Joy Long said Tuesday she was shopping at Hamilton Place mall for the first time in a while, having done much of her buying online and especially from Amazon since the pandemic started.
“I hope it gets back to normal, but with cases going up,” the Chattanooga woman said, stopping mid-sentence.
Mall owner CBL Properties on Tuesday reported that shoppers had returned to its centers in droves over the last three months.
The Chattanooga-based company, one of the nation’s biggest mall operators, posted second quarter earnings that rose not just over the lockdown period of a year ago, but also sales numbers that were higher at nearly all of its sites than in 2019.
Funds from operations in the three months ending June 30 were 39 cents per share, up sharply from 2 cents per share for the same time in 2020 when the coronavirus hit its business operations, the company reported.