A longtime store at Mount Berry Mall in Rome is leaving. Sources confirmed this week that Express will exit the mall toward the beginning of February.

Express is one of the longest tenured tenants at the Mount Berry Mall. Its storefront location is considered one of the best leaving many to wonder what will happen to the space. Previous stores have boarded up the windows and placed murals of Rome in its place.

This makes the second ‘prime’ location store to leave the mall in the past months. Longtime jewelry store Knight’s left the mall and opened a standalone location on Turner McCall Boulevard.

Officials with Mount Berry Mall said that they did not feel that the store leaving ‘reflects the mall or the community’, rather it is just the ‘natural cycle of the retail business.’

The mall has added several stores in the past three years including Dunham’s Sporting Goods , who took over a longtime vacated anchor store, along with Buckle and Sienna & Bellini. Plans are in place to add a new pretzel shop where the former ice cream shop was in the food court.

The mall, which is owned by Hull Property Group, redesigned its look last year by removing the center kiosks, children areas and the word Square from its name.

Recent rumors have said that the mall also plans a more impactful redesign which could include the demolition of certain wings similar to what the group did to its Macon Mall in 2011.

(Coosa Valley News)