Cobb Center

Cobb Center Mall (originally Cobb County Shopping Center) was a shopping mall in Smyrna, Georgia, United States. It was the second mall built in Georgia, and opened on August 15, 1963. Early years The mall was built in a post-World War II suburb of Atlanta by the parent company of Food Fair and featured nearly 50 stores including a Rich's department store (the fourth in the chain), Woolworths, Dunaway Drug (later Eckerd), Davis House restaurant (later Davis Brothers Cafeteria) and a Colonial supermarket. A six-screen movie theater, which later became King's Cinemas, was also opened on an outlot on the north side of the center. The mall was also originally an open-air center with covered walkways and the stores wrapped around the south and west side of the Rich's store, all facing it. For the first ten years, the mall was successful and the two-story Rich's store was quickly expanded with a one-story north wing that greatly increased the total floor space. The mall was a major blow to downtown Marietta, Georgia to the north. When the mall first opened, nearly all of the major clothing stores in downtown Marietta also had branches at Cobb Center. It began to draw out its tenants, leaving the downtown mostly dead by the 1970s. Enclosing Cobb Center Ten years after the mall opened, Cobb Center struggled after the opening of Cumberland Mall, a mall far superior in size and quantity stores compared to the much smaller open-air mall. Cumberland Mall opened in 1973 and featured all of the major Atlanta anchors including Rich's, Davison's, Sears and JCPenney. Cobb Center just had Rich's. The owners of Cobb Center in reaction to the new mall, fully enclosed the structure and added a new anchor, Grant City on the northwest corner of the mall.