SkyMall : Retail History and Abandoned Airports: Perimeter Mall, Dunwoody, GA

Located 12.4 miles northeast of downtown Atlanta, Perimeter Mall acts as an upscale center that gets covered by the all the others. Forgetting all Lenoxes and Phipps, Perimeter Mall is the near-perfect mall. It's upscale but not Gucci-store galore, large but not laid out dumbly, and fits well but not cliché. It's all you need, and these pictures show it. On a Sunday afternoon, the mall was busy as ever, and it was obvious a brisk business was being done. If every mall looked like this, wardrobes would be filled with clothes, to say the least.

To give perspective, here is what we see. It's upscale, and the layout is nothing spectacular.

To develop the northern part of the then-two-year-old I-285, Rouse Company pondered the construction of the mall and went for it. Properly named the Perimeter Mall, DeKalb County's fourth venue of its type turned on the neon open sign on August 17, 1971. Anchored by local favorite Rich's and Wyoming's JCPenney chain, the mall was opened up to great fun, as was pretty much anything else in 1971. The mall was nearly identical to Greenbriar Mall at opening, but today, the malls are anything but identical. Perimeter included all the classics at opening, and was essentially what you expect in a 1971 mall.

I find odd harmony in this entrance. It isn't anything over-the-top, but I like it. Maybe that's why, it blends well and doesn't scream, "HEY MACY'S IS OVER HERE!"

Here's the Dillard's entrance from afar. This whole wing feels new, capped off with a fairly new Dillard's store. I guess it is an improvement over the dark cavern the mall once was.

Von Maur knows how to make a decent looking store. The store shows some age on the inside, but in the middle of the store is a large atrium complete with a piano on the first floor, which was in use at the time of my visit. Complete with the exterior, it brings nostalgia of downtown department stores.

The short Nordstrom wing. The blue monstrosity on the left is a J. Crew. Note the terraced skylights on the roof. For a cloudy late afternoon, it was very bright in the mall.

All was well until 1982, when news came out of the Dunwoody mall. An expansion was proposed and constructed, adding a food court, Davison's department store, and sixty-some shops. This wasn't Davison's for long, though. The year 1986 brought Macy's following the store's merger with the then-New York concern. This set the mall up for problems later down the road. Meanwhile, things were coming together nicely. In 1998, another expansion was added on, featuring Seattle's Nordstrom chain. All this helped the mall gain a major presence in the northeast Atlanta trade area and a pretty safe feeling in the consolidation excitement soon to take place.

Here's the long-shot from center court all the way to Von Maur. It was very busy here today.

Nordstrom and the Von Maur court. The columns are an odd but nice touch.

Just a bit closer to Von Maur. The food court is roughly below me.

Though it wasn't as bad as it could have been, anchor store consolidation still touched the mall. In 2003, with the merging of Rich's to Macy's, Federated Stores had a dilemma. Macy's already had a store at the mall, and Rich's already had a large furniture gallery. But the mall was upscale enough for Bloomingdale's, also owned by Federated. The original Davison's turned into the new Bloomingdale's, with the Rich's becoming Macy's. JCPenney would close in 2005, and was replaced by a sparkling new Dillard's store a couple of years later. It was a good sign for the mall with the quick turnaround of closed stores.

This goes from Von Maur to the center court. In a way, it oddly looks like Lenox Square's main corridor.

VM from the lower level. I'll stop soon with using Von Maur words and photos every ten seconds.

This is from center court to the mall's Macy's. I took this from an escalator and ended up with an oddly angled blurry photo. Never will do that one again too.

Still more has changed since 2007, but not for the worst. Bloomingdale's closed in 2012 but was quickly replaced with Atlanta's second Von Maur. This wasn't a very worrying closure, as odd as it sounds. Atlanta already has a Bloomingdale's at Lenox, and not many cities have two. Even those with two have them spaced out. If Atlanta wanted to have two it would have to be Lenox and Southlake, Arbor Place and MoG, or Town Center Cobb and Stonecrest. And anyways, maybe three of those malls could actually house a Bloomingdale's. What I'm saying is that Atlanta shouldn't feel bad joing a group with Boston, Seattle, Detroit (whose suburbs are actually not as bad as one may think), D.C., anywhere in Texas (only outlets), or anywhere in VA apart from basically Washington, D.C. The owners should take it as a good sign that as soon as the gates closed for Bloomingdale's, Von Maur was filling up the racks.

Stores along the upper floor of the Dillard's wing.

This is the corridor that runs towards Dillard's. This is a very short wing despite it being on the main mall. Apple, Foot Locker House of Hoops, and a newly opened Zumiez all locate along here.

Along the main entrance corridor, per se. Below me would be an H&M, and roughly to my left would be Urban Outfitters.

Ramblings aside, all that has come to the mall ever since have been small renovations. The most recent of these includes the revamp of the main entrance. I would have to presume that the renovations have ended though. There was no sheetrock to be seen on my visit, but I don't think that's a bad thing. The mall has visually improved enough to be viable for a few more years. It's pretty obvious that the owners are trying to shake the infamous dark mall of days past. Its converted nicely to a much brighter and more modern mall. But I think there is one spot to improve in. The current food court remains dim and doesn't fit in with the rest of the mall. With this, the food court should be relocated to a prospective third floor in the center court. This new floor would be only surrounding the main atrium, and not to any anchors. The old food court would be renovated to fit with the rest of the corridor. The current food court doesn't fit in and feels cramped and dark, not something to be happy of today.

It was near impossible to get a good photo of the food court. I suppose going here on a Sunday evening before when most area kids had the week or Monday off was not my finest moment.

Here's one side. The other side goes much deeper and is larger.

This was the best I could do. The barrier there is a little obstructing, but isn't that the point?

As area malls thin out, it's very probable that Perimeter will last. The only downside to this is that the mall has long provided competition to Northlake and North DeKalb, and has given them a run for their money. On the bright side, one of the wealthiest and aesthetically pleasing areas of Atlanta has a mall that many other places would love to have. It can be called an oddly perfect mall. It mixes upscale at a fair price with not over-the-top. It shows that a city's oldest malls don't have to struggle. They can become one of the best, and live long, happy lives as retail establishments.