Cobb Center - Early Years

Early Years

The mall was built in a post-World War II suburb of Atlanta by the parent company of Food Fair and featured nearly 50 stores including a Rich's department store (the fourth in the chain), Woolworths, Dunaway Drug (later Eckerd), Davis House restaurant (later Davis Brothers Cafeteria) and a Colonial supermarket. A six-screen movie theater, which later became King's Cinemas, was also opened on an outlot on the north side of the center. The mall was also originally an open-air center with covered walkways and the stores literally wrapped around the south and west side of the Rich's store, all facing it.

For the first ten years, the mall was enormously successful and the two-story Rich's store was quickly expanded with a one-story north wing that greatly increased the total floor space. The mall was a major blow to downtown Marietta, Georgia to the north. When the mall first opened, nearly all of the major clothing stores in downtown Marietta also had branches at Cobb Center. It began to draw out its tenants, leaving the downtown mostly dead by the 1970s.