Walnut Square Mall: Dalton, GA

Five years after Riverbend Mall became the first mall in Northwest Georgia, Walnut Square opened on July 23, 1980 (from Wikipedia) bringing Dalton its first and only enclosed mall. Prior to the construction of Walnut Square, most business was in or near downtown. Bry-Man's Plaza was the major strip mall for the city located within a few blocks of the major downtown department stores. Walnut Square is in a rather odd location. It is nowhere near I-75, basically east of downtown on Walnut Ave (SR 52). It is not located near the intersection of any other highways, but is within a couple miles of the east by-pass, completed almost 20 years after the mall first opened. With that, the Dalton By-Pass (US 41) has no positive impact on the mall. In all, this suggests that Walnut Square is largely a local affair not meant to attract customers outside of its original buying area. However, the most likely reason for its location probably relates to the mountainous terrain near I-75 where building a large shopping mall would have been difficult and costly.

Four photos of the main concourse. The third is in front of the Belk Home & Kids (former Loveman's) and the last is in front of Penney's

Walnut Square is one of the few remaining malls to have been little modified since it opened. While there have been some changes of anchors, the overall mall concourse still features the original terrazzo floors, original overall design and original store fronts on long-time businesses: definitely NOT a bad thing in a successful mall in otherwise good repair. In fact, the only place in the mall that has been updated is the flooring in the court areas and the mall entrances outside, which strongly resemble those at Georgia Square (CBL owns both malls). Despite all of this, the mall is still successful even with a desperately ailing local economy.

Northeast entrance and just inside the northeast entrance.

Dalton, the carpet capital of the world, is struggling with a declining housing market; vastly reduced demand for carpet; gasping industrial sector and an overall bad economy. The result is Dalton having the highest unemployment rate in the state and one of the highest in the country at the moment. With that, a few store vacancies vs. a dead mall is impressive and I was glad to see it was not in worse shape since my previous visit in 2006.

Note the original signage here. The chinese restaurant on the right still has diagonal wood treatment and is obviously original. In the background is an original Sbarro sign not seen anywhere else. Mall owners, please do not ever change these signs!

The CVS pharmacy here was originally a Revco. Note that the CVS has its very own entrance, allowing the store to operate outside of regular mall hours.

A few malls still have the classic Foot Locker sign with the diagonal wood trim. Walnut Square is one of those.

When Walnut Square opened, it had anchors Belk, Sears and Loveman's along with a movie theater. According to Wikipedia, JCPenney moved to a new store in the mall later in 1981 and Goody's came along in 1990. The last now leaves a vacancy in the rear of the mall since Goody's went bankrupt in 2009. Loveman's of Chattanooga was acquired by Proffitt's in 1986 before becoming a second Belk store when Belk bought up the entire Proffitt's chain in 2006. Also, the movie theater left the mall in 2007 or 2008 and now resides in the back of the mall on an outlot. The first Belk store was a continuation of defunct Belk Gallant, which was once downtown along with Loveman's, Sears and JCPenney.

All the mall entrances, except Goody's including Belk, Penney's, Loveman's and Sears. The Penney's was the most original store in the mall. It even has the original brown carpet from 1980 before it came back into style again. A photo of the sealed Goody's mall entrance and Sbarro will be done in another trip soon.

Recently, a planned lifestyle center looked to pose a threat to Walnut Square. With most of the trade area around I-75, it is not surprising that such a proposal would be introduced, so with that, the economy may actually be helping the mall. Since this will likely not happen now for awhile, Walnut Square remains successful in its position as one of the outpost shopping malls of Chattanooga and as Dalton's very own major shopping mall.

Loveman's today and Loveman's in 2005 as Proffitt's. This is the only photo I have of the store as a Proffitt's.

Outside photos of Goody's, Penney's, Sears and Belk

Outside entrance to now-closed McDonald's. A labelscar is visible for it as well as Goody's. The McDonald's is now a pet store, but it still has the same floor as McDonald's. Walnut Square never had a food court. All restaurants are scattered through the mall as was once common.

Oak Ridge Mall: Oak Ridge, TN

Back on our out-of-state march, Tennessee is a hotbed of small malls that anywhere else in the country would have been dead and long forgotten. This time, I'm going to do a feature of the "downtown" of Tennessee's nuclear city, Oak Ridge. Indeed, it has not fallen flat on city leaders that a dying mall hardly looks like people's image of downtown much like a lot of the country that fell to the post-WWII tax policies that led to the suburban sprawl of America and the retail behemoths that have dominated the landscape since the 1970's.


Originally opened in 1957, Oak Ridge Mall was known for 30 years as Downtown Shopping Center, a large strip center anchored by The Knox/Proffitt's, JCPenney, Sears, Loveman's (of Chattanooga), Miller's and GC Murphy.  The mergers that occurred in the 1980's that resulted in Loveman's, Miller's and Proffitt's all becoming the same store are why the later mall did not end up with five department store anchors.  Oak Ridge Mall followed the course of quite a few malls in the country that started out as a mere 1950's strip and were enclosed and expanded into a full-scale shopping mall. The only difference was, this one was a strip mall all the way to 1987 instead of the 1970's...not exactly the best timing for such projects as new malls were already proving to find it more difficult to compete in contrast with previous decades. Indeed, Oak Ridge Mall never really took off and was largely vacant aside from the anchors as recent as my March 2005 visit. I had heard a couple years before it was dying, so this is why I came by to visit just to see what this place was all about.


I do not know a whole lot about Oak Ridge Mall other than this, and the fact that it always had Sears as an anchor. The original Sears anchor was abandoned in what was left of the strip in my 2005 visit and did not connect to the rest of the mall. The anchors, however, appeared healthy and successful with a cheery, but very vacant corridor tying them together. In all, the anchors in 2005 were Proffitt's, Sears, JCPenney and a stadium-seating movie theater on an outlot.  Proffitt's was added in 1987 as Hess's while the fourth vacant anchor in the middle of the mall was the original Proffitt's, originally known as The Knox.  They once operated as a double-header Proffitt's, but it's unclear when it closed.  At least one mall corridor was sealed off to the general public on the visit as you will see below, which looked to be the food court.  A combination of the completion of TN 162 creating access to better access to malls in Knoxville and poor management caused the mall to to fail.

In allover layout, the mall was an L-shaped mall with JCPenney on one end (a strip attached to the other-side), Proffitt's (formerly Hess's, now a Belk) on the other, Sears off to the side of Proffitt's and the former The Knox/Proffitt's in the middle. The mall seemed difficult to access on the side that was once the back of the strip mall, and it was sealed off when I visited.

Vacant Hess's/Proffitt's in center court area.

In 2008, the project that was promised to start in late 2005 right after I visited seems to be permanently on hold. (Note 7/24/2016: demolition has now begun on the long-abandoned mall).  The mall itself has since been sealed off to the public with some "physical activity" occuring at the site. While I was hardly bowled over by the place, fanatics of late 80's architecture should be very excited about this view of a once-strip mall, then mall and now...nothing.

Looking down the entire Sears wing.

Something seems VERY ironic about the "shopoakridgemall.com" banner.

Proffitt's entrance...note the holes for what was formerly Hess's.

Another view of center court.

This was the original Sears store sitting abandoned on the JCPenney end of the mall on a small strip mall wing.

This appeared to be the entrance to the food court, and the food court area is very visibly sealed off from the rest of the mall.

Rack Room Shoes finally realized the party was over and it was time to leave.

Proffitt's

Before becoming Belk, Proffitt's had a good run in Georgia even though it was a department store mostly associated with eastern Tennessee. In Georgia, it pretty much lasted here from 1992 until Belk bought it out in 2005. How it came into Georgia pretty much came as a result of several consolidations.


Proffitt's existed in Georgia in two locations: Dalton and Rome. At both of those locations, Belk was already there as well. In regards to Belk in Rome, it was known as Belk Rhodes while in Dalton it was possibly originally Parks-Belk. Proffitt's, however, had started out as two different stores for each town. In Rome, it was the only Georgia location of the Miller's (Miller Bros.) Department Store, which was centered in Knoxville. In Dalton, it was the Chattanooga-based Loveman's (not to be confused with Loveman's of Alabama).

Proffitt's came first to Dalton in 1988 when the small Loveman's chain was purchased by the expanding Proffitt's, which originated in downtown Maryville, TN. The expansion of Proffitt's was a rather strange phenomenon considerings its origins as a small town department store south of Knoxville. The notion of how it came to trump Miller's was rather strange, but Miller's itself was bought out two years earlier by Pennsylvania-based Hess's.

For a few years, you had Hess's in Rome and Proffitt's in Dalton. Hess's moved from the flood-prone Riverbend Mall to the shiny new Mt. Berry Square in 1991 and only a couple months later it became Proffitt's. That's how there became two locations. Proffitt's by then had gone expansion crazy and had locations in about seven states and bought out Saks Fifth Avenue and McRae's in Alabama. The expansion did not go over well in many areas and the chain began hurting and retracted back in those places.

By 2005, Proffitt's sold out to Belk because of the decline of the chain. Belk was a good fit for all these stores and the small size of most locations made the Belk conversion easy since they could simply expand their departments in two buildings in the same mall. Belk also gained much greater prominence in Tennessee and Alabama, where they had previously had a very limited presence.

Photos include the Proffitt's at Mt. Berry Square Mall in Rome (now Belk Home and Kids) and the Proffitt's at Bradley Square Mall in Cleveland, TN (now Belk).