The Charleston Town Center: Dealing With The Inevitable

The PopCulteer
October 9, 2026

The Charleston Town Center endgame has finally started.

Monday, just hours after Charleston’s Mayor, Amy Goodwin, said on WCHS Radio that the mall’s owners, The Hull Property Group, were nearing a deal to sell the mall, The Hull Group instead announced that in the coming year, as the leases of the interior stores expire, they will not be renewed, and only the two restaurants with exterior entrances will remain open.

The inside of the mall will be closed by the spring or summer of 2027.

It seems like more of a whimper than a bang, but to be fair, the Town Center has been whimpering for years.

Exactly ten months ago I wrote a PopCulteer column that was was almost entirely speculation about the future of The Charleston Town Center.  With the mall back in the news, I think it’s the right time to go back and add a little analysis to that speculation.

And be warned, this is all analysis and speculation and not actual reporting. I don’t have any secret sources or inside info.

First, let’s look into the timing. 

I have to wonder what it was that spurred The Hull Group to make the announcement when they did.  Did a deal of some kind fall through?  Had they reached a point where the tax write-offs and meager income from the rents finally paid off the $7.5 Million  price they paid for the mall back in 2021?  Maybe they had a self-imposed deadline of five years to try to figure out a business model that would see the mall revitalized before they pulled the plug.  It could be as simple as the cost of paying somebody to unlock the doors, act as security, handle the management and maintenance duties and process paperwork finally exceeding the revenue they bring in from their tenants.

The Hull Group is not talking, at least not to me…not that I asked.  It does seem clear that they never intended to just donate the property to the city. That was a pretty big ask on the part of Mayor Goodwin, and the idea of the city trying to operate the Town Center as a going retail concern just seemed completely unrealistic. The Hull Group is either working on their own internal schedule, or making things up as they go along.  All we know now is that the end is near, not why.

Chances are there could be reasons we haven’t even contemplated yet.

Maybe they have a buyer who is only interested in the mall once the leases all expire, so they don’t have any messy legal fights on their hands.  It would be easier to tear the whole place down if you don’t have to evict anybody first. It’d be interesting to see how they do the demolition if they have to leave the parking buildings standing, but I’m sure Rodney Loftis has a plan drawn up, just in case.

I would imagine that attracting new tenants to the CTC would be damned near impossible with spaces still available (with tax incentives) at the new Park Place Shopping Center in South Charleston.  Plus there’s plenty of room for new stores down Corridor G at the high-traffic shopping centers on both sides of Route 119.   With the Town Center you have a congested location with paid parking in rickety parking buildings that don’t belong to the the mall. On top of that there’s a dearth of foot traffic because the mall is currently hovering at 10% occupancy.

Jesus couldn’t raise the Town Center from the dead as a retail destination. It’s possible that The Hull Group kept the mall operating the same way that I kept my 2004 Chrysler parked in front of the house for two years after it was clear it couldn’t be repaired. Maybe they finally just got tired of being pestered about it. I discussed the difficulties with using the mall as a retail location again back in January. If anything, I’m even more pessimistic about that happening now.

Outback Steakhouse and Chili’s will remain open, and having the mall entirely closed probably won’t make any difference in the amount of business they do.  The foot traffic from there had be negligible.

And I have to wonder if keeping them open is a sign for optimism that the mall could be resurrected, or is it just a case that they have longer-term leases.

As for what’s next, nobody knows. 

There is no shortage of people who have grand proposals for what to do with the property. So far none of these people have the money it would take to realize those proposals.

Any major real estate project within the city limits is going to speed along at less than a glacial pace.

It’s entirely likely that The Charleston Town Center will become the new Stone & Thomas building, sitting empty for decades, trapped in some kind of real estate limbo, too big and expensive to develop, but too complicated and beloved to demolish.

Or, and this is a totally crazy idea, maybe The Hull Group plans to turn The Town Center into a giant movie set, filled with fake storefronts, for people who want to make movies set in the 1980s.

I, for one, would love to see a cool Blues Brothers-style car chase through the mall show up on the big screen someday.

I have serious doubts that the proposed Capitol Sports Complex, of which I’ve been leery since day one, will happen. By the time they arrange financing (if they arrange financing) and break ground, the market for sports complexes will be throroughly saturated in this region.  Looking at the idea objectively, it seems like it’d be the way to get the least use, for the least amount of people out of the property.  Counting on spillover from an annual event at the Charleston Colisseum is not really a sound business model.  The location, across the street from the Colisseum seems ideally suited for hotels and restaurants, not overflow basketball courts.

The idea of turning the property into low-income housing or some other kindly endeavor is one that I’m sure will be seriously considered only after the property has sit vacant for three or four decades.

I’m hoping the WV Music Hall of Fame can find a new location. Their location in the Town Center was great, except for the near-total lack of foot traffic and expensive parking. In a better location, they could really thrive. Barring that, I wonder if they could relocate to the old Chop House location, since it has its own external entrance on the opposite end of the mall from Chili’s and Outback.

I’m sure that the remaining businesses in the Town Center that want to remain in the area will be able to find new locations.  We’re talking about maybe a dozen stores, so it’s not like there’d be a lot of competition for space.

What I wrote in January still holds true…

Unless they decide to try to preserve the old mall structure, there’s not a thing that’s going to happen with that land for at least a decade. And trying to revive the mall as it is might simply not be worth the investment.

That is the problem. Yes, it’s primo real estate, but the ownership issues with the parking buildings belonging to other entities, combined with the questionable economic environment in this country, especially in this area, make doing anything with the CTC property a daunting proposition.  It seems like I’ve been writing about the fate of this mall forever.  I think the first time I used the phrase “ghost mall” was in 2019.

That is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back for fresh content and all our regular features every day.