7 Store Closings Hitting Georgia Shoppers Hard This Year

Twenty-six Family Dollar stores in Georgia have gone dark since last year.

That’s just one chain’s tally.

Nearly 7,900 stores are on pace to close nationwide by the end of 2026, and Georgia’s malls and strip centers aren’t spared.

These are the store closings hitting Georgia shoppers the hardest this summer.

1. Georgia Furniture Mart Shuts

Georgia Furniture Mart traces back to 1986, when it opened as Underpriced Furniture before rebranding in 2020, and its liquidation sale began on July 16.

Four decades, gone in a single summer.

Owners Michael Hall and Tim Padden pointed to an evolving retail landscape and the sale of the company’s real estate as the reasons for shutting down.

Both showrooms are affected.

The 92,000-square-foot Norcross flagship and the smaller Kennesaw location are both closing for good.

Deep markdowns on major furniture brands are the last chance to walk out with a deal before the sale ends.

An outlet store sits attached to the Norcross flagship, so even the clearance section has a clearance section right now.

There’s no Labor Day furniture sale to wait for this year.

2. Macy’s Leaves Northlake Mall

Macy’s is closing out its anchor spot at Northlake Mall in Tucker, one of 14 stores the chain is shutting down across the country this year.

Clearance racks went up within weeks of the January announcement.

Ten weeks.

That’s roughly how long the closing sale ran before the DeKalb County store closed for good.

The mall itself changed hands, too.

The Centurion Foundation bought Northlake Mall for $95 million this year, with plans to turn the property into an Emory Healthcare campus, not another round of retail.

Macy’s calls this its “Bold New Chapter” turnaround, its term for closing stores nationwide while it invests in the stores that remain.

A rename rarely changes what’s already been announced for a property.

Shoppers who grew up browsing that Macy’s now drive past a construction fence instead.

3. Two Saks Stores Gone

Saks Off 5th began closing-sale markdowns at its Lawrenceville store at Sugarloaf Mills on January 31, and its Woodstock store at the Outlet Shoppes at Atlanta closed two days later.

Almost the whole Off 5th roster, wiped out at once.

That’s what happened nationwide during the retailer’s bankruptcy restructuring, which shut roughly 57 of the chain’s 69 stores.

Buckhead’s location survived.

It’s one of about a dozen stores the company kept open nationwide.

Whatever calculus spared it, shoppers there aren’t complaining.

Buckhead is the last stop left for off-price designer racks in metro Atlanta.

4. Family Dollar Trims Georgia

Family Dollar has closed 26 stores across Georgia since last year, part of a nationwide downsizing that's shuttered roughly 350 locations.

Not a small dent.

That's a lot of dollar-store real estate going dark.

New owners Brigade Capital Management and Macellum Capital Management bought the chain from Dollar Tree for roughly $1 billion last year, and the shakeup started almost immediately.

They call it an optimization push.

Translation: Close the underperforming stores and keep the rest.

Family Dollar has pointed to inflation and weaker spending among lower-income shoppers as reasons for the pullback, which hits budget shoppers the hardest.

5. Carter's Cuts Its Footprint

Carter's operates 23 namesake stores and 13 OshKosh B'gosh stores across Georgia, and the company hasn't said which stores survive its national cutback.

What it has said is the number, 150 stores nationwide, closing gradually as leases expire over the next three years.

Three years to find out.

CEO Douglas Palladini says tariffs on imported goods are squeezing margins hard enough to cost the company up to $250 million a year.

The company is also cutting about 300 office jobs by the end of the year, on top of the store closures.

Those layoffs hit corporate staff, not the sales floor.

Parents who count on Carter's for baby clothes and OshKosh overalls won't know if their nearest store is safe until the lease comes up.

6. Yankee Candle Closes Four

Yankee Candle is shutting its Georgia stores in Dawsonville, Buford, Woodstock, and Kennesaw, four of 20 locations closing nationwide.

Yankee Candle turned off its scent wall in all four towns.

Just like that.

These are standalone mall and outlet shops, part of parent company Newell Brands' pullback from brick-and-mortar candle stores.

The trouble is the mall, not the candles.

Bath & Body Works is making a similar move.

It's the same story playing out at two different mall retailers.

The chain closed 62 stores nationwide over the past year, almost all of them inside malls, while it opened 94 new stores somewhere else.

North Georgia is losing the mall version of candle and lotion shopping.

Candles and lotions are still easy to find elsewhere.

7. Four Kroger Doors Close

Kroger shut down four metro Atlanta stores in 2025, on Morosgo Way in Atlanta, Buford Highway in Brookhaven, Memorial Drive in Decatur, and Douglas Road in Alpharetta.

That's four fewer places to catch the weekly grocery specials.

The closures are the leading edge of a still-active plan to shutter 60 stores nationwide by the end of 2026.

Kroger calls them underperforming.

Kroger CEO Ron Sargent says the savings are modest, and the company is putting them back into the stores that stay open.

It also plans to open 30 new locations across the country in 2026.