North Point Mall is a shopping mall, located in Alpharetta, Georgia (a suburb of Atlanta). The mall opened on October 20, 1993 as one of the largest shopping malls in the country. The mall, originally a Homart property, is now owned and managed by General Growth Properties. As of 2015, North Point Mall is one of Atlanta's top upscale shopping destinations.
The mall's five anchor stores are Dillard's, JCPenney, Macy's, Sears, and Von Maur.
Opening
The mall opened with space for six anchor stores (the most in one mall in Georgia at that time). Only five of these spaces were originally occupied: Rich's, Lord & Taylor, Mervyn's, JCPenney, and Sears. It was originally believed that Macy's would be a sixth anchor, but the R.H. Macy Co. was bankrupt that year and sold out to Federated Department Stores, which owned Rich's, a year later. One of the more distinctive elements of the mall was the Rich's store, which was designed with numerous distinctive historical elements and a more elaborate design to pay tribute to its lost flagship store in downtown Atlanta, which had closed only two years earlier. Though it became a Macy's in 2005, the outside of the store retains the elaborate sculptings of the original store.
Anchor changes
There have been several significant changes within the mall since it opened on October 20, 1993: Mervyn's vacated in December 1995 and Dillard's filled the sixth pad on the east side of the mall the following year. A large parking deck was also constructed next to Dillard's. Though JCPenney converted most of the former Mervyn's locations, they already had a location at the mall. Instead, Parisian took the spot, making the mall more upscale in the process. In 2005, Lord & Taylor closed its 115,000 sq ft (10,700 m2). store at the mall leaving a vacant anchor. The Parisian location was vacated September 2007, as it has been bought out by Belk, which opened in the former Lord & Taylor space. In June 2009, Belk announced that its North Point Mall store closed in September 2009.
The mall itself was most recently renovated in 2003, when the interior was modernized to introduce more sitting areas, and in 2004, when an entire escalator was moved from East Court near Starbucks to the Sears wing of the mall.
Another major development occurred in June 2004, when The Cheesecake Factory opened its third Georgia location (and first location outside of Atlanta) at North Point. The store is located in the mall parking lot just beyond the parking deck. A walking path known as the "yellow brick road" connects the restaurant to the mall's Center Court.
Midwestern luxury retailer Von Maur announced in October 2010 to take over the vacant Belk (originally Lord and Taylor) building and open its first Atlanta-market store by the Fall of 2011 or 2012. According to Jim Von Maur, company president, the company planned to gut the two-story former Belk and expand it to 140,000 square feet (13,000Â m2) from 115,000 square feet (10,700Â m2). The design includes reddish brick, a cupola and columns to echo Georgia and the South. The store opened November 2011.
The former Parisian store was demolished to make way for a new AMC 12 screen theater featuring a MacGuffins bar, Recliners, Coca-Cola Freestyle, IMAX & ETX in September 2012.
Food Court
A carousel that sits behind a floor-to-ceiling window in the food court. Crafted in Brooklyn, New York by the Fabricon Carousel Company, the carousel's hand-painted fiberglass animals were modeled after those of a vintage Victorian carousel on Coney Island. It was shipped to Atlanta in December 1992 (originally to be displayed in the Perimeter Mall) and sat in a warehouse near Duluth for eight months. Then on August 1, 1993, it was brought to the then uncompleted North Point Mall, and was assembled in a huge unfinished, high-ceiling room that is now known as the Food Court. Shoppers saw it operate for the very first time a few weeks after the grand opening. The carousel was supposed to have been the centerpiece of the mall, however due to a broken part it did not operate until a few weeks after opening day of the mall.
References
External links
- Sky City: North Point Mall
- Official Site