Bradley Square Mall: Cleveland, TN

A few cases exist where small cities have more than one mall. Always in these cases, the malls complemented each other with completely different anchors (usually 1-2) and a small amount of stores that total about 50 a piece. These malls also tend to have been built from about 1965-1975 and were pretty well worn by the early 1990's. Needless to say, by that time they were viewed as quite depressing with their often very dark color schemes and interiors in contrast with the light, bright designs popular in that time. In almost all cases, it only took one new mall coming to town to wipe those malls out for good, and in the case of Cleveland this was all true when Bradley Square Mall was built.


Bradley Square Mall opened in 1991 on the north side of Cleveland. Named for Bradley County, which it resides, the mall brought in four anchors with over 500,000 square foot of space compared to the smaller and less exciting Village and Cleveland Malls. Bradley Square took all but two of the anchors from those older malls, and the ones that remained closed shortly after. When the mall opened, Hess's came from Village Mall while JCPenney and Sears left Cleveland Mall without a reason to exist. When all was finished, the new mall featured Hess's, JCPenney, Sears and Kmart. A fifth anchor pad was also added to the mall, which I'm sure was presumed to be either Goody's, Rose's or Parks-Belk at that point in time. Rose's, of course, simply closed at Cleveland Mall as the company by that time was in trouble.

Bradley Square may be one level, but its design is rather unique. It is not a typical straight up and down mall.

Bradley Square has a very interesting layout, which made it intriguing compared to the older malls. It starts out as a normal hall, but splits off into a diamond patter similar to North DeKalb Mall. At the southern part of the diamond is a beautiful, but small fountain that sits in front of the Belk. Visible from the south court is the east entrance to JCPenney and the Sears entrance. The food court is located on the east part of the diamond. A mall entranced joined the north court, but is covered up awaiting a new theater. The west part of the diamond is a split from the main corridor, which heads to Kmart and includes the west entrance to JCPenney.

Entering the mall from the Penney's west mall entrance into the Kmart wing.

Looking back in front of Kmart along the Kmart wing.

Around the north court looking toward food court.

Detail of planter in Kmart wing.

Looking from fountain (south) court to Kmart wing.

While Cleveland Mall withered and died, Village held onto Parks-Belk oddly for a couple more years. It turned out that the Parks family planned to sell their stores, and did so in 1995 to Proffitt's, who had also acquired Hess's shortly after Bradley Square opened. With that, Parks-Belk closed and Village Mall turned into a ghost town while fast-growing and popular Proffitt's took the realm as one of the four at Bradley Square. Bradley Square also featured other elements the original malls never had such as a food court, a distinct layout and bright, detailed modern decor that the older malls could not offer. Bradley Square also offered air conditioning that open-air Village Mall didn't offer.

The fountain in center court is a fairly basic fountain, but it is still very beautiful.

For the next decade, Bradley Square was successful as the dominant mall. It was closer to the interstate and more competitive with Chattanooga...or so it seemed. The mall today has seen somewhat of a shuffle with the re-branding of Proffitt's as Belk. With that, it looks like Belk finally did make it to the mall without the help of the Parks family. Also, a movie theater is now under construction in the rear of the mall making five anchors.

Entryways inside and out on the mall are striking. The archway is a tad dated looking, but the overhead area is a very elegant touch.

All is not well at Bradley Square, though. Like its sister mall Mount Berry Square in Rome, this Crown America-constructed mall is facing similar problems. While the mall offers trendy stores and a complete anchor lineup, the mall never caught on as well as the developers originally thought. Numerous stores are dark throughout and the food court is not serving any food. This is curious as to why this is, since the mall seemed fairly busy for the off-hours I was there. It is not really known why the mall is having these problems either except that they are both too close and too far from Chattanooga...too close, which makes them have to compete with Chattanooga, but also too far in that they are not drawing the traffic of a more urban market. Perhaps also the incomes are too low in the area or unemployment too high in the area.

The food court, located next to Sears, is the most worrisome sight in the mall. Nobody's eating and no business is there to cook it either.

Nevertheless, it is really too soon to tell if the mall is actually dying or if it just that the market is just not enough to support a full line of stores in the mall. While the mall was recently listed in a report as "in danger of failure", the fact is that its sister mall in Rome never filled up fully as it was. Just because a mall has high vacancies doesn't always mean it's dying if the market around it cannot support many of its stores. However, such reports tend to be worrisome, especially with the local economy in these smaller southern towns already shaky and troubled more by the national economic crisis.

Areas like this are where the wounds show. This corridor extends from the Kmart wing to the center court. Note Belk on the right.

In all, though, Bradley Square is a very attractive smaller mall. While it is a bit dated, the nice touches it has are very nice such as the elaborate and tasteful entrances, a fountain with a pool and a large number of planters throughout to keep the mall from feeling sterile like most new malls do these days. Nevertheless, I tend not to be totally cheerful about any mall that has caused the demise of other malls. While it is a nice center, I hardly think it has the charm of Village Mall and the death of two malls for one is not easy to overlook. Nevertheless, I hope that Bradley Square can figure out what's causing the vacancies and that what is successful in the mall stays successful. Hopefully the movie theater will make a big difference and bring the dead food court back to life as well. Overall, I found Bradley County's third mall to be an enjoyable experience and a fairly attractive mall that still serves the town well.

JCPenney east entrance followed by JCPenney east entrance view from the fountain court.

Belk/Proffitt's entrance from the fountain court.

JCPenney east mall entrance from fountain court.

Sears mall entrance with vacant food court on the left.

Approaching the Kmart mall entrance.

Side view of Kmart entrance and southwest entrance corridor. Entrances come in on both sides in front of the Kmart mall entrance.

Detail of the northwest entrance, which is less elaborate than the one used in the fountain court area. This entrance mirrors the one in the last photo.

Outside view of the less elaborate southwest entrance and more elaborate southeast entrance (fountain court entrance). I can't complain about the design of these...they are quite attractive.

Outside views of Sears, Penney's, Kmart and Belk. Below is a pic of the Belk store as Proffitt's.

The Proffitt's sign just looks better, sorry. This was originally Hess's sign had a rainbow-spectrum design on the logo instead of just green. I would have loved to have seen that!

Mall sign from US 11. What did those holes above the name use to be for?

Plywood and scars of the former entrance mark the work commencing on the new movie theater.

Southlake Mall: Morrow, GA

Southlake Mall is a very successful mall, and far from dead, but it has still scored the reputation of being somewhat "urban", and as a result, limited on its better offerings. In that, it is overall your run-of-the-mill mid-market mall catering moreso to a non-white crowd. Considering that, for those living in the southside of Atlanta, truly upscale options just do not exist. That is why so many shoppers in Henry County, Fayette County and Spalding County simply drive right past it to head to the more posh northside malls such as Lenox, Perimeter and Phipps. Since this is the case, either the incomes on the southside just do not support it or those upscale tenants have simply snubbed the mall.

Standing in front of Sears looking back into the mall. This latticework ceiling treatment is found throughout the entire mall.

The Atlanta malls would likely be less successful if the southside actually had a mall that everybody liked, and that was not lost on developers. A proposed mall in McDonough (Henry County) has been planned since 2004, but for some reason the development stalled. Nothing could be better news for Southlake, which is surrounded by spotty blight from closed businesses affected by the usual reaction to an area that is majority minority. That fact alone is the primary reason that Southlake has not only not doubled in size over the years, but also the fact that it lacks the more upscale store offerings in favor of a larger array of urban stores.

View of the elevator from the upper and lower level. Much like everything else in this mall, it is not laid out in the usual way. This elevator is in a random location closer to Macy's (Rich's).

Southlake Mall first opened in 1976. When it opened, it was a super-regional mall, but it opened primarily to serve fast growing Clayton County, which had evolved as a mostly white county in the more industrial side of the Atlanta. The opening of the mall likely was related to not just growth, but also issues of white flight as shoppers looked for options from transitional Greenbriar and decaying Lakewood Mall. Such a story is similar to how Gwinnett Place came into being. When it opened, its anchors were Rich's, Davison's, Sears and JCPenney giving them a mall equivalent to Cumberland in size and offerings on the southside. The mall contains a total of 120 stores, and Piccadilly Cafeteria was also in the mall. All of the anchors were two levels as well as the mall itself. Today, it is still the only two-level mall on the southside.

View from the upper and lower level of Davison's court (roughly center court). There really is no obvious center court as in other malls this size. It has had no anchor connection since Macy's vacated the Davison's location in 2003.

Views of the sealed-off Davison's (Macy's) mall entrance from lower and upper level.

For the next two decades, Southlake was the king of the south, but Clayton County has become quite troubled with white flight issues during the 1990's. In ten years time from 1990 to 2000, Clayton County went from a substantial majority white to substantial majority black as the white population shifted to Henry, Fayette and Coweta counties. During that time, many of the businesses around the mall started closing up. When Macy's consolidated in 2003 and moved into the Rich's, the old Davison's was also vacated. For a long time, no store came to fill the void, and the store was sold early on. Nevertheless, as white shoppers began to largely avoid the mall, the mall did not become any less successful. This was because the non-white neighborhood around it had money of their own, and it was more than enough to support it.

A short one-story wing is found on the upper level connecting the mall to the parking lot across from JCPenney. This mall map was in that corridor describing the offset layout of the mall better than I could.

Today, Southlake has evolved quite well and has pretty much survived nearly free of any nearby competition. The mall was last renovated in 1995, adding a food court and updating much of the decor. Piccadilly left the mall and is today located on Mt. Zion Blvd a block from the mall. The mall has very few vacancies, an excellent food court and the former Davison's/Macy's is now in the process of being renovated and/or demolished for a new conference center. I was also pleased at how polite and friendly the employees of the mall were, which is treatment I am not used to in the northside malls.

A couple views of the JCPenney court. The JCPenney court has elevated walkways crossing over the court similar to what Cumberland had in the 1980's.

While Southlake is not the most unique mall I have ever visited, it is refreshing in this economy to see a local mall still doing so well considering two factors. One of these is that is outside of the upscale periphery, and second is that it is in an area that is dealing with some of the blight that is creeping southward that ravaged nearby Forest Park. I do, however, wish that the circumstances were different so that the mall was more popular regionally since the options down there are so few.

A carousel is found at the main mall entrance, which today is the food court area. The second photo shows the food court ending at a Babbage's, which is actually a Game Stop without the nameplate changed. Too bad Macy's didn't take the same approach with Rich's and Davison's. The food court was added in 1995.

Exterior view of main (food court) entrance.

Two sets of mall signs: one at the Jonesboro Road (SR 54) entrance and a tall sign for traffic on I-75.

Considering this, the future of this mall pretty much depends on the future of Clayton County, and lets hope that future keeps the mall at least as viable as it is today. With that, Clayton County must keep Morrow from being the next Forest Park. Forest Park strangely never had a mall of its own, but it bears the scars of chain retail long abandoning much of it. These challenges are especially important considering the mall is over 30 years old in an atmosphere that has been trained to believe that enclosed malls are all dying. The truth is, if malls like this die then it is a reflection on the economy as a whole or too much competition, not a reflection of this well-managed bustling mall.

Mall entrances of Sears and Macy's (former Rich's). Too bad all Sears mall entrances look exactly the same these days. Photos of the Macy's as Rich's are shown at the end.

Exterior view of Davison's then and now. The Macy's labelscar was very visible in 2004. Today, the store has been completely repainted in earthtones as part of a repositioning of the former anchor.

Exterior views of Sears, Macy's and JCPenney. Note the obvious old logo labelscar on Sears and Rich's labelscar on Macy's. Compare to the earlier Rich's photos below.

Exterior shots of Rich's day and night. Photos taken late December 2004 and February 2005.

Rich's mall entrance day and night. This folded glass design was also used on stores at Lenox, Cobb Center, Cumberland and Century Plaza. This is the last one remaining of that style.

UPDATE 1/24/11: The future is not so bright for Southlake Mall anymore now that JCPenney is announcing they are closing the mall's location.  This leaves only two anchors with Macy's (former Rich's) and Sears with the former Macy's (originally Davison's) still never filled after it closed in 2003.  This all comes on the heels of the closing of Shannon Mall including the Macy's store there.  This is also a reflection of how much the foreclosure crisis and terrible economy in the Atlanta area is beginning to affect the malls here.

Northgate Mall: Tullahoma, TN

The strangest mini-mall I have ever run across is Northgate Mall in Tullahoma, TN. As the only mall in the southern portion of Middle Tennessee, the mall first opened for business in May 1976. Original tenants to the mall included TG&Y Family Center, Readmore Book-n-Card, Treasury Drugs (a division of JC Penney), Kroger, Ann Herbert Dress Shop, Bonanza Restaurant, Sound Shop, and Horner-Rausch Optical. The Castner-Knott department store opened at the mall in early 1977 [1]. Even though it has the appearance of mall originally converted from a strip mall, it was indeed an actual enclosed mall to start with, but it seems strange a mall would be developed in such a fashion.

Looking back from the Dillard's/Castner-Knott entrance through the mall. The mall doesn't go too much further beyond what you see.

Northgate Mall until 2009 was anchored by Dillard's, JCPenney, Goody's and Big Lots. The mall only has 15 stores aside from those anchors including tenants such as Bath & Body Works, Claires, a jewelry store, an Army Recruiting Center and a Ponderosa Steakhouse, which had already closed for good when I visited. Dillard's closed in March and Goody's closed at the beginning of the year. The Dillard's at Northgate Mall was originally a Castner-Knott, which Dillard's bought out in 1998. Big Lots originally opened as a Kroger, which left in the late 1980's or early 1990's for a then Wal-Mart anchored shopping center just down the street. The mall even has its own website, which gives a pretty good idea of where it stands today.

Here is the most active part of the mall. While there are a couple other stores/tenants, this area has the most. Not pictured on the left is the Foot Locker.

The middle entrance corridor is not faring so well. The Ponderosa (not pictured on the left) closed up awhile back. In the background is a jewelry store and a nice skylight area I failed to get a picture of.

When I assumed that the mall started as a strip, I was noting how the mall space is essentially a corner of what would have been front-facing strip mall stores that were enclosed into a mall. In fact, the mall entrances only open on one side, which is the side facing N Jackson St (US 41A). US 41A is the main route through the city. Similar to Three Star Mall, Northgate also has a couple anchors with no mall access including Big Lots (in an old Kroger) and JCPenney. No stores have rear entrances (except a JCPenney customer pick-up), and only the Dillard's had a side entrance. Part of this design is the very narrow strip of land it is built on. On the entire length of the rear is NW Atlantic St, a street that is paralleled by railroad tracks and prevents any expansion or general public entrances on the backside.

This end was hurt by the closure of Goody's at the beginning of the year. The Goody's was all that stood in the way of JCPenney having direct access to the mall.

The sole remaining tenant on the south entrance corridor is the military recruiting office. I imagine it is extremely popular with the local youth trying to escape this town.

Overall, Northgate is truly a community mall, and it is fairly obvious that the owners take its success very seriously. The mall on the inside has been completely renovated very recently, and the main mall entrance has been entirely upgraded. The new main (middle) entrance is actually quite elegant, but the other two entrances have not been changed. I was actually pleased to find that the mall had retained a few A class tenants despite it being far from a traditional shopping mall. While this mall is not nearly as appealing as Three Star Mall, it still is a decent shopping center in desperate need of modification for continued success.

The sign remains on the Ponderosa Steakhouse. It is not certain when it closed.

Inside Ponderosa, it looks like they just closed for the evening one day then never opened back up again.

Dillard's and Goody's leaving have left the enclosed mall portion in a very vulnerable state, and if the management fails to handle this crisis properly the mall will die quickly, either forcing a costly redevelopment or leaving a blight on the city. Obviously, the property presents challenges to any proper expansion, but the city is not large enough to support a mall much bigger in the first place. While it might seem best to just convert it into a strip mall, I do not feel this is necessary.

Looking back at the Castner-Knott/Dillard's entrance. The entrance to the right opened to the Juniors section, and the mall is currently leasing that separate from any future department store use.

Looking out of the north entrance from Dillard's/Castner-Knott.

The best course of action for the mall owners is to find a department store more suitable for the market. Dillard's is far too upscale for a small town, and the fact it lasted over 10 years in that location is remarkable. Perhaps Castner-Knott was also as upscale, but I'm sure as an outpost store it probably did not carry the higher end lines of the Nashville stores. Dillard's is not as expert about adjusting to their market, but previous owners Mercantile Stores were and today Belk is. Belk would actually be an excellent fit at this location as they gear their stores just for the market. Kohl's and Sears might also do well at this store. The store has the same basic design as most Kohl's, and Sears there would make a perfect discount/department store hybrid since it is one level and large.

Outside the north entrance, pictured above.

The main mall entrance is quite elaborate, and it definitely proves that the owners actually care about the success of the mall. The former Ponderosa is just inside on the left.

Goody's, on the other hand should NOT be replaced. This is actually an opportunity for the mall's owners to expand the mall by cutting through the empty store and cutting a new mall entrance for JCPenney. By doing this, they would also allow more spaces for small or mid-sized stores, which would make the mall more of a draw. In addition, they would connect another major anchor to the mall, which would draw more traffic into the mall. A large tenant that needed both inside and outside entrances, such as a restaurant, bookstore or drugstore could use part of the space up to the Goody's outside entrance and also have a mall entrance. A Books-A-Million actually would be ideal at this location. A better restaurant is also desperately needed to fill the void left by Ponderosa such as an Applebee's, Ruby Tuesday or a popular regional chain. The mall should study more successful small malls to make this work, because it would not take a large number of stores to fill the voids.

The sign on the highway, however is a bit dull. Note the Western Sizzlin in the background.

The Big Lots, on the other hand, is not an asset for the mall and it makes the mall look more dead. While I'm sure it does good business, it is quite unsightly in the old Kroger space and it hems in the JCPenney so that it has no side entrance unlike the old Dillard's. With that, either JCPenney could expand into the store, renovating the front or the store should be torn down. Big Lots could move nearby in one of likely several vacant stores in other shopping centers. I believe that if they lured in a Belk or Kohl's, cut access for Penney's, attracted a bookstore in part of the old Goody's and made the Penney's stand out more, the mall would be more successful than before. In contrast, if they do nothing and leave two vacant anchors, the center will likely fold within 2-3 years.

The rest of the mall is truly just a strip mall. The JCPenney here as noted before is not connected to the mall, and Big Lots in a long-closed Kroger just sits on the end like an exception. Kroger really seems to have liked community malls in the 70's.

Now for the exterior front entrances of former Dillard's/Castner-Knott. Dillard's wasn't right for the town, but I'm sure a Belk or Sears would do fine here.

Dillard's also had a side entrance, but no rear entrance. JCPenney could use one of these here, too, but it is not possible without modification.

In all, Northgate Mall is no Cool Springs Galleria, but it is a nice little mall. In addition to the suggestions above, I also think this mall should be renamed Tullahoma Mall, Tullahoma Station Mall or Jackson Station Mall in lieu of vague Northgate Mall. The name is confusing since there is also a Northgate Mall in Chattanooga less than 100 miles away. It would be easier to market a mall with a distinct name than one with a name like many other malls nationwide. While it will never compete with big city malls, it caters to a fairly large market covering four cities including Shelbyville, Winchester and Manchester in addition to Tullahoma. In all, I thought this unique mall just needs some love and I hope others can see the potential before it's too late. Of course, even if it dies it has done quite well as a successful mall for over 30 years.

My own redevelopment idea as described above. This drawing also throws in a potential expansion idea.

[1] Coming of Malls Altered City’s Shopping Habits. http://www.thsclassof1974.com/tullahomaarticles/1952/malls.htm