What Does the Growth at CoolSprings Galleria Mean for Parking?

Cool Springs Galleria

CoolSprings Galleria is growing at a rapid pace.  Over the last few months, there have been several new establishments to open and more are on the way.

Most recently, The Cheesecake Factory opened. It was the first sit down, full service restaurant added to The Galleria. Opening soon will be Connors Steak & Seafood, offering the “best steaks and seafood, along with chef prepared pastas” and Kings Bowl will offer shoppers another full service restaurant with entertainment options.

The redevelopment of the Sears building has brought more retail options with the opening of American Girl Doll Store, H&M,and A’Gaci, Belk’s Men and Kid’s store, and the soon-to-be open ULTA.

See CoolSprings Galleria Celebrates New Stores

Zumiez recently opened on the second level of the mall, along with Vera Bradley and Sephora. J. Jill is coming to the lower level next to Williams-Sonoma in fall of 2015.  Shoppers will certainly have more options this holiday season and beyond.

There are only 18 more Fridays left before Christmas, yes it’s true! CoolSprings Galleria will have most of the newly announced stores opened by the holiday shopping season. Belk’s redevelopment of its existing anchor store is on target to be complete in October.

While shoppers are very excited about the new changes, there are a couple of things still missing at CoolSprings Galleria. Where is the high end retail? Shoppers have told us that they will still drive out of the county to seek out more of a high end retail experience. Current anchor stores at CoolSprings Galleria include Dillard’s, Belk, and Macy’s–all mid range stores with very few high end options for shoppers.

Also, parking has been limited in the past holiday seasons but now with the additions of ULTA, Conners Steak & Seafood and Kings Bowl–whose buildings sit on what once was parking spaces–where will shoppers park?

Cool Springs Galleria         Cool Springs Galleria

Also, as you drive through the Galleria parking lot, you will often find new cars parked in the mall parking lot (as seen in the photos above). Hyundai and Nissan of Cool Springs currently take up hundreds of parking spaces. Nissan has 5 rows of parked cars, with an estimated 200 cars total. Hyundai has only 2 rows of parked cars, about 100 cars parked in the lot.

We contacted both the Hyundai dealership and Nissan of Cool Springs. Both said they use CoolSprings Galleria as overflow parking. We asked both parties if the mall was aware they were parking cars there to which they said “yes” but were unwilling to tell us the agreement they have with the mall in terms of compensation. Both expressed that they did have a limited number of cars they were allowed to park at the mall parking lot.

In addition to car dealerships parking cars at the mall, we even have an eyewitness account of employees from an office building across Mallory Lane parking their cars in the CoolSprings Galleria parking lot and walking to their office. We were unable to get a comment regarding an agreement between this office and CoolSprings Galleria. There is no crosswalk available to employees who are using this lot, making it a dangerous proposition to cross during rush hour.

We reached out to corporate CBL (manager of CoolSprings Galleria) and the local CBL representatives for a statement as to if the parking issue will be addressed. At this time, we have received no comment.

We want to ask you, the readers, if parking will be a deterrent to shopping at CoolSprings Galleria this holiday season?

Answer our poll below.

[poll id=”44″]