MILLIANS: Bringing a mall to y’all

Published 9:11 am Friday, October 25, 2024

Once upon a time, there was a fruit and vegetable stand at the intersection of Roberson Mill Road and North Columbia Street.

It was owned by Arthur Phillips, who was at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked in 1942. Arthur would buy produce from local farmers as well as make trips to the farmer’s market in Atlanta to stock up.

Phillips’ fruit and vegetable stand might as well have been in Timbuktu. It was in the boonies. The sticks. It was a journey from downtown Milledgeville.

That’s because back then Milledgeville’s north side basically ended at the entrance to Carrington Woods.

But that all changed in the early 1970s because of one man.

Al Hatcher.

Hatcher had the vision to see what others could not: that Milledgeville would be expanding northward and he wanted to be in the vanguard.

The Phillips roadside stand and the woods surrounding it were replaced in 1972 by Hatcher Square mall.

A mall in Milledgeville?

Shopping under one roof in climate-controlled comfort? Who could believe it?

We had hit the big-time.

Belk and Woolworth’s were the anchors. JC Penney came later. Simpson’s Men’s Store and a lot of other shops and restaurants filled in. There was even a soul-food place called Adams Restaurant.

Melody Hatcher Gold, one of Hatcher’s four children, vividly remembers when Hatcher Square opened.

The night before opening day, workers were still paving the parking lots. Al Hatcher, in his hard hat, and his children were helping.

“We were shoveling gravel, doing whatever we could to help,” Melody said. “We were all family. You gotta do what you gotta do to help.”

The Hatcher family moved to Milledgeville from Dublin. The Hatchers practically lived at the mall. Al, especially, when he couldn’t go home during the great snowstorm in 1973.

“We got to know a lot of merchants in the mall,” Melody said. “They took a risk to come out to Hatcher Square with Daddy. They became a part of our family. We did things with them.”

Hatcher had offered every business in downtown Milledgeville a chance to come to Hatcher Square. One of his big selling points was free and ample parking at the mall, the lack of which was often a problem for downtown merchants.

He attended Georgia Military College, Georgia Teacher’s College and earned his law degree from the University of Georgia. He served almost two decades in state government, including the position of chief administrative aide to then Lt. Gov. Peter Zack Geer.

But Hatcher was an entrepreneur at heart. He entered the development and real estate field. He developed apartments, subdivisions, shopping centers and malls, with Hatcher Square and others carrying his name.

Bill Kennedy, who married into the family, remembers Hatcher as being “very kind, a grandfatherly figure.”

Hatcher was known for frequently wearing a blue seersucker suit — and a hat, because it was the gentlemanly thing to do. On other days, he would wear khaki pants and a red Georgia Bulldogs shirt.

“He was a sport,” Kennedy said. “If you don’t think he loved the Bulldogs, just ask him.”

There were plenty of doubters when Hatcher built the mall here, including some of Melody’s classmates at John Milledge.

“Children can be cruel,” she said. “They were saying that there was no way it would make it so far from downtown Milledgeville. They said Green Acres Discount (sort of like Dollar General but much larger) would put Daddy’s mall out of business. It was kinda funny.”

Of course, Hatcher Square became Milledgeville Mall in the ‘90s. But the vision of Al Hatcher, who passed away in 2011, lives on.

“Daddy was a man before his time,” Melody Hatcher Gold said. “When other people would say ‘No Way,’ he saw a way. He saw what it could be.”

And the once sleepy intersection of Roberson Mill Road and North Columbia Street? It’s now the busiest in town.

There are restaurants, banks and shopping centers as far as the eye can see in either direction on North Columbia.

All thanks to Al Hatcher’s vision.

Rick Millians, a 1970 Baldwin High grad, is retired after working at newspapers in Georgia, Ohio and South Carolina. Reach him at rdmillians@aol.com.