OPINION: Lulah, Lulah, Lulah! North DeKalb Mall’s ‘next chapter’

I get nervous when politicians and development execs wield sledgehammers. There’s always the concern someone might crush a wingtip.

Fortunately, the demolition ceremony for North DeKalb Mall last week went off without injury and provided a chance to be wistful about the past, perspire in the ungodly hot present and to project hope for the future.

North DeKalb Mall, opened in 1965, was metro Atlanta’s first enclosed, air-conditioned shopping center and served its purpose through the decades, even when it ended up as a backdrop for zombie movies and a place for truckers to park their rigs.

Now, with some financial love from DeKalb County, it is destined to be the Next Great Thing — a small “town” of bars, restaurants, shops, apartments, a communal AstroTurfed green and walking trails.

“Mixed use” has been embraced by development circles because its anti-old-school suburbanism. Back in the day, the ‘burbs separated homes from commerce, making car ownership a necessity to do everything from grocery shopping to dining out to buying slacks at Rich’s, which once was the mall’s anchor.

The ceremony provided a chance for sledgehammering dignitaries to heap platitudes upon those squeezed under the tent to escape the sun.

Credit: Miguel Martinez

Herbert Ames, executive for Edens , the firm rebuilding the 73-acre property, called it the mall’s “next chapter,” vowing to create something “pioneering and special” for the next 75 to 100 years.

I’ll take something suitable for 25, but my bar is low.

Ted Terry, DeKalb’s hip commissioner in red tennis shoes, noted that “new memories will be created in this suburban mall,” emphasizing “suburban” as a way to say “these ain’t your grandpa’s ‘burbs.”

He said the on-again, off-again slog to redevelop the mall over the past two decades — a Costco was once viewed as its savior — could have ended up with a less-than-stellar end product.

“With dead or dying malls, sometimes there’s a rush, (a sense that) ‘We’ll take anything,’ “ Terry said.

Outgoing DeKalb CEO Michael Thurmond saw it as time to take a victory lap.

“The county has been reborn, revitalized and re-energized,” he said.

Later, he told me, “We’re trying to create a new narrative around the DeKalb Way. The DeKalb Way was not always been something to be celebrated.”

Credit: Miguel Martinez

In 2015, former state Attorney General Mike Bowers, after investigating its government, deemed the county “rotten to the core.” It has since improved to “ripe around the edges.”

The new development will be called “Lulah Hills,” apparently famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted’s working title for the Druid Hills neighborhood.

This Lulah Hills will eventually have 320,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space, 1,700 apartments, 100 townhomes, a hotel, and a PATH Foundation trail connecting to paths in surrounding woods and, if you keep hiking, to Emory University and beyond. It will occupy a bit more than 50 acres because 20-some are flood plain, so they must squeeze what they have into a smaller footprint. The movie theater will stay in a reduced form. Its unclear if it’ll remain reduced price.

The $843 million plan — scheduled for completion in the early 2030s — will be aided by a Tax Allocation District (known as a TAD). This is a plan that uses future property tax increases in a designated area to build and renovate infrastructure in that same area.

Edens, the developer, will raise $35 million to build sewer lines, a street grid, parking decks and to demolish the mall. The TAD funding (again, from the increased taxes) will repay Edens $70 million over the next 15 years because borrowing isn’t cheap. Most of these amenities would have had to have been built anyway, but developers now routinely get incentives for waking up in the morning.

The TAD could raise another $100 million on top of that $70 million, which would be used in that area.

As the county, neighbors and Edens haggled over plans, Commissioner Terry contacted Ellen Dunham-Jones, a professor of urbanism at Georgia Tech, who is also sort of the Maven of Dead Malls. That is, she’s filled with ideas with how to repurpose them.

Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC

“When I see a dead mall, I see an opportunity,” said the author of “ Retrofitting Suburbia .” (”Dead malls” are not necessarily ones with no tenants. It’s malls that charge rents so low they can’t replace their roofs when they leak.)

Dunham-Jones was glad to see Edens in the picture because even though the South Carolina developer is noted for grocery store-based strip malls, “they are capable of doing mixed use, walkable designs.”

The professor said developers often do their best work in larger cities and then underperform in Atlanta. “I challenged (Edens’ CEO) to bring her A-team here,” Dunham-Jones said. “I’m still waiting to see, but I’m hopeful.”

Surrounding residents are what you might call cautiously optimistic.

“Edens has done a good job of selling us on how much they’ll be community-oriented, with walkable green space and common areas,” said Carol Hayes, who lives in the nearby Laurel Ridge neighborhood.

Like most of her neighbors, she hates the name Lulah Hills. “They tried to give me a hat (with the name) and I was like, ‘Are you kidding?’ "

Theresa Same, zoning chair from the adjoining Medlock Park neighborhood, visited an Edens project in Washington D.C. and was impressed. She was more diplomatic about ole’ Lulah.

“I can appreciate how hard it is rebranding a name,” she said, with a long pause. “Umm, I guess it’s grown on me.”

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