General Growth Properties, the Chicago-based owner of Manchester’s Buckland Hills mall, is heading outside for its newest venture.
The company will operate street-side kiosks in downtown Atlanta, Ga., and may expand the concept to other cities, according to David Keating, the company’s senior director of corporate communications.
The venture is a natural outgrowth of General Growth’s “vast amount of experience in the specialty leasing industry,” Keating said.
It is“certainly not unlike the specialty leasing program we’ve perfected inside our malls,” he said.
General Growth has an agreement with Atlanta to manage the on-street vending program in what Keating called “one of the most comprehensive public-private partnerships of its kind in the country.”
General Growth is responsible for the design, construction, and installation of the retail kiosks in the city right-of-way, he said.
The first group of kiosks has opened in Atlanta’s Woodruff Park area, along Peachtree Street, facing the park, according to Keating.
Vendors are selling everything from handbags and sunglasses, to newspapers and Atlanta souvenirs in new steel-framed kiosks with brass accents and domed canopies, he said.
