Georgia Square Mall — Local services in Athens-Clarke County Unified Government

It is very clear that this is a dying mall, and has been for some time. Half of the shops are no longer open. There are three department stores: Bealls, Sears and JC Penney. There are some teeny-bopper clothing stores: Charlotte Russe, Rue 21, Soho, Victoria's Secret, American Eagle, Rainbow, Claire's. At least four shoe stores, nine eateries, three mobile stores, two optical stores, two nail salons, two children's clothing stores and two jewelry stores. You can find both formal and street apparel very easily here. There is an Army, Marine, Air Force and Navy recruitment centers. There is a tattoo shop and arcade. Gamestop, As Seen On TV, Bath and Bodyworks and Earthbound are here, as well. There is also a computer repair shop whom I actually recommend. Cheaper than Best Buy, and even recommended by Best Buy. They are quicker, as well. It seems for about every store opened, another is closed. The prices are typical mall prices. You'll probably be overpaying for whatever you're buying. The sales are pretty decent when they have them, though. Good for walking around while trying to figure out where you actually want to go I recommend buying some pretzel bites for the walk.

It was a lot better back when the dollar theatre was still running. While you were waiting for your movie you could waste some money here pretty easily. Lots more shops back then, too. Not worth the stop. It'll be bittersweet to see...

TLDR: Mall Security told me I couldn’t use the HUGE empty parking lot to teach a friend to drive.

As if this depressing excuse for a mall could be any more USELESS, apparently you can’t even use the vast empty abandoned parking lot to practice driving. I was letting my friend practice learning to drive in my car, with me in the passengers seat. We were out there for maybe 20 minutes until mall security pulled up next to us. From the moment the “security” rolled down his window he was shaking his head side to side as if to say “no” and scold me. While I tried to explain why we were out there he never stopped shaking his head no. The only words he spoke to us was “You can’t do that here” and continued shaking his head condescendingly— never bothering to explain why. We just decided to comply and leave because it was obviously just some bored security guard on a power trip. I just felt so off put that I didn’t even feel like going in like we had planned to do...

As far as malls go this is one of the better ones in my opinion, because it's not so huge and busy and they have a great Santa during the Christmas season as well as a train that kids and their parents can ride all around the mall. They also have stuffed animals that are battery powered that the kids can ride on and drive all over the mall at a price and being as how it isn't super busy it's actually a safe thing to do here. Great fun for families and an all around fun mall for the kids. I take my kids here every year to get their pictures taken with Santa and the Santa has a real beard and hair and takes time with the kids to read them a story from his book and talk with them. My kids have never been afraid of the Santa at this Mall and that's not something I can say about the other bigger and busier malls. It's just a great local Mall with a local hometown atmosphere that you just can't get at the...