Kroger is not coming to Cumberland Mall after all.
The deal to take over the top floor of Sears, which was supposed to happen later this year, has fallen through, according to a Kroger spokesman.
“Kroger was pursuing a lease agreement with Sears, Roebuck and Co., to open a 88,000-square-foot Kroger store inside Cumberland Mall,” Glynn Jenkins, spokesman for Kroger’s Atlanta division, said in a statement.
“However, Sears chose to transfer this asset to Seritage Growth Properties – a real estate investment trust (REIT) company,” Jenkins said. “We had anticipated signing a lease and are disappointed that it wasn’t executed.”
Sears Holdings spokesman Howard Riefs said that Sears is a tenant of the property but no longer owns the building. After Sears sold the property to Seritage in June 2015, Seritage took over negotiations with Kroger and Sears was no longer involved.
The addition of a Kroger store at Cumberland would have been the latest twist in the reshaping of metro Atlanta malls amid fundamental shifts in retailing and consumer behavior.
As consumers have increasingly moved online to shop, mall foot traffic has slipped and their share of the retail pie — which peaked in the late 1980s and early 1990s — has diminished.
Macy’s formally announced last week that it is closing its store at North DeKalb Mall, one of 36 being shuttered nationally because of disappointing 2015 sales for the Cincinnati-based company.
Other malls have filled vacancies with nontraditional tenants such as doctor offices and schools, while others, such as Union Station, the defunct former Shannon Mall, have found new uses. (Union Station has been demolished to make way for a movie studio and a 1.1 million-square-foot distribution center).
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