Lost in Time :: Galleria Specialty Mall, Smyrna

     If you bring up all the Atlanta area malls, one is likely to go unnoticed. One you probably did count was Smyrna's Cumberland Mall, but that's not what we are here for. What we are here for is a hidden gem of retailing. And this is a truly "hidden" gem. Nestled between a parking deck, a hotel, and under a convention center is a forgotten mall in the least likely of places. However, not only is this mall hidden, it's really a gem in an era where nearly every mall has either been demolished or been renovated a million times. Not only has the Galleria never been renovated, everything pretty much remains from the mall's opening date. It's all many of us have ever wanted in a mall, and then some. I hope you enjoy this absolute treat of a shopping center. What isn't to be enjoyed?

While the outside of the mall is pretty low-key and gives no clue to what's inside, the long-dead remaining Jocks and Jills to the left isn't giving off modern vides.

Detail of the old restaurant. Sorry for the finger in the bottom right corner.

     Information isn't easy to find on this mall, and that's not a good sign of the state of the mall. In fact, the mall seems to be missing a full history, which likely came from the fact that the mall floundered for a long time with little success. What is known is that the mall opened in 1983, a year after the connected Waverly Hotel opened next door. This seems believable enough given that the architecture looks the 80's part and has evidently and truthfully never been renovated. The mall opened up with a whopping zero anchors, but this somehow translated into success, albeit small (it was the 80's, so pretty much any mall was guaranteed to live for some time, no matter how bad they were). Unfortunately, this success was short-lived. All hope was lost when the Gwinnett Place duplicate Town Center at Cobb opened in 1986. The Galleria still is open and you can enter without fear of a trespassing charge. Let that sink in. The Galleria has been effectively dead for over three decades and still exists.

The inside of Jocks and Jills remains dirty with a TV still inside.

Looking back to the entrance from the inside of the mall.

A view from the second floor into the center court. You weren't expecting this, weren't you?

     With little care from locals or business owners, the Galleria went on a slow death from 1986. If a tree falls in a forest with no one around it to hear it, did it make a sound? That rang true with this mall, and owners basically threw in the towel in 1993, with the second floor being converted into a convention center. That convention center is still successful, and on the day of my visit there was a jewelry show on display for those in the industry. The owners must have thought this revitalization would bring some added SHINE, but the Galleria never became a DIAMOND in the rough and becoming the crown JEWEL of retail is hardly a dream at this point. I'll leave now like the stores that once lived in this vintage GEM. 

This mall may be small, but it does fit a lot in with this oddly-shaped layout. 

The odd shine from the wide skylights give so many 80's vibes in this photo and the mall as well that are so hard to explain. This would be from the lower level of center court with the food court to my left and the Jocks and Jills corridor to my southeastern angle.

This entrance wing once housed the previously mentioned Jocks and Jills as well as a Peter Glenn ski shop which would have been on the right. Say what you want about a ski shop in Atlanta but I shouldn't have to give clues on why that business failed.

The de-facto food court remains scenic despite all of the eateries that LEAFed it. 

     This all takes us to today, where a decaying corpse of a mall lies in a rather successful corridor of Cobb County. Unlike many other malls on this blog, I cannot create a plan to get this mall out of the dumps or keep it successful. The likely outcome here is that sometime in the next 5 years we will see what has been coming for a long. I'd imagine that the convention center is likely to expand into the mall, though even this idea hasn't been activated yet. It's been over three decades of hot debate, and nothing has been done so far. Is there any reason to believe change is in the air?

Developers definitely didn't hold off on the use of brick here. It creates a sort of "Main Street" feel to the storefronts, which is something that I like, no matter how old. Modern malls lack the character that places like these captured.

The occasional storefront still remains in the mall.

Decorative ivy adorns an otherwise plain balcony for the convention center. 

     While it's obvious that the Galleria at this point is pretty much obsolete and done for, there is still one thing that is nice about this mall. The architecture is one of a kind today, with the mall never being renovated as the others from its time were. Every other currently-existing Atlanta mall has been renovated, aside from the Galleria. This gives the dead mall an interesting niche, but one that is hardly sustainable. The everyday shopper wants clothes at the mall and not aging brick corridors. This mall has been brick corridors for too long to become relevant again. But if you did have a reason to head here, I will say that the design elements are worth a visit.

Walking through the food court leads you to a smaller court with a corridor to the Waverly Hotel and a corridor past the old theatre. While the central court was bright and open, this court is an exact opposite.

With a mall as unsuccessful and original as this one, it's highly likely that most or all of the storefronts are original. This green and yellow one is as interesting as it is old.

The theatre mallway may be empty but it's sure cool. The theatres occupied the large storefront to the right.

     While it may be grim, the Galleria was almost doomed to die from the start. Name any element of a successful mall, and the Galleria doesn't have it. Anchors? Unless you want to call a mid-sized movie theatre an anchor, there is nothing anchor-like at the mall. A hotel isn't an anchor as normal shoppers have no draw to go there and guests aren't going to enter the mall if nothing is there. A mall without anchors is like a ship without anchors; things may go well at first but you have no chance if you reach rough waters. But perhaps you will still shop here if its got a nice location, right? It took me at least ten minutes to get from the Cumberland food court to the parking deck, and that's before parking and entering the joint. Why should I go through the entire ordeal of getting here when there's a better mall across the street? And even if I'm coming from home, I still have to deal with exiting I-285 which can be problematic at any time of the day. This was exacerbated even further when SunTrust Park was built, destroying any decent part of getting here. I haven't even gotten to how much competition this mall has had to deal with, though that's partially just being unlucky. The part that isn't so lucky is how little ready the mall was for this. You can't stop other mall developers but you can renovate or expand. The developers didn't do anything, so it's hardly a surprise the mall is dead.

Even though its a fairly nice hotel, the hallway to it isn't so nice.

Quite possibly the coolest part of the mall is the long-closed AMC 8 Theatre. The theatre moved to a larger plex on Akers Mill and Cumberland Roads over a decade ago. There is still a faint labelscar on the entrance.

Oddly enough, the lights were on in the old theatre. Most fixtures still remain, which was a wonder to see. I can only imagine how the rest of the cinema looks, which wouldn't be too bad, based on what we see here.

     What is a "galleria" isn't showing much more than empty hopes and dreams down dank hallways. What the mall hasn't disappointed is the second part of its name. The mall is a specialty, though perhaps not in the way the original owners envisioned. Too bad filling a niche in retail doesn't equate to sustained success. If that was the opposite, this mall would be booming. But all that's booming today is only neon dreams and the malls that today reign supreme.