’s layout – shaped by expansions, the mall is a traditional two-level ‘I’ shape complemented with two, shorter two-level wings also ending in anchors.  Gwinnett’s gross-leaseable area today is over 1.2 million square feet, including its five anchor stores.

Surprisingly, the mall has held its own against competition from much newer nearby centers and a shift in demographics as the money follows the sprawl.  In order to remain viable, Gwinnett will need to pull extensively from its immediate area in order to keep dollars from flowing to Buford or the other Atlanta super-malls.  They’ll need to recognize they won’t necessarily be the top-tier mall they were for the first 15 years, but by recognizing the demographic trends – such as opening the Asian department store – they’ll be able to hold their own.

The photos featured here were taken in December 2008.  As usual, feel free to leave your own comments or experiences with Gwinnett Place.

41 thoughts on “Gwinnett Place Mall; Duluth, Georgia”

  1. I remember seeing the broadcast on WAGA channel 5 about this mall opening the next day. it showed an aerial view of the empty parking lots which would be full the next day.

  2. Hmmm….

    • Not dead
    • Anchors are actually pretty exciting
    • Dark and light areas
    • Dated-looking Chick-fil-A
    • First Labelscar post of its third year

    Awesome, five stars!

  3. Actually I’m a bit confused on the M marketplace. Is it a discount store or a full-line department store? And wouldn’t Shirokiya be the first, even though Ala Moana is open air?

  4. Atlanta seems to be able to retain malls with far better luck than almost all markets- I would have thought Mall of Georgia would have slaughtered Gwinett Place, but that was definitely not the case. Even when Belk moved in to Mall of Georgia and the subsequent Parisian merger, it still held its ground. Even with nearby Mall of Georgia, it’s still very much a class A mall.

    The real problem with Gwinnett Place is the fact on the outside it looks like a dead mall. The abandoned outlots and vintage facades don’t convey “healthy mall,” not one that’d have a Gap inside.

    Also, while it’s a pleasant mall inside, it’s eerily dark at night. Look at the pictures- there’s hardly any artificial light sources in the corridors, and no, it’s not that they’re cleverly hidden. Aside from floodlights they tacked on when they realized “whoops!,” you’re shopping in near darkness at night.

  5. Wow, that’s the first dead Williams Sonoma store I”ve seen. Too bad it became a local mattress outlet, although it could have been worse. It could have been a poorly conceived urban fashion store.

  6. @Jonah Norason, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see! The one at Ala Moana counts, I guess, but I was talking more about regular ol’ enclosed malls.

  7. I’ve been wondering what the work on the former Macy’s related to…now I know, thanks to Labelscar.

    And I see that the Macy’s signage on the former Rich’s building is…black. No surprise there, but I really wish they’d have chosen a different color. The only stores I think the black works on are those with white exteriors (Town Center, SouthPark).

    Just thought I’d throw in that Gwinnett Place is about a 85-90% carbon copy of Town Center over in Cobb County. Same basic footprint, same distance from downtown, same general demographics (at least when they opened). However, I’d say Town Center has been kept up a little better than GP. I, too, thought that the Mall of Georgia would have had much more of a devastating impact on GP than it has, but I’m glad to see that’s not the case.

    Another little tidbit is that the interchange with I-85 is a constant source for backups. As part of the expansion of the GA 316 interchange (the next exit north), the interchange at Pleasant HIll Road was redone for folks traveling southbound on I-85 and 316. A flyover ramp from 316 connects to a much longer (it has to be at least a mile and a half long!) ramp from I-85. It’s actually quite an interesting setup compared to before. Unfortunately, in my experience the worse backups have always been on the untouched northbound exit…Just a little diversion for those of us who might be interested in roads in addition to malls.

    (Who has carpet these days in a mall?)

  8. Looks like a pretty nice mall and for the size of Atlanta, they have a pretty large shopping mall roster in their metro area. Didn’t there used to be a pretty large fountain in center court? I knew they had more before the renovation, but I can’t tell by the pics if they removed the new one.

    And on Williams-Sonoma, BonRegis, I’ve seen a couple here in NJ close, both in very successful and high traffic malls; but I think that was because they were focusing on the “Grande Cuisine” stores.

  9. Davisons had been part of Macy’s since 1929 and the name change occurred around the same time that Macy did this with its other non-Macy banners like LaSalle’s in Ohio. Rich’s was bought by Federated in the late 70s and would have been part of the Macy-Federated merger. Macy’s (formerly Davison’s) and Rich’s coexisted for quite a while after the merger.

    Asian department stores have been retrenching, even in Asia, particularly the Japanese and Hong Kong stores. LA had one of these stores–it didn’t last. M Marketplace is from a different mold and Mainland Chinese, but despite its growing Asian population, Atlanta seems like an odd choice. M is probably a discount store and a full-line store; despite some regional differences, Asian discount stores tend to be more like traditional department stores (i.e., truly full-line including supermarkets and food service). It will be interesting to see how this works out–I rather doubt they will get non-Asian shoppers. Compared with other cities I know, “ethnic” retailers in Atlanta get very few non-ethnic folks.

    Atlanta doesn’t have any classic deadmalls like Randall Park or Dixie Square, but has a lot of underperforming malls, including some that have received significant investment (which didn’t help) and this seems like one that could easily go in that direction. Northlake Mall in nearby DeKalb County is a good example of this—Northlake is the mall that Gwinnett supplanted, as white flight took people from DeKalb County to Gwinnett; if Gwinnett declines, Northlake may benefit as it is in an area with significant gentrification. Northlake generates traffic but has lost most of its “classic” inline mall tenants. It has a healthy food court that draws a lot of people who don’t shop. JCPenney & Sears are healthy but Macy’s is neglected and seems to have an uncertain commitment from management (pre-rebranding as a Rich’s, much of its space was used for close-outs). Northlake has refilled with no name stores and the clientele has less affluence than is present in its trading area. I doubt that it generates the sale/sf of a successful mall like Mall of Georgia.

  10. In 2006, I had more than enough opportunities to photograph the shit out of this mall. I actually was stranded there doing a run on a short-lived driving job so I circled the mall for over an hour waiting to get picked up. At the time, Davison’s/Macy’s was still 100% vacant (you could look in the door and see left-over displays) and the Parisian was still there also. While I took lots of pics of the Rich’s, I failed to get most of the mall. The fountain there was really cool…a black, eye shaped one with a very shallow pool that shot a jet of water into the air. It was very sleek. When I was there I got the impression the mall was moving full speed ahead into B territory but awhile away from being dead.

    The M department store thing is really odd. This is a store that has its market in Asia but is supposedly going to be headquartered here at Gwinnett Place! When I was there last I noted the construction on the store. I do have to admit that the Davison’s was not very pretty…most of their stores were very outlandish prior to the changeover to Macy’s. I wish this store luck. They are a little ways off from the core Asian market down on Buford Highway.

    To the poster talking about the dead outlots. Dead outlots in Atlanta indicate two things: an increase in crime, shoplifting and a demographic shift that never favors traditional retailers. The urban scene just doesn’t help the marginal neighborhood grill like an old-fashioned bleached burb does. Nevertheless, dead outlots have yet to kill at least three malls that have been on death watch for years: Southlake, Greenbriar and Shannon. Of those three only Shannon I would count on to bite the dust and barring a major disaster, I think Gwinnett could hang on 5-10 more years before it becomes the next Regency Mall.

  11. Looking at the M INternational Marketplace signage, I see what looks food items. Will this department store be selling groceries as well? I never heard of a dept. store selling groceries before, especially one that’s a mall anchor.

  12. Aw, I was hoping for some more photos from that Sears. Does anyone have any?

  13. @danroman, Walmart, Target and Kmart are also considered department stores even though they are in the discount category. Some malls have Walmarts and Targets as anchors. They may not be traditional anchor stores but they do the same purpose as any other anchor, to bring in customers to all the inline stores.

  14. @Gary,
    Lets not overlook the international air traffic into & out of ATL. After all ATL is the worlds busyest airport. How far is GP from the airport anyway?

  15. It’s difficult tio know how to weight outlots. Dead malls can have live outlots or adjacent strips. North DeKalb, which has been “underperforming” for years has had life on its periphery, includng a Pier1, but it’s a failed mall (planned for redevelopment), nonetheless.

    A DC analog to Gwinnett might be Wheaton Plaza. It had an expensive remodel with the addition standard mall stores a few years ago, most of which have departed within 2 or 3 years time. It is filled with no name retailers, has a popular food court, vacancies in its outlot, and healthy anchors, although one departed due to the Macy merger. I was just there yesterday and the JCPenney was packed, with a multi-cultural collection of folks speaking a variety of languages. Target gets a much more Caucasian group that doesn’t enter the mall. The mall, itself, draws young families, teens and a more solidly Latino population than the anchors. The mall probably does not get good sales/sf from the low end retailers in the mall (people look more than shop and the merchandise is lower priced), but the anchors do all right and the vacancies continue to turnover. Like Gwinnett, the immediate area is pretty diverse, but this has happened over two decades and there is starting to be some gentrification around the Metro, so things may slowly come full circle. OTOH, the mall has not seemed to benefit from gentrification of nearby Silver Spring. The many hole in the wall ethnic places draw people from a wide area (including non-ethnics–something that happens far less in Atlanta). So, perhaps Gwinnett can become like Wheaton, but depite the rapid demographic changes in Gwinnett (now the most diverse county in GA), I wonder if it has the base to support a successful mall; as the place becomes more ethnic the white flight is likely to be greater than at Wheaton (Atlanta has far fewer places that cross-over) and the ethnic population base is still smaller. In the emantime, it’s funny to watch how transitory white flight can be expecially in a developer dominated area like Atlanta which would have been leveled by real estate interests if Gen Sherman hadn’t done it first.

  16. I’m intrigued by that new Sears prototype with what you describe as the “classier” logo. Isn’t that actually a resurrection of the old Sears logo from the 1940s, as shown on your own page for Santa Monica?

  17. I think the “M” would be better suited to Cali, where anchor vacancies abound and there are Asians with money to spend.

  18. Also the Simon website is kind of weird. The “map” link often refers to Parisian interchangably with Belk, and the Belk shown is a really old and different logo.

  19. I spent a lot of time in this mall and have a few observations and answers to questions.

    This was our primary mall when I was growing up until North Point opened. The only closer malls were Roswell Mall and Lakeshore Mall and they both sucked hard. Even back in the 80’s. It was naturally-lit in the daytime and at night is fairly dark by today’s standards. It has kind of a twilight look to it at night. Back in the day, it had three bookstores (B Dalton, Walden, and Coles), two toy stores (Kay Bee and Circus World), an awesome food court, and a decent arcade originally called Atari Adventure and then renamed to Space Port. There is now a toilet standing in near-as-I-can-tell the exact spot I used to play Double Dragon thanks to the Parisian remodel. It’s far from dead but has certainly already seen its best days.

    There was an awesome fountain in the center court that was later replaced with the eye-shaped one. The fountain was squared off and a stairwell nearby had a sort of small river of water running down alongside it into the fountain. If you look at 3rd column, 6th picture down, that river started where the escalator is now but the stair well was oriented differently than the current escalator.

    This mall is located just north of a rather large Asian community that stretches south for almost all the way into downtown Atlanta. I think the M will do just fine here. And speaking of M, I thought Macys kept the wrong store. I liked the old 3 story pink Macys more than the mirrored Richs spot.

    More interesting to me than the Sears signage is the remnants of a proper Kay Bee (NOT KB) toy store off to the left in that pic. It left years ago. And something I mentioned in the Sears-specific post, Gwinnett Place has still done nothing to the exterior Sears signage. It’s still the 90’s all-caps version on the outside.

    The mall is far from dead but it has its fair share of odd tenants like a rent-to-own store next to the Penny’s (as of last time I visited about a year ago). It also doesn’t help that the immediate mall area is scattered with ghost of shopping past like a Service Merchandise-turned-bar and a former-Borders-turned-some-Asian-shop. The thriving bits of retail are mostly across on the other side of Pleasant Hill on Venture Drive. And the county has done everything humanly possible to discourage you from actually crossing Pleasant Hill.

    I drive by Gwinnett Place often but rarely go there anymore. I spend more time at Discover Mills and Mall of Georgia.

    Someone mentioned Atlanta’s lack of dead malls and my first thought was of Roswell Mall. Roswell Mall was already a dead mall in the 80’s. It was anchored by K-Mart and Uptons (what a winning combo…). There was a Richway-turned-Target attached that didn’t connect to the main mall. It had an entire wing closed for at least a decade after the theater moved downstairs. It has since been converted to something I’m not even sure I can describe. It still has a few retails shops, had a satellite college campus last I checked, and has an arcade/go-kart/mini-golf/bar/comedy club/movie theater inside. Maybe Atlanta was just ahead of the game when it comes to dead malls.

  20. @JT,

    Whoa, that’s pretty strong to compare it to Regency in Augusta. The only Atlanta-area malls I theoretically see are on the way to being completely dead(a la Regency) are Shannon(formerly Shannon Southpark), and probably Northlake. I’m not sure how the latter still survives, considering all the competition that mall gets from Stonecrest, North DeKalb, and other area malls.

    If anything, this mall kinda reminds me of Golf Mill(in Chicago’s north suburbs) in a way. Has probably one of the more diverse clienteles than your average mall attracts, and though I’m not the most familiar with the surrounding area around Gwinnett Place, it seems like it has a slightly greater amount of nearby retail, than Golf Mill does. Diverse clientele doesn’t necessary mean a mall necessarily is on its way to being dead, but can mean it’ll attract non-traditional stores that many malls having a greater percentage of white shoppers don’t have, such as the M Marketplace.

    Loved seeing the old-school Chick-Fil-A logo, and wished the Sears experimented with their 1940s logo more, especially on their exterior. 🙁 I still stand by my statement that I made on Labelscar 1-2 years ago wishing that they had expanded the use of their old logo more, rather than only experimenting with using this logo at Gwinnett Place.

  21. I lived about 4 miles from Gwinnett Place. In fact, my mom, brother and I went there on opening day after school. We were excited to have a mall so close. Before Gwinnett Place, we had to drive all the way to Northlake or Perimeter. We still went to Perimeter on occasion to go to JCPenney.

    One odd thing about the first few years of Gwinnett Place: Instead of a single large food court, there were 4 smaller courts throughout the mall with 2 or 3 tenants each. When the new wing with the Mervyn’s and food court opened, the smaller courts were eliminated, though the part with the McDonald’s stuck around.

  22. I’m looking through this post for Gwinnett Place, and for whatever reason, I can’t get over how strange and confusing it is that the upstairs part of the mall has carpeting, but not the first floor! Did the 1st floor ever have carpeting at one point, or has the mall always been this way? (2nd floor carpeted, 1st floor w/no carpeting)

  23. Apparently M MarketPlace has been renamed “Eastern Wells Market”. Other than the name change, things seem to be on track. Hopefully, it won’t be another Epicenter Collection…

  24. PLEASE – for people who write these infoblogs, you need to get your facts straight.

    Macy’s did NOT acquire Rich’s.

    Federated Departments Stores, established in 1929, bought out Rich’s in 1976. In turn, Federated merged with Macy’s, essentially buying them out when Macy’s was in danger of closing due to their Finkelstein bankruptcy in 1993-94. Federated then decided to take, what many people would say, was a regretful approach to marketing themselves as a national brand and slowly destroyed their regional nameplates (such as Rich’s, Lazarus, Goldsmiths, Burdines, etc) and over a 10 year period from 1995-2005, replaced those distinctive regional names and stores with the one Macy’s brand. This is why so many people get it wrong. Macy’s did not buy out all these regional brands. Macy’s was saved by Federated, who allowed Macy’s people to nationalize their brand on the backs of the regionals. In turn, the new Federated/Macy’s bought out the May Company and what they did in 10 years previously, did in 18 months to May. Now after three years of declining sales (not all brought on by the bad economy) and the massive debt incurred by buying out the dying May Co., the company had to step back and reassess the fact that everyone in the nation didn’t want the same generic store, so they have reorganized – again – to try to make their local markets distinctive within the NEW “One Macy’s” enterprise.

    So please, get it right.

  25. @Allan (M.),

    I don’t think that’s weird, our mall is like that (It’s a Simon Mall in the south) – marble floors on the first floor and carpet on the second, everywhere except in the food court, of course.

  26. @Allan Marshall, Note I wrote that last year. 2019 is still a little ways away LOL. I could be wrong, but some malls can and do die quickly…Century Plaza died in five years. The real strength in this mall are the anchors on each end…the Sears (one of the highest grossing) and Macy’s (former Rich’s).

    it is important to note, though, that Sears never left for Mall of Georgia. An anchor pad sits at MOG waiting for them if they change their mind, but so far it seems to have been in permanent limbo. I assume that was meant for Parisian, but I am guessing Sears will just come where an existing store is (like if Dillard’s or Nordstrom closed). Parisian and Sears deciding to remain at Gwinnett Place is likely the biggest reason that the mall survived after being dwarfed by a gargantuan showplace. Simon owning both malls I’m sure has a lot to do with that.

    As optimistic as “M” is, it looks troubled. Nothing has come of it yet and it almost looks like they can’t get the project done. I hope it works out, but they are going to leave a mess if they don’t finish it and abandon the project. That anchor should have just been knocked down and become a grand new mall entrance that it never really had. It was the most dated looking anchor in the mall. I also noted in my last visit that it seemed like a lot of stores were suddenly leaving, and hopefully that wasn’t a harbinger of bad things to come.

    As to the darkness, yes indeed it was dark at night. I took my own photo set and the mall was downright creepy looking in places. I actually took two sets of the mall (one in the daytime with the eye-shaped fountain), so if I do post them myself I have a few angles missed in this post. However, I really have never liked this mall much at all, and the area around it is very ugly and depressing to me…the worst of haphazard white flight 80’s/90’s suburbia Having a huge high voltage power line so close to the mall doesn’t help, either.

  27. @Dante, Atlanta has done a good job hiding and disguising the few dead malls it has or had. These include namely Roswell Mall (d: 1994), Cobb Center (d: mid-90’s), Parkaire (d: 1985), Merchant’s Walk (d: 1995), Stewart-Lakewood (longer story) and Columbia/Avondale (d: 2001, demolished 2007). Note the early death of Parkaire…I passed the former site of it constantly growing up and had no idea it existed until fairly recently.

  28. @KatieG, in this context, the Rich’s brand was REPLACED by Macy’s.

  29. I visited this mall last week, and it appears as though the national chains are finally started to pull out. Gap looked to have just recently left because their dark storefront had not yet been covered with a blank wall and the Chick-fil-a in the food court is gone too. I would bet after the 2010 Christmas season, we’ll likely see a few more of the remaining national chains (i.e. the remaining Limited Brands stores, Abercrombie, Zale’s, etc.) pull out.

  30. I grew up in the area, and was in town for a wedding recently. Decided to pass by and see how the mall was. At one point in the 1990’s it was bringing in more moeny than Lennox– can’t imagine that at all now. The Sears is nice– reminds me of movie department store with the setup of it.

    A lot has changed in the two years since this aricle was posted. Gap is closed, Bath and Body Works goen, Hallmark, and a number of national stores. Food court is dying off as Chik Fil-A, Subway, McDonald’s, Dairy Queen are all gone. No movie theaters are close by and a bus terminal replaced the one theater that was there for a long time.
    What has replaced these is a lot of empty units and even a worse sign, displays for other stores. The stores that do remain appear to be mom-and-pop stores with old racks and slat walls for displays. I would be interested to see a dollar ammount for GPM’s revenue for 2009.

    There is a school near the Belk Clearance center that teaches english classes to those with limited proficiency, the larger, older Macy area is being replaced with what looks like a mini-Korean-mall that sells everything from groceries to electronics.
    The surrounding area is dominated by empty buildings and signs in other other languages, predominantly spanish and korean. While a lot of money lives within ten miles of the Mall (Sugarloaf Country Club), I would be very surprised if any of those residents visited any time soon. It is a shame as this mall holds a lot of memories for me. I think what killed this mall is all of the unchecked growth of Gwinnett County.

  31. Okay, I used to live at this mall. I loved hanging out in the arcade which was Atari Adventure and then Space Port. We used to sit and people watch, you would see the escalator crowd and a huge atrium from in the McDonald’s. When I was of age, I used to go with a dates and loads of friends to the Ruby Tuesdays near one of the entrances and at the top of the awsome water falls. You could see a huge area of lush green plants, water fountains and falls, and the glass elevators from the bar in the restaurant. It was great to be able to chill out and see all the people going busily about their shopping.
    The seasons brought new fashions and decorations, I really enjoyed the large christmas docorations that had motorized santas and elves. Great time, and summer was great because the women wore the latest shorts and skirts. It was a great place to meet people.
    With the new malls it has lost all if it’s identity. With unchecked urban developement the mall is now a shell of itself. No one in the area wants to shop at M, and I have heard that they are trying to open check cashing places inside. They did form a tax district to beautify the area and ease traffic. They have done both quite well. Unfortunatly the ethnicity of the area is a danger to paying customers, there is a lack of safety as the mall is very dark at nights, most of being empty store fronts. It is a shame, it was once a beacon of activity for Gwinnett county, we thought it would be around for a lot longer. The mall is only 25 years old, it should have made it to 50.

  32. The mega mart, the Korean mega store is set to open this weekend at Gwinnett Mall. It is the first store in America from the Mega Mart company, they have several stores in Korea and China but this is there first foray into the United States. It is going to occupy the former three story Macy’s store with the third level of the store being offices only and the other two having everything from electronics to groceries. We will see how the store fares but the local governments are very happy to have a new retailer in the old mall. It is now 26 years old.

  33. I have not been there since the M openend. No one really talks about it, no buzz unless you are Korean.

  34. i misss you atlanta mall

  35. Gwinnett Place is going to transform into a Hispanic and/or Asian mall similiar to what happened to the mall on Clairmont in Atlanta now called Plaza Fiesta. It was once the Clairmont Mall. There are Asian strip shopping centers on Buford but Gwinnett got heavily Hispanic since Gwinnett Place was built. A great study of demographic changes.

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