Gwinnett Place Mall gets remodeled to look like the 80s again (video). Keep it as a permanent attraction? (Atlanta: credit, buying)

[bryantm3]

They did a pretty neat job here for the show "Stranger Things". Here's the ad they made for the mall, renamed Starcourt Mall. They did such a good job on the interior, it's really impressive and it's less of a set than it is a mock remodeling of the inside of the mall. It's made me think, with dead malls and the whole vaporwave/mallwave culture being such a trend with teenagers, maybe they could rehab the rest of Gwinnett Place and bring back this look. It seems like a shame for them to do such a cool job for it just to be torn out later.






And here is a walkthrough one of the Dead Malls people did on YouTube (Ace's Adventures), the food court section starts at 2:00, the first part is about the person who was murdered, it does seem eerie that this is the site that a body was found and it's being used as a set.

[jeoff]

Funny, I worked at an ice cream shop at Gwinnett Place in the 80s. Almost forgot about it. I guess that’s half the fun of “Stranger Things”—it’s a time machine.

[Newsboy]

Those episodes of “Stranger Things” were shot last year. Those sets have long been torn down.

[DreamerD]

They should have kept the 80's look. Maybe it would have helped them to survive longer. I never saw anything special about Gwinnett Place Mall and remember it being pretty dead. This was YEARS ago.


So did Stranger Things really get pulled? It was such a cool show.

[Pemgin]

It pretty much still has the 80's look. They've never done much to update the place. I hope they can find a way to readapt it. It's completely worthless as a traditional mall.

[Born 2 Roll]

Originally Posted by DreamerD

They should have kept the 80's look. Maybe it would have helped them to survive longer. I never saw anything special about Gwinnett Place Mall and remember it being pretty dead. This was YEARS ago.

Originally Posted by Pemgin

It pretty much still has the 80's look. They've never done much to update the place. I hope they can find a way to readapt it. It's completely worthless as a traditional mall.

In the current retail marketplace (where large bricks-and-mortar physical footprints just simply are not needed anymore because of the continuing rise of online shopping and changing buying habits of consumers), I get the feeling that the only "re-adaptation" of a structure like Gwinnett Place Mall will be by way of a wrecking ball.

Like Pemgin noted, a circa-1984 bricks-and-mortar retail layout is pretty much worthless in a circa-2019 retail marketplace dominated by online shopping and a generation of consumers (led by Millennials and now post-Millennials) who just are not anywhere near as crazy about mall shopping as past generations were.

I could maybe possibly see an opportunity for redevelopment of the Gwinnett Place Mall property into a transit-oriented mixed-use development village of scale (with a dramatically shrunken bricks-and-mortar retail footprint) built around a future transit station if a high-capacity rail transit line is ever extended into the area from Atlanta.

But absent that, there is probably nothing for the current mid-1980's era structure to do but continue to sit there and rot until eventually being put out of its misery by the wrecking ball.

[DreamerD]

Originally Posted by Born 2 Roll

In the current retail marketplace (where large bricks-and-mortar physical footprints just simply are not needed anymore because of the continuing rise of online shopping and changing buying habits of consumers), I get the feeling that the only "re-adaptation" of a structure like Gwinnett Place Mall will be by way of a wrecking ball.

Like Pemgin noted, a circa-1984 bricks-and-mortar retail layout is pretty much worthless in a circa-2019 retail marketplace dominated by online shopping and a generation of consumers (led by Millennials and now post-Millennials) who just are not anywhere near as crazy about mall shopping as past generations were.

I could maybe possibly see an opportunity for redevelopment of the Gwinnett Place Mall property into a transit-oriented mixed-use development village of scale (with a dramatically shrunken bricks-and-mortar retail footprint) built around a future transit station if a high-capacity rail transit line is ever extended into the area from Atlanta.

But absent that, there is probably nothing for the current mid-1980's era structure to do but continue to sit there and rot until being put out of its misery by the wrecking ball.

For real! I was thinking that maybe it could be made into a museum. People used to shop at malls like these. LOL. Malls here are pretty boring and don't offer much.

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by Born 2 Roll

In the current retail marketplace (where large bricks-and-mortar physical footprints just simply are not needed anymore because of the continuing rise of online shopping and changing buying habits of consumers), I get the feeling that the only "re-adaptation" of a structure like Gwinnett Place Mall will be by way of a wrecking ball.

Like Pemgin noted, a circa-1984 bricks-and-mortar retail layout is pretty much worthless in a circa-2019 retail marketplace dominated by online shopping and a generation of consumers (led by Millennials and now post-Millennials) who just are not anywhere near as crazy about mall shopping as past generations were.

I could maybe possibly see an opportunity for redevelopment of the Gwinnett Place Mall property into a transit-oriented mixed-use development village of scale (with a dramatically shrunken bricks-and-mortar retail footprint) built around a future transit station if a high-capacity rail transit line is ever extended into the area from Atlanta.

But absent that, there is probably nothing for the current mid-1980's era structure to do but continue to sit there and rot until eventually being put out of its misery by the wrecking ball.

I think bricks-and-mortar retail is very much alive and well. From what I've read only about 11-12% of retail is online.

And it's obvious that the gazillions of retail businesses (free standing, big box, strip centers, etc.) around GP mall are booming.

So why can't Gwinnett Place mall itself be fixed?

[DreamerD]

In their defense, I have to give them credit for staying alive for so long. It's like Toys-R-Us...how did you do it and for this long?!?! LOL.

[jeoff]

Originally Posted by arjay57

I think bricks-and-mortar retail is very much alive and well. From what I've read only about 11-12% of retail is online.

And it's obvious that the gazillions of retail businesses (free standing, big box, strip centers, etc.) around GP mall are booming.

So why can't Gwinnett Place mall itself be fixed?

The “gazillion of retail businesses” around GP was a slow build, and there are still a lot of vacancies around. Vacancies at a mall are just toxic, it kills the whole experience (going to the mall used to be an experience)—so it is hard to slowly recover from that—I don't think shoppers mind vacancies as much at a strip mall or mixed-use shops.