Mall Done

Avondale Mall in Decatur, Ga., the Atlanta area's first enclosed mall, will shut its doors as of Jan. 1, 2002. The 37-year-old shopping center has been hurt by the slow economy, reverberations of September 11 and an inability to come up with a big-name anchor store.

Sears, which co-financed the building of the 300,000-square-foot 60-store mall in 1964, closed its store in 1983. Macy's, the other co-builder (when it was the independent R.H. Macy Co.), shut its store in 1995. Goody's Family Clothing took over the Macy's spot but stayed just one year. The presence of newer Target and Wal-Mart stores in the area has discouraged some tenants, and others (such as JC Penney and Kmart) have been closing stores instead of opening new ones.

According to Urban Land Institute, at least 300 older malls have shut down since the mid-1990s and there are another 300 to 500 about to follow suit. Whereas the U.S. has an already-dense 15 square feet of retail space in shopping centers per capita, Atlanta's per capita density is 25 square feet.