Beechwood Shopping Center — Local services in Athens-Clarke County Unified Government

Understand that I am not reviewing specific stores in Beechwood Promenade. I'm reviewing the strip mall in its entirety and its facilities.

In general, entry and egress to this strip mall is almost always congested. You will spend five minutes waiting in line to enter or exit the parking lot on relatively normal weekdays, especially after work gets out. The fact that it is so congested speaks to the popularity of the various merchants and restaurants in the facility. I give them marks for tree density in their parking lots that actually seem to be thriving compared to trees in other parking lots in Athens-Clarke County that are sickly or simply gone and never replaced to spec. Tree density could always be more, but this is reasonable. They renovated the entire parking situation several years ago and have recently made some additional changes. I applaud the attempt to make things better, but I'm not sure it makes things any less congested, especially since some of the original parking is now host to additional store fronts in the middle of the lot. Weirdly, I seem to filter these stores out of my view because they're facing Alps rather than the other stores.

There are no public bathrooms that I've seen. You'll have to visit one of the anchor stores if you need to go. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as I'm not sure exactly where they would put a public bathroom.

Some of the non-anchor stores have actually been here longer than I've lived here (twenty-plus years). There are store fronts around the back of the facility that many people probably don't even know exist. Even before the pandemic, I would say there has been steady turnover of merchants, but no more so than any other strip mall. There's always a flurry of sandwich shops, work-out spaces, etc. They seem to come and go. I generally don't visit most of these. I actually visit two anchor stores in this facility fairly regularly (Fresh Market, Michaels) though two other anchor stores do not appeal to me (TJMaxx/HomeGoods and Steinmart). One recently closed permanently (Steinmart). I hope some other business will find a use for that space. There is a movie theatre that I also visit when it's not pandemic times (Beechwood Cinemas).

Chick-Fil-A moved in about a decade ago. They seem to have become an anchor in the middle of a parking lot. This restaurant is extremely popular. Unfortunately it is cause for massive traffic backups during breakfast, lunch and dinner up and down alps road. In spite of all that, it probably would be worse if Chick-Fil-A hadn't done a comprehensive job of moving customers in and out of their multi-lane drive through. I seriously don't know how they do it. Still, I wish this could be engineered better.

In a time when many strip malls are finding it difficult to fill merchant spaces, this strip mall remains reasonably full. One or two spots remain shuttered, but usually end up becoming holiday-specific pop-up stores in their season.

I give this site four stars because it's generally a chore to visit. Ever since the Post Office and Buffalos Restaurant left, it's just a place to get in and out of. The tightness of parking, the tedious navigation... these things make going...

They have parking problems big time, especially with the movie theater. Since Steinmart closed I try not to shop there. Even though I love shopping at TJ Maxx and The Fresh Market prior to the closing of Stein Mart and the closing of the other stores next to them, there has been construction of a new building. I have no clue who or how many businesses will be opening there soon however, the construction has really exacerbated the parking problems.

Oh I almost forgot about the new REI store and Sephora which added on to the building when Talbot's closed.

Back to current and future parking issues at Beechwood. I would like to request that specific parking area should be instituted for trucks and SUV vehicles. Parking is difficult enough especially with truck's and SUV's being longer and taller. It is difficult for cars to park safely in a place but add in having these vehicles park next to you it causes safety issues for drivers as when pulling out of your space you have no way of seeing a vehicle until you are basically 3/4 of the way out of the space before you can see either pedestrians or vehicles looking for a parking place. In addition, when these large vehicles park next to you,most times they are too close to your vehicle pull into the space crooked thereby in far too many cases struggling to enter your vehicle At times I personally had to attempt to enter my vecle through the passenger side. And once inside my vehicle, these trucks and SUV"s are so close to your vehicle or parked so crooked you have another problem pulling out of your space because you must take extra precautions not to hit the side of their vehicle to exit your parking space.

Other than the frustrating and unsafe parking conditions I do enjoy shopping my favorite stores, but much less frequent. I shopped there probably 5-6 times per week. But since about 3 years ago only 1x per week now. I do my shopping elsewhere and will continue to do so until something is done about the...

Lots of beautifully displayed merchandise and great customer service. They also have a wide variety of food choices and a friendly cinema with lots of movie choices that well serve young families, Seniors and college students as well.

The stores generally have upscale merchandise at reasonable prices. There are also business services including a Temporary Employment Agency, UPS Store and banks.

There are only two marginal services in the promenade.

The CVS is poorly stocked and generally messy. They frequently do not have sale items on the shelves, no matter what day of the week you visit. Front end staff rarely stay longer than a month or two and the front end manager is rarely seen and of little or no help in managing staff.

The only other thing that held the Promenade from a 5 Star rating was the Crunch 24 hour gym. The clientele of this gym that attend at night are "sketchy" to say the least and make this an unsafe environment after dark.

This should be monitored by the Athens/Clarke County police department and arrests should be made regularly. Transactions are taking place in the parking lot, vehicles without mufflers are purposely racing their engines at all hours and it is difficult to safely cross the back parking lot after dark. At the front of the building cars come tearing around the corner with little regard for human life.

This behavior is bad enough to discourage customer s from patronizing other merchants in the Promenade. The Promenade Retailers Association should band together and insist that this out of control facility provide adequate Security and Supervision of their clients from dusk until dawn. If they are unwilling to do this, Promenade Management should refuse to renew...