National search for Gwinnett Place Mall saviors is finally a go

For metro Atlanta’s most famous/infamous dead mall, the true path toward redemption could be officially beginning right now. 

Or will redevelopment ambitions for Gwinnett Place Mall sputter once again, as we’ve also seen in recent years in Alpharetta, West End, Morrow, and elsewhere? 

Only time—and a whole lot of investment dollars—will tell. 

This week Gwinnett County officials, alongside the county’s Urban Redevelopment Agency and international real estate services firm CBRE, announced the release of a nationwide Request for Proposals. It’s a means of finding the right developer to transform the long-ailing but centralized Gwinnett Place Mall site, spread across more than 90 acres near Interstate 85 in Duluth. 

Instead of empty retail shells amid vast parking lots, Gwinnett Place Mall’s remake calls for a dense, green, walkable, and well-connected mixed-use hub that celebrates the area’s cultural diversity and character. Following Gwinnett Board of Commissioners’ approval in March, the site will also include a major bus hub, Gwinnett Place Transit Center, which is largely being funded by the Federal Transit Administration, with plans to open in 2032. 

“The county has made tremendous progress in preparing the site for transformation, and this RFP brings us one step closer to a vibrant, walkable, and sustainable redevelopment,” Nicole Love Hendrickson, Gwinnett County chairwoman, said in the RFP announcement. 

Along with the CBRE partnership, those preparations include buying 87 and ½ acres of the mall site in several transactions since 2021. 

The county has also committed more than $49 million for infrastructure projects (think: road enhancements, stormwater upgrades, sewer improvements) meant to support the mall’s redevelopment. Some of that has been finished, with the rest scheduled to wrap by 2028, per county officials. 

Another county measure was the creation of the Gwinnett Place Overlay Zoning District, which establishes a regulatory framework for mixed-use redevelopment on a large scale for the former mall site and surrounding area. 

County officials have also “aligned infrastructure planning and streamlined development review procedures” as a means to “eliminate unnecessary regulatory barriers and reduce uncertainty for future developers of the site,” per the RFP announcement.  

The exact scope of what Gwinnett Place Mall could become is TBD. But following a community engagement process, four north stars for redevelopment emerged, per county officials: cultural celebration, multi-generational design, mixed-use development, and community gathering spaces. 

Over the past two decades, Gwinnett Place Mall has slipped from a multi-state attraction into a magnet for unfortunate headlines that was empty enough for Netflix’s Stranger Things to transform its interiors into 1980s-style mall sets for two seasons. 

An economic analysis prepared by KB Advisory Group in 2023 found the mall had hemorrhaged nearly 88 percent of its collective appraised tax value over the past two decades—dropping from $167 million in 1999 to just $20.6 million—despite the county’s population swelling around it.

A pre-proposal conference for Gwinnett Place Mall's redevelopment is scheduled for Oct. 7 in Lawrenceville.

The deadline for RFP responses is Dec. 16 this year. Once all submissions are in, URA officials will evaluate the proposals and experience of responding teams and pick the ones best qualified. No timeline for that selection was specified. 

Whatever happens with Gwinnett Place Mall could set a precedent and tone for so many ailing mall properties with big redevelopment ambitions across the metro, from West End to Gainesville and beyond. It’s early, but please take a second to log a vote—in the spirit of the forthcoming MLB postseason—in the new poll below.