Maybe it’s the oft-reported decline of brick-and-mortar retail. Maybe last weekend’s snow days didn’t slow down the pace of shopping.
Whatever it is, today appears to be a good time to hit the malls and check off Christmas list items.
This morning — on the start of the last full weekend before Christmas Eve — some major suburban malls appear to be no more busy than on a regular Saturday.
A few hours after it opened, Cumberland Mall, near SunTrust Park in Cobb, wasn’t quite a ghost town, but it was close.
At the Mall of Georgia in Gwinnett County, parking spaces abounded and people reported being in and out within a few hours.
Though an I-85 exit ramp was backed up, it took just five minutes to reach a mall parking space. A line at Old Navy reached halfway to the back of the store, and it took shoppers about six minutes to reach a cashier.
Even the line to see Santa, which wrapped around two corners, took less than a half-hour’s wait.
Around 2 p.m., the story was the same inside the Perimeter at Lenox Square. Traffic crawled along Lenox Road, but reaching a parking space at the mall took nine minutes or so, depending on one’s luck and shoppers' flow.
Of course, procrastinators might be biding their time: Because Christmas Eve falls on a Sunday, there’s one more Saturday of shopping to take care of last-minute gifts.
ALSO: Click here to check out the AJC’s 2017 holiday gift guide.
