COLLEGE SQUARE: MORRISTOWN, TN
Phoenix's Commentary
Posted April 1, 2006 (user submitted)
I would like to submit a post about a mall that is not yet dead but probably
will be very soon. The mall I am referring to is College Square, a fairly small
450,000 square foot regional mall in Morristown, Tennessee.
I have very fond memories of visiting this mall as a toddler and still
remember many of its earlier tenants. College Square opened as the first
enclosed mall within an eight-county radius (which is a fairly decent amount of
land, considering Tennessee counties are HUGE) in 1988. The mall is owned by
CBL Associates and was originally anchored by Proffitt's (a now defunct
department chain once a division of Saks), Wal Mart Supercenter, JC Penney,
Sears Roebuck and Company, a nine-screen Carmike cinema, and a very local
discount semi-anchor, Goody's Family Clothing, a very popular store with the
area's high percentage of lower income families.
The mall once housed many national tenants like Dollar Tree and KB Toys and
still continues to do fairly well in terms of occupancy. However...
A few years ago, Wal Mart Supercenter left the mall in favor of a
free-standing location across the street (now, THAT'S a bad sign of things to
come when Wal Mart leaves). This didn't hurt the malls traffic flow, however,
because the vacant space was divided into two new spaces---the one with the
mall entrance became a Parks-Belk (now more commonly known as simply "Belk")
and the one without the mall entrance became a large pottery liquidation
warehouse called Dixie Pottery. Although the mall is ALMOST fully occupied, and
the mall is ALMOST booming, and the parking is ALMOST not confusing, and the
mall's decor and facade are ALMOST modern, it takes the "wow" factor to keep
shoppers coming to a mall with no food court and a vacant anchor space
(Proffitt's closed upon merging with Belk)that a few ALMOSTs simply cannot
deliver.
There may be hope for this mall yet, but good fortune for the mall is few and
far between, and I see this as just the prechorus to the sad melody College
Square will sing is withers away into retail history...