Twelve years after Tom Cruise starred in Steven Spielberg’s “War of the Worlds,” a poster heralding the film’s summer 2005 release still hangs outside the vacant, one-screen movie theater in Leigh Mall that closed shortly after the film arrived.
Joyce Good walks by the poster, as well as almost a dozen other storefronts in Leigh Mall that are either closing or are already out of business, almost every day.
Three laps through Leigh Mall’s interior corridors equal a mile, and Good — along with many other Columbus residents — frequent the indoor walking path in the early morning hours before the mall opens to customers.
Good and her friends — eight women in their 70s or 80s — talk about recipes, church, their children, grandchildren and physical ailments. It’s an opportunity for “health and fellowship,” Good said, but they still can’t help but notice the declining state of the once-bustling mall.
“I used to go to (JCPenney) and Sears — my husband and I bought almost all of our appliances from there while they were in the mall,” Good said. “And we’ve been to Radio Shack. I’ve bought from all of them, just at different times through the years.”
Sears at Leigh Mall closed four years ago, and anchor store JCPenney will be closing this year. Radio Shack, a longtime tenant, is also gone.
In fact, only 23 of 35 retail spaces in the 308,000 square-foot Leigh Mall are occupied, with Hobby Lobby soon to be its only anchor. And stores are leaving the mall faster than they are coming in.
Still, Good wants to see Leigh Mall succeed.
“To me it’s a community thing,” Good said. “Ever since I moved to Mississippi 40 years ago, it’s been part of my life. You see all these stores closing with the economy, and you kind of get a little nervous.”
Entering a ‘death spiral’
There are now 10 types of major shopping centers in the United States and five different types of “general-purpose centers,” according to data from the International Council of Shopping Centers.
Of the five “general-purpose centers,” Leigh Mall is considered a regional mall. ICSC data show only 600 regional malls still exist in the U.S., compared to the almost 69,000 active convenience centers typically known as strip malls.
If Leigh Mall hopes to survive, or even bounce back from its losses, Golden Triangle Development LINK CEO Joe Max Higgins said things need to change. Otherwise, he sees the mall entering a “death spiral” where it can’t find quality tenants to pay rent high enough to fund necessary facility upkeep.
“Malls are yesterday’s retail,” said Higgins, whose organization provides economic development recruitment services for Lowndes, Oktibbeha and Clay counties. “Over the years there’s been a lot of conversation about Leigh Mall. Most people want to see it brought up to speed.”
California-based Security National Master Holding Company owns the mall and the 30-acre property where it sits. Security National Properties, the holding company’s regional branch in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, operates the facility.
Since he has worked for the LINK, Higgins said, at least six different developers have looked at working with Leigh Mall.
“And over the years we’ve gotten the answers ‘it’s not for sale’ or that the price was higher than buyers were willing to pay,” he said.
According to Higgins, with JCPenney leaving, interest in Leigh Mall has risen, and two unnamed developers are currently looking at the facility.
Even so, Higgins said the mall’s owners still express an unwillingness to sell.
Gail Culpepper, who has managed the mall for 11 years, declined to comment on the property’s status or whether improvement projects were forthcoming.
Higgins said JCPenney’s departure “isn’t all bad,” as the Plano, Texas-based department store and Sears, which left Leigh Mall fours years ago, had both signed long-term, low-rent contracts.
“What happens is you don’t have enough money to upgrade because tenants are paying such low rent to the property,” Higgins said.
And that’s exactly what has happened, according to Mayor Robert Smith.
In addition to finding new “upscale” tenants, he said, the mall needs roof repairs and a major “face-lift.”
Higgins said the LINK plans to find businesses willing to pay higher rents, and he continues to reach out to potential tenants, making them aware spaces are available. He said about half of retailers looking for property right now are restaurants.
Since Security National Properties owns acres of property around the mall, Higgins sees potential for Leigh Mall to grow its out-parcels, which he said are independent stores located on the mall’s property.
“We try to target what we think we want and what would work here,” Higgins said. “(Businesses considering locating in the area) run our average income. They run our poverty rates. People say ‘we ought to have this, we ought to have this.’ They don’t realize about one-third of the people who live here live in poverty.”
A Grand Opening
Lex Jackson, owner of Reed’s at Jackson Square in Columbus, remembers happier days.
As a 26-year-old businessman at the time of Leigh Mall’s opening, Jackson managed Reed’s when the clothing store located in the mall in 1973 — the year the then 350,000 square-foot shopping center opened its doors.
Only a month after the mall’s grand opening on Feb. 1 of that year, floods ravaged Columbus, leaving the mall mostly underwater. It bounced back quickly, reopening less than two months later thanks to community cleanup efforts.
“We are open, dry and ready to serve your every need,” read a letter published in The Dispatch on March 25, 1973, from Leigh Mall’s original owner, Montgomery based Colonial Properties.
According to advertisements placed in The Dispatch the day before the mall’s grand opening, the newly built Leigh Mall featured a 200-seat community center and 38 stores and restaurants — including an ice cream shop; a pizza parlor; shoe, clothing and jewelry stores; a movie theater; and a Winn-Dixie grocery store.
“Maybe one-third of the entire mall was local businesses, and it was 100 percent filled,” Jackson said. “It stayed that way for years and years. I hardly remember a vacancy when we were there because it was the place to be.”
Reed’s remained in the mall until 1997.
“When we left Leigh Mall, it was still pretty strong, but we had been there for about 25 years,” Jackson said. “We had the opportunity to purchase Jackson Square, and we’d rather purchase our own property than pay the rent.”
Though Jackson said his store enjoyed doing business there, he thinks the mall seems to have lost its appeal over the years, in part, he argues, because of the rise of outdoor shopping centers.
“In hindsight, malls are not as much in favor as outdoor centers are,” Jackson said. “I think people enjoy the convenience of being able to pull up to the store.”
Revenue lost
Smith said Leigh Mall has steadily declined over the last 10 years. He said hears two chief complaints about the mall from city residents: It lacks upscale clothing store options and the parking lot is “a disaster.”
“We get complaints all the time about Leigh Mall and what we’re gonna do about it, but it’s privately owned,” Smith said. “It’s not like the city owns a portion of it or can dictate to them what needs to be done.”
He’s pleased mall owners have begun to repair its parking lot but said much is left to be done.
“I don’t think they did anything on the back,” Smith said of the repaving. “It was just on the front.”
But if facility repairs and recruitment efforts don’t start producing results very soon, Smith fears Columbus will continue to lose retail sales tax revenue to Tupelo and Jackson, as well as the Alabama cities of Tuscaloosa and Birmingham.
“I’m very concerned about Leigh Mall, where it’s going from here,” Smith said. “Because right now — besides Hobby Lobby and three or four other stores out there — we don’t really have a mall.”
Ward 6 Councilman Bill Gavin, in whose ward Leigh Mall sits, doesn’t look at the situation quite as bleakly.
“I think the mall has a lot of potential,” Gavin said. “It has been used in this community since the 1970s. It’s got a lot of property, and it’s in a key location for the city.”
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