Sunday, January 25, 2015

Bed Bath & Beyond And Party City Coming To Oconee County’s Epps Bridge Centre

Now At Athens Promenade

Oconee County has issued a permit for a 39,000-square-foot building at Epps Bridge Centre to house both Bed Bath & Beyond and Party City.

The new building will be located to the west of Marshalls in the last open area in the central core of the strip mall that lies between the Oconee Connector, SR Loop 10 and Epps Bridge Parkway.

Bed Bath & Beyond and Party City currently are located in Athens Promenade on Atlanta Highway, less than three miles away from Epps Bridge Centre.

Erase Two More

The departure of these two retailers from Athens Promenade will leave most of the nearly 133,000 square-foot-shopping center vacant.

Oconee County issued the building permit for the shell of the new building for the two retailers on Jan. 22.

Two days earlier it issued a build-out permit for 2,400 square feet in an existing building at Epps Bridge Centre for a nail salon.

Permit Details

The permit for the building that will house Bed Bath & Beyond and Party City is valued at $1.7 million.

Construction work on the shell is expected to be completed by Sept. 30 of this year.

Epps Bridge Centre LLC of Atlanta will remain the owner of the property.

The nail salon, named Bellagio Nail Bar, will go into the building cluster that houses the speciality outdoor outfitter Kinnucan’s.

David Dang of Covington is the business owner. The permit does not indicate when the inside build-out will be complete.

Dang told me in a telephone conversation tonight he is not affiliated with other nail salons in Atlanta using a similar name.

Old Navy Left Too

Epps Bridge Centre has drawn stores from along Atlanta Highway, including Best Buy and Pier 1 Imports, but it has nearly decimated Athens Promenade.

Old Navy left Athens Promenade and moved to Epps Bridge Center when it opened in 2013.

The only stores operating in the strip mall at present, in addition to Bed Bath & Beyond and Party City, are Barnes & Noble, Lens Crafters, ChuckECheese’s and Rugged Wearhouse.

The restaurant On The Border is located in an out lot of the shopping center.

The pan of the shopping center on Saturday shows the already empty spaces.

Athens Promenade is owned by Athens Bypass LLC and has an address of Hanover, Md., according to Athens-Clarke County tax records. The shopping center was built in 2000.

Corporate Details

Bed Bath & Beyond is a chain of domestic merchandise retail stores with outlets in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. It has stores throughout the Atlanta market.

It is headquartered in Union, N.J.

Party City, based in Rockaway Township, N.J., operates in the U.S. and Canada, with multiple stores in the Atlanta area.

It is the largest retailer of party goods in the two countries.

2 comments:

Jonathan Wallace said...

Absolutely ridiculous. Will Oconee County get 14 years from these stores before another strip mall opens 3.5 miles away?

Alan Cason said...

If B&N was a healthy company they would be gone too. May as well rename this Athens GhostTown.