Goodbye to Northlake Mall?
Friday, June 5 — Katie here, back with some more Tucker tea. I’ll be at City Hall today to check out the Henderson Park master plan open house. I hope to see you there!
We’ve got some big news with the mysterious sale of Northlake Mall and the subsequent eviction of tenants like the beloved Challenges Games and Comics. But first:
🎶 Tucker’s Summer of Fun continues tonight with an outdoor concert by Fleetwood Mac tribute band Landslide. The show starts at 7 p.m. at Tucker Town Green, but guests are welcome to set up chairs and blankets starting at 5:30 p.m.
🏓 DSPLN is hosting Padel and Social at Padel Highway tomorrow. The event includes a padel clinic and open play, a HIIT workout, cold plunges, a specialty coffee bar, and more. Tickets are $30, and the event lasts from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
📈 The millage rate in the DeKalb County School District will remain the same, which means a 1.5% increase in property taxes.
🎵 The Metro Atlanta Chorus will celebrate 20 years with a free concert tomorrow at 4 p.m. in the Smoke Rise Baptist Church Sanctuary. Selections will include spirituals, Broadway favorites, sacred compositions, and contemporary classics.
👋 Until next week,
Katie
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Tenants in Northlake Mall face eviction amid sale
🛍️ Business owners at Northlake Mall were left reeling on Friday after receiving a notice that they had 30 days to vacate the property.
Tony Cade, owner of Challenges Games and Comics, told Rough Draft that all the businesses in the interior of the mall – stores like Tagz Sportz Box, Evolve Clothiers, and Happy Land – received the same notice. The mall’s general manager told Cade that the evictions were due to the sale of the property but did not confirm to whom the mall had been sold. According to anonymous sources who spoke to Tomorrow’s News Today, the buyer was Emory Healthcare.
While the eviction notice didn’t violate the business owners’ leases, which were short-term with 30-day eviction clauses, Cade says he and other tenants were blindsided by the notices.
🏬 Learn more about the evictions.
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Scraplanta fundraises after ceiling damage
🎨 Scraplanta, Tucker’s creative reuse store, is raising money after being forced to temporarily close due to a leak that caused the ceiling to collapse.
Jonelle Dawkins, the Executive Director of Scraplanta, told Rough Draft that a recurring summer leak worsened on May 22, leading to a ceiling tile collapse on May 24. No one was injured.
Scraplanta is hosting a fundraiser to raise money for both the HVAC repair costs, which will be the store’s responsibility, and income for staff who were unable to work during the closure. The store has raised $2,500 of its $5,000 goal.
🧶 Learn more about the fundraiser.
Tucker taxes increase
💰 The City of Tucker has tentatively adopted a millage rate of 2.036 mills for fiscal year 2027, unchanged from the 2026 rate.
A “mill” represents one tax dollar for every $1,000 of assessed property value. Because the millage rate is not changing, this action would effectively be a property tax increase of 5.17% over the rollback rate, the rate at which property taxes would remain the same, of 1.936 mills.
This is the first year since Tucker’s founding in 2016 that the city has not rolled back the millage rate.
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