A Chattanooga-based real estate development company is expanding its footprint into the Southeast where it’s buying former mall department store space and transforming it for other uses.
“I foresee the mall as being the land of opportunity,” said Jimmy White, co-owner of Urban Story Ventures.
White, whose company already owns the former Alstom plant and the James Building among other Chattanooga properties, said the firm has bought four former Macy’s stores at malls and it’s eyeing more such acquisitions.
He said the vacant Macy’s locations are in Florida, Texas and Tennessee, where the company bought the store space at Rivergate Mall in Goodlettsville outside Nashville.
One of the Macy’s purchases is at a Daytona Beach, Florida, mall owned by Chattanooga shopping center giant CBL Properties, White said. But that’s the only CBL mall where White’s group has made an acquisition, he said.