A new roster of luxury, contemporary and designer brands are slated to join one of the flagships of Atlanta’s shopping scene.
Lenox Square announced it landed 17 new leases this year, including several new shops entering the Atlanta market. Multiple existing brands will also relocate, remodel or expand their storefronts within the tony Buckhead mall. It continues multiple years of above-average leasing activity at both Lenox Square and its sister mall Phipps Plaza, both of which are fully leased, according to Simon Property Group.
Credit: Simon Property Group
Credit: Simon Property Group
Simon, which owns and manages both posh properties, touts the malls among its best-performing locations. By the end of this year, both malls will combine to house about 65 luxury brands, one of the densest footprints of opulent shopping in the country, the company said.
Michelle Smart, vice president of leasing at Lenox and Phipps, said the malls tick all the boxes for up-and-coming brands alongside international heavyweights.
“They look at sales per square foot, they look at the traffic, they look at the occupancy and they look at the types of retailers they might want to be near,” she said. “We have all that.”
Paris-based contemporary women’s apparel brand Sandro and children’s clothing store Cotton On both opened their first Atlanta stores earlier this year at Lenox, which is celebrating its 65th anniversary. Longtime tenants Steve Madden and Gucci also recently opened relocated and expanded stores within the mall.
Smart said brands choose to move and right-size their storefronts when other tenants’ leases expire, which she said prompted Gucci to jump on a larger space within Lenox Square’s coveted Neiman Marcus luxury wing.
“When you’re 100% leased, it becomes sort of a checkerboard,” she said of plugging tenants into spaces that fit their needs. “Gucci wanted to take advantage of a vacant space in our luxury wing which is extremely rare.”
Credit: Simon Property Group
Credit: Simon Property Group
Atlanta acts as the fashion capital of the Southeast, which Smart said spurs shoppers to drive from hours away to access high-end brands and unique boutiques. She said many of the new shops joining Lenox see metro Atlanta as a hotbed for e-commerce activity, which prompted them to pursue brick-and-mortar locations to tap into that customer base.
Some forthcoming brands, such as upscale luggage company TUMI, will treat Lenox as their flagship location with its entire product line on offer to in-person shoppers. Others like Spanish clothing brand Mango and Miami-based boutique The Webster are looking to add their wares to Lenox’s mix of shopping options.
“It’s this continuum of shopping options, both the luxury and the mass market, that is not found anywhere else,” Smart said. “It’s one of the reason why the traffic and sales are so strong.”
Credit: Henri Hollis
Credit: Henri Hollis
Buckhead’s high-profile malls have tried to shake recent perceptions that they’re unsafe. Lenox has been the subject of negative headlines over the past few years because of multiple shootings in the mall’s parking lots. The violent incidents became a rallying point for the Buckhead cityhood effort that was quashed last year, and prompted a youth supervision policy at Lenox that barred unaccompanied minors from the premises after 3 p.m.
In November, Mayor Andre Dickens and Atlanta police leaders chose Lenox as the backdrop for their holiday season safety update, touting the mall’s foot traffic and falling crime rates in the city.
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