It’s been two years since the Athens-Clarke County Commission approved a plan to redevelop Georgia Square Mall, but demolition work just started last week. Such delays are typical, developer Mark Jennings said at a town hall meeting to provide an update on the project.
Jennings said that, when he’s asked “What’s the holdup? I didn’t know there was one.” It takes an average of three to four years to break ground, he said.
Jenning’s company, The Leaven Group, won commission approval in March 2023. The company received demolition and land disturbance permits last fall. Last week, crews started to tear down some of the outparcels around the mall, Jennings told a crowd of about 200 at a Mar. 27 town hall meeting organized by District 6 Commissioner Stephanie Johnson. Next, they’ll move on to the old movie theater behind the mall. By the end of the year, Jennings said he hopes to start demolishing parts of the mall itself, starting with the old Sears.
The mall will not close during construction. Instead, the few remaining tenants — including the police substation — will be allowed to move into the central portion of the mall, which will not be torn down.
Plans call for keeping the area around Belk, which has a long-term lease, and surrounding it with 70,000 square feet of new commercial space (one tenant he named-dropped was Dave & Buster’s) and a total of 1,200 housing units, with apartments toward Atlanta Highway and townhouses and a 55-and-up senior living center toward the back of the property. The project will cost an estimated $660 million—making it, according to Jennings, perhaps the largest development in Northeast Georgia history—with $189 million covered by future tax revenue from the property.
That $189 million represents the property taxes the development will generate over a 20-year period. The mayor and commission created a tax allocation district (TAD) around the mall in 2020 to encourage redevelopment. Under a TAD, taxes are fixed at the current level, and any additional revenue from new development is plowed back into the district for a certain time period. In this case, the TAD will fund stormwater infrastructure and “community benefits” such as 99 affordable apartments for low-income renters, greenspace and trees, walking and biking trails, a bus station, subsidized commercial space for women- and minority-owned businesses, space for the Boys & Girls Club and internships for Clarke County public school students.
But Jennings said he has not received any of those funds yet. An agreement between The Leaven Group and the ACC government calls for him to be reimbursed for eligible expenses; he doesn’t get the money upfront. That has led to some challenges financing the project, according to Jennings, so he is working with county officials to change the order in which construction proceeds.
The first phase of the project, which includes demolition and stormwater drainage work, does not generate any value, Jennings said, and so banks have been reluctant to lend money. “Our Phase 1 has no collateral value,” he said. “If something goes wrong, [banks] don’t want a detention pond in Athens, Georgia. They want an apartment building.”
So far, Jennings has spent $31 million of his own money on the project, including $25 million to buy the mall, according to an annual update required by the TAD agreement filed Mar. 18. He said he owns it outright and does not have any debt.
Jennings said repeatedly that setbacks were expected in such a complicated venture, especially considering that TADs are new to Athens, and neither he nor ACC officials have worked with one before. He said he has a good partnership with the local government, and that he is confident the project will come to fruition.
“We want it to be the nicest thing in the Athens, Georgia area—the nicest thing Athens has ever seen,” he said.
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