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It's sad because I just KNOW that someday shoppers are going to say, "why are we walking around in the heat and rain to go from store to store? Wouldn't it be nice if we had climate controlled covered hallways connecting everything?" and the mall will be reborn. After we've torn them all down.
Yes. I was thinking the exact same thing yesterday and today.
I don't see all malls being torn down. Those in higher income areas will still be around - I'm not the least bit worried about Lenox, Phipps, Perimeter and North Point closing their doors. The challenge which Gwinnett Place faces is that so much of the population surrounding it resides in apartments. Thirty years ago when G.P. opened, the apartments nearby, as well as the single family homes had residents who were professionals. However, as the apartments aged, the demographics of the residents changed and the income levels went down, too. As a result, the stores in the mall struggles with many of them closing and it started a downward spiral which has led to the mall being in the shape it's in now.
You forget about the opening of the Mall of GA and Discover/Sugarloaf Mills. I think they were the true culprits...moreso than what you mentioned.
As long as they don't close Lenox or Perimeter I'm good.
If that happens, the mall is truly dead!
I know the apartment theory sounds good, but I just don't buy it because Perimeter and Lenox are great examples. Plenty of apartments around them! Why have they been able to keep an affluent demographic while Gwinnett Place lost most of its?
I think the answer is white flight. I remember when I first moved to Atlanta, I lived close to Jimmy Carter. Back then, the notion was all the money had already moved out to Pleasant Hill...and some of it was even going as far as Sugarloaf. Nowadays, Sugarloaf as about as SOUTH as you can get and still find considerable wealth.
Lenox was safe because it was in Buckhead, and the money was never going to leave there. Some of the Sandy Springs money did, I think, go up to Roswell and Alpharetta once upon a time, but they retained enough of it so the area thrived. I'm sure there are a zillion reasons as to why....proximity to town? Established Jewish neighborhoods? Just a couple of guesses.
I guess -- and I can say this as a Gwinnetian -- the Gwinnett Place area never had true wealth. It just had some people who had made SOME money and thought the best way to get away from elements they didn't like was to move away from them, which rarely seems to work, unless you're willing to eventually move to South Carolina. So when blacks, Hispanics, and Asian immigrants moved in, they moved out. You can tell the area lacked true wealth because a lot of the single family housing stock around it isn't just in rough condition today because it wasn't kept up; it was never built very well in the first place. Sandy Springs has nice, big, old homes built of quality 4-sided brick. Gwinnett Place mostly has crap made of siding that they could throw up as fast as possible that would look nice for 5 years or so.
So I guess you could say the area was never designed for longevity in the first place, and that's a big, uphill battle to face.
Probably the only thing that is ever going to save the area is that as Atlanta expands outward, it will eventually be considered an almost intown suburb, like Chamblee or Dunwoody today. People sick of moving up to northern Forsyth county will eventually come back and reclaim it, hopefully doing a better job than they did the first time around.
That's what I think! I probably won't live to see it.
I know the apartment theory sounds good, but I just don't buy it because Perimeter and Lenox are great examples. Plenty of apartments around them! Why have they been able to keep an affluent demographic while Gwinnett Place lost most of its?
I think the answer is white flight. I remember when I first moved to Atlanta, I lived close to Jimmy Carter. Back then, the notion was all the money had already moved out to Pleasant Hill...and some of it was even going as far as Sugarloaf. Nowadays, Sugarloaf as about as SOUTH as you can get and still find considerable wealth.
Lenox was safe because it was in Buckhead, and the money was never going to leave there. Some of the Sandy Springs money did, I think, go up to Roswell and Alpharetta once upon a time, but they retained enough of it so the area thrived. I'm sure there are a zillion reasons as to why....proximity to town? Established Jewish neighborhoods? Just a couple of guesses.
I guess -- and I can say this as a Gwinnetian -- the Gwinnett Place area never had true wealth. It just had some people who had made SOME money and thought the best way to get away from elements they didn't like was to move away from them, which rarely seems to work, unless you're willing to eventually move to South Carolina. So when blacks, Hispanics, and Asian immigrants moved in, they moved out. You can tell the area lacked true wealth because a lot of the single family housing stock around it isn't just in rough condition today because it wasn't kept up; it was never built very well in the first place. Sandy Springs has nice, big, old homes built of quality 4-sided brick. Gwinnett Place mostly has crap made of siding that they could throw up as fast as possible that would look nice for 5 years or so.
So I guess you could say the area was never designed for longevity in the first place, and that's a big, uphill battle to face.
Probably the only thing that is ever going to save the area is that as Atlanta expands outward, it will eventually be considered an almost intown suburb, like Chamblee or Dunwoody today. People sick of moving up to northern Forsyth county will eventually come back and reclaim it, hopefully doing a better job than they did the first time around.
That's what I think! I probably won't live to see it.
I agree with everything you are saying, however, I will add these points:
1. Yes, there are a large number of apartments near Lenox, however, they are getting far higher rents than those around Gwinnett Place and there are a large number of condos near Lenox, too and they also house a high income population. The biggest stabilizing factor for Lenox and Phipps are the residents of the single family homes west of Peachtree Rd. where the wealthiest residents of Metro Atlanta live - they will always shop at these malls and therefore, Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Tiffany's, etc. will stay in business.
2. The Gwinnett Place Mall never had true wealth, however, the original white residents who moved out there in the mid 1980's had generally higher incomes than the minority populations who replaced them - I know this is a tough thing to say, but can you honestly say that Gwinnett Place Mall would be built today given the incomes of the current surrounding population?
3. You hit on an excellent point when you said, "Gwinnett Place mostly has crap made of siding that they could throw up as fast as possible that would look nice for 5 years or so." You also mentioned that Sandy Springs has homes which are four sides brick. The key to having stable neighborhoods which will hold their property value, and increase in value is the quality of construction and the homeowner's association which can enforce the restrictive covenants. For example, the City of Council of the City of Smyrna practically forces the developer to build houses with four sides hard surface and if they don't have a strong HOA, the developer needn't bother asking for zoning.
4. You mentioned that those residents who have been part of the white flight to "northern Forsyth county will eventually move back and reclaim it". I'm not so sure because I have a theory that in metro Atlanta, the closer real estate is to the straight line of Peachtree St./Roswell Rd./GA 400, the more it will appreciate. Just look at the growth pattern of high end residential neighborhoods starting with Buckhead, next Sandy Springs/Dunwoody followed by Roswell/Alpharetta (Johns Creek is the farthest east high end neighborhood) and then Milton and southern Forsyth county. All of these areas are within 5 miles of GA 400. By contrast, East Cobb has higher priced homes than West Cobb because East Cobb is adjacent to Sandy Springs and West Cobb is too far west.
5. All of the Macy's stores in discussion for being closed are a long distance from the golden corridor of GA 400 and don't have the household incomes to support retail that the communities I mentioned above have.
I know the apartment theory sounds good, but I just don't buy it because Perimeter and Lenox are great examples. Plenty of apartments around them! Why have they been able to keep an affluent demographic while Gwinnett Place lost most of its?
I think the answer is white flight. I remember when I first moved to Atlanta, I lived close to Jimmy Carter. Back then, the notion was all the money had already moved out to Pleasant Hill...and some of it was even going as far as Sugarloaf. Nowadays, Sugarloaf as about as SOUTH as you can get and still find considerable wealth.
Lenox was safe because it was in Buckhead, and the money was never going to leave there. Some of the Sandy Springs money did, I think, go up to Roswell and Alpharetta once upon a time, but they retained enough of it so the area thrived. I'm sure there are a zillion reasons as to why....proximity to town? Established Jewish neighborhoods? Just a couple of guesses.
I guess -- and I can say this as a Gwinnetian -- the Gwinnett Place area never had true wealth. It just had some people who had made SOME money and thought the best way to get away from elements they didn't like was to move away from them, which rarely seems to work, unless you're willing to eventually move to South Carolina. So when blacks, Hispanics, and Asian immigrants moved in, they moved out. You can tell the area lacked true wealth because a lot of the single family housing stock around it isn't just in rough condition today because it wasn't kept up; it was never built very well in the first place. Sandy Springs has nice, big, old homes built of quality 4-sided brick. Gwinnett Place mostly has crap made of siding that they could throw up as fast as possible that would look nice for 5 years or so.
So I guess you could say the area was never designed for longevity in the first place, and that's a big, uphill battle to face.
Probably the only thing that is ever going to save the area is that as Atlanta expands outward, it will eventually be considered an almost intown suburb, like Chamblee or Dunwoody today. People sick of moving up to northern Forsyth county will eventually come back and reclaim it, hopefully doing a better job than they did the first time around.
That's what I think! I probably won't live to see it.
I have a theory that in metro Atlanta, the closer real estate is to the straight line of Peachtree St./Roswell Rd./GA 400, the more it will appreciate.
I agree with this theory.
When I was looking for a house 7 years ago, I was looking between 400 and I-85. I ended up on the Gwinnett side of the river to get a little more value and to save a bit on property taxes. However, when you crunch the numbers, the property tax differential is minimal and the amount of money you save on the initial purchase is quickly lost because your home will not appreciate as much as on the Fulton side. If I had it to do all over again, I PROBABLY would have bought in Fulton instead of Gwinnett....even though I feel it's a little bit of a wash because most things in Johns Creek are actually more convenient to my house than their Duluth/Suwanee equivalents.
I suppose you could say I have a vested interest in Gwinnett Place mall because it's about 5 minutes closer and slightly less annoying to get to than North Point for me...but what happens there doesn't seem to affect my neighborhood, at least not yet. My value is actually appreciating like crazy, but that only started this year, whereas it started for most other people in the metro a couple of years ago.
I still think the area has a ton of up side and will prosper. The timeline for it is just much longer than I originally anticipated.
While we're on hard truths, here's one: The Korean and other immigrant population that was supposed to save the area didn't work. Case in point: Megamart. Didn't do jack, the place sucks. I suppose you could argue that without all the Korean businesses there would be empty storefronts instead, but there's no way to know if that is actually true. I was pretty disappointed the other day walking into Super H-Mart because I remembered it used to be pretty nice...but there are signs they are already starting to let it get rundown. There are good restaurants and things like that, but the area needs businesses that appeal to a wider demographic if it is to thrive in the long term.
The GA 400 corridor seems to understand this much better, to your original point.
You can tell the area lacked true wealth because a lot of the single family housing stock around it isn't just in rough condition today because it wasn't kept up; it was never built very well in the first place. Sandy Springs has nice, big, old homes built of quality 4-sided brick. Gwinnett Place mostly has crap made of siding that they could throw up as fast as possible that would look nice for 5 years or so.
This is a huge factor. It is so easy to tell what a brand new neighborhood will look like in 20 years just by checking out the layout and housing. Did they clear cut all the trees and build the housing in the most efficient way possible? That will not be a nice neighborhood in 20 years, no matter nice it looks now. "Minor" development choices like that will determine the future for the area.
So many neighborhoods look like a gigantic 50 story tall robot just walked around, plopping down houses in rows. This is what I think people mean when they say "cookie cutter" homes.
One thing I did was select my neighborhood carefully. Yes, it has a few houses that share the same flooplan and look pretty much exactly the same. Cul-de-sacs? Check. All the things people loathe.....BUT, the streets have curves, there are changes in elevation, and there are well-placed mature trees. So while the houses may be cookie cutter to some degree, you can't just look down the road and see a straight line of the same exact houses lined up right next to each other.
This is huge and it annoys me! Where my parents live in Florida, they are building all new neighborhoods like this, with perfectly straight grid-like streets with houses all the same that are not only right next to each other....but in front of, and behind each other too! It's like perfect squares of mediocrity dotting the landscape.
INCIDENTALLY: Intown neighborhoods are note entirely not-guilty of this either!
Not so much for the Macy's itself, but because if it closes, I'm pretty sure that means the Sears would close. And I'd really miss that.
I know! That Sears was my 1st retail job. Still does good business though.
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Which Atlanta..
