Augusta Mall Primark: What Reopened at the Former Sears

Primark opened its doors at Augusta Mall on September 24, 2026, in the upper level of the building that spent six years as a dark, locked-off wing of the mall. The store is 28,000 square feet, sits next to the Food Court and JCPenney, and is Primark's second Georgia location after Sugarloaf Mills in Lawrenceville. That much has been reported by every outlet covering the opening.

What gets lost in the coverage is the math. The Sears store that vacated that space wasn't 28,000 square feet. It was 157,000 square feet, added in 1990 as the mall's fourth anchor in a $32 million renovation that also refreshed the interior. Primark filled a little less than a fifth of the box.

One Store, Not One Building

Augusta Mall's own history explains why the upper-level detail matters. When Sears closed in April 2020 after thirty years as an anchor, it left behind a two-level department store, not a single retail suite. Public records of the redevelopment describe the mall initiating a partial plan for the vacated space, with Primark taking a portion of it rather than the whole building. Nothing in the reporting so far details what happens to the rest of the footprint, the lower level included.

That distinction matters if you've driven past the mall over the last several years and noticed one end of the building looking permanently closed while the rest stayed lit and busy. The upper level is active again. Whether the remainder of the old Sears gets a second tenant, gets absorbed into mall operations, or sits as-is isn't something any of the coverage has addressed yet.

For anyone shopping there this fall, the practical version is simpler: walk toward the Food Court, look for JCPenney, and Primark is right there. The company has been advertising opening-week price points that include women's denim starting at $12, men's T-shirts at $5, kids' sweatshirts at $8, and Atlanta Hawks and Falcons gear starting at $16. Hiring is ongoing through the company's careers site if you're looking for retail work locally.

Six Years Dark, More Than a Year in the Making

The gap between Sears closing and Primark opening wasn't a straight line. The Augusta Chronicle first reported in March 2025 that Primark had signed a lease to take the anchor spot. Construction started later that year. The company then announced an opening date of September 10, 2026, only to push it back. At the time, WRDW reported that Primark cited "many moving pieces" in getting the store ready, with the goal of making sure everything was right before opening to the public.

The store opened two weeks later than planned, on September 24. Primark's U.S. president, Kevin Tulip, called September a "busy month in Georgia," referring to the fact that the Augusta store followed the Sugarloaf Mills location by just over two weeks. Between the March 2025 lease announcement and the actual ribbon-cutting, well over a year passed just on this one piece of the larger vacancy.

A Mall That Keeps Finding Tenants

Primark is the sixth name on Augusta Mall's current anchor roster, alongside Dick's Sporting Goods, JCPenney, Dillard's, Macy's, and Barnes & Noble. None of those six has been there since the beginning. The mall has spent nearly five decades swapping and adding anchors as retail habits shifted:

• 1978: Opens with Rich's and Davison's as its two original anchors, plus about 90 smaller stores.
• 1987: A 132,000-square-foot expansion brings in JCPenney.
• 1990: Sears joins as a fourth anchor in a new 157,000-square-foot store, part of a $32 million renovation.
• 1998: J.B. White opens as a fifth anchor in a 160,800-square-foot two-level building. It becomes Dillard's the following February.
• 2007: The Promenade, a 180,000-square-foot lifestyle-center addition, brings Dick's Sporting Goods and Barnes & Noble to the property.
• 2020: Sears closes after thirty years as an anchor.
• 2026: Primark opens on part of the former Sears footprint.

Every generation of shoppers who's used this mall has watched at least one anchor change hands. That pattern of continual replacement is easy to miss when you're only looking at the most recent headline.

Regency Mall, Opened One Week Earlier

Regency Mall, another Augusta shopping center, opened the same summer and followed a different path. It opened on July 27, 1978, one week before Augusta Mall. For a while the two centers coexisted. Then the anchors at Regency started leaving. Upton's closed in April 1993, and seven more stores followed by the end of that year. Merchants who left said the mall wasn't drawing enough traffic to justify staying.

The clearest link between the two properties is J.B. White. In 1998, the same J.B. White that had anchored Regency Mall closed that location and opened instead at Augusta Mall, becoming Dillard's a few months later. That single move left Montgomery Ward as the last anchor standing at Regency.

New owners eventually bought Regency Mall, once valued at $33.5 million in 1991 tax records, for less than $4.15 million. They dropped lease rates as low as $3.50 per square foot, well under the $9 to $18 per square foot charged elsewhere in the area, in hopes of attracting business. A few businesses moved in, but the mall continued to lose tenants. Proposals to redevelop it into a park-and-retail village, or to build a civic arena on the site, both fell through. By 2013, county officials were ordering the owner to either secure the building against vandalism and fire code violations or demolish it.

Regency Mall and Augusta Mall opened one week apart in 1978. Augusta Mall has added or replaced anchors repeatedly in the 48 years since, while Regency Mall lost anchors between 1993 and 1998 and was left with Montgomery Ward as its last one.

What This Means If You Shop There

None of this changes what's true today: the upper level of the old Sears at Augusta Mall has a tenant again, and it's a name Georgia shoppers hadn't had easy access to outside of the Atlanta area until the Augusta store opened. The reopening is real. So is the fact that it covers less than a fifth of the space Sears once occupied, and that the rest of that building's future hasn't been spelled out in anything published so far.

Augusta Mall's record of refilling anchor space over five decades suggests the rest of the building could see new activity over time, though no announcement says so yet. Worth remembering next time the headline says an anchor reopened. It's worth checking how much of the building that headline is actually talking about.

If you're the kind of person who notices these things about the place you live, whether it's a new store at the mall or how a corridor of retail keeps reshuffling, that's the same close attention we bring to the neighborhoods themselves at Tonda Booker Real Estate Group. Let's Start a Conversation.