Imagine a pathway of glass hidden in the shadows, with remaining shards protruding through the doorway, creating a sense of uneasiness. As the light shines through the ceiling, ripples of water are illuminated in between mounds of mud covering the original tile floor. Drops of water rhythmically hit the fallen beams overhead, mingling with the hanging wires and pipes. Carpet squishing under each footstep as the smell of feces and urine permeate every inch of the property. With pitter patters of rats scurrying through the bushes as graffiti walls tower overhead, this picture in mind is a reality.
The Regal Cinema behind Town Center Mall in Kennesaw, abandoned since 2020, remains a health hazard for the community. Kennesaw Town Center LLC bought the property in January 2025 for $13 million. The former legal owner, Presidium, planned to tear down the former cinema and build new apartment buildings, but the property remains vacant for whoever roams it.
Adame Basse is the manager at The Varsity next door and observes many homeless people walk from the cinema to the restaurant.
“A lot of homeless people used to live there. This last time was okay because I think the police are doing something about it, but it used to be a lot,” Basse said.
The theater’s open access attracts many curious wanderers who visit to see what is inside. Town Center Mall is directly across from the cinema, and its security office faces the abandoned theater. However, the mall’s security has no jurisdiction over the cinema.
“We don’t patrol the outside of the mall,” a female security officer said. “We only do the inside of the mall.” The security officer refused to provide her name.
Cobb County Police are periodically seen driving past the abandoned building between The Varsity and the Regal Cinema. There are 10 official police reports since 2019. The majority of police calls involve loitering. All of these reports were filed after the building became abandoned.
According to Cobb Police, people were arrested for loitering in addition to possession of drugs and weapons. In the past six years other crimes include street car racing, a stolen vehicle and burglary.
According to Cobb Police, “This area does have a high homeless population; however, the Regal itself would not be mentioned unless there is a direct incident there. This is due to their transient nature. “Most of the homeless live in camps located in wooded areas. The biggest one I have personally seen in that area is behind the Home Depot off Barrett Parkway.”
Although gates prevent vehicles from entering, anyone can walk around them since they only block the paved entrances, not the grassy medians. This explains how homeless people enter the building.
Omar Ruiz is an employee of The Varsity, which is directly across from the cinema.
“It wasn’t that long ago, a couple of months maybe, that they put up the gates,” Ruiz said.
According to Georgia Law 16-7-21, it is legal to enter a property without criminal intent and if it does not have locked doors or gates.
“And the problem is we keep developing and developing, the amount of vacant land or undeveloped land is decreasing, so they’re having to find new places to hang out at,” TullanAvard, executive director of the Bells Ferry Civic Association, said.
Although the new Kennesaw Town Center LLC put up the gates, the smell of the mold, mildew, moss, standing water and feces travels through the empty parking lot because the doors are either propped open with rocks so squatters can easily access the theater, or the doors are ripped off the hinges. The conditions inside are hazardous and unsuitable for the Kennesaw community.
“We do have a local nuisance ordinance that allows us to address external issues on private property that could contribute to the harborage of rodents or mosquitoes, such as piles of debris, trash or stagnant pools of water,” Chris Hutcheson, director for the Center for Environmental Health in Cobb County, said. “When a complaint is investigated and verified, the property owner is notified and given a timeframe (typically 14-30 days) to correct the issue. Enforcement can escalate if the problem remains unresolved past the initial correction period, which can include citations and court summons.”
Not only is the property a health code violation, but many homeless people seek shelter inside on rainy days. There are signs of fresh soda cans, Whataburger cups, shoes and footprints. With homeless people living in these awful conditions, it is simply not safe to stay there for any length of time.
As Presidium LLC is still the property’s current owner, it is responsible to maintain the property. The Cobb District of Public Health does not currently hold records for the property owner’s information.
The new Kennesaw Town Center LLC is a subset of the original Presidium LLC that operates out of Dallas, TX.
The Regal Cinema was built in 1999 and closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The majority of Regal Cinemas in the United States reopened in 2021, except for the Town Center location. In 2021, when Cineworld [the owner of Regal Cinema] went bankrupt, they sold properties to Presidium LLC in hopes of turning the land into apartment buildings.
Plans for the Property
In November 2021, the Cobb County Board of Commissioners approved the rezoning of the property for a multifamily apartment complex with 350 units. Construction never started. During the approval process, the Bells Ferry Civic Association opposed this plan due to the high number of apartments already in the area.
“The Town Center Area is already inundated with apartment complexes that have done little to rejuvenate the mall which is in foreclosure,” BFCA’s Joanne Trivett said in 2021 at a Cobb County Board of Commissioners meeting. “There are over 300 available apartments in the Town Center Area, and that is not including several apartment complexes currently being built/or to be built.”
The mall is no longer in foreclosure, however, the lender stepped in to stabilize operations.
In 2018, the Bells Ferry Civic Association proposed a miniature Chattahoochee Nature Center where the Town Center Community Improvement District planned to build the Town Center Park.
“It could be like the Chattahoochee Nature Center and the Regal Cinemas. We had hoped they would have made that into a Cobb County welcome center and into a nature center,” Tullan Avard said.
The Chattahoochee Nature Center is a non-profit dedicated to environmental education that holds many family experiences involving nature, including canoeing, walking trails and exhibits.
“That would have really benefited Cobb County residents. It would have been a place for school kids to go to, but Cobb County only tends to think of South Cobb, the Braves stadium, and that area as the tourism destination,” Avard said.
Aside from Sova, Indy, and Upoint apartment complexes across the river behind the cinema, there are no apartment buildings near the mall; rather, long-stay hotels are alongside the JCPenney entrance of Town Center Mall. Other businesses in the vicinity of the abandoned cinema are Pomme Salon, HR Block, and PureGolf.
PrintGraphics is in the same complex as Pomme Salon. One of the employees said the cinema hasn’t affected them in any way.
“We are fairly far removed from the Regal Cinema and so we have not directly been impacted one way or another,” Derek Teasley owner of PrintGraphics said.
Current Status and Plan
Since the building’s decline, the assessed value of the property is worth more than $3.4 million, but the physical building is valued at only $400 of this total. This is a stark contrast from 2020, when the assessed building value was $1,794,328. With $13 million already spent on this property and more money put in for new construction, this property should bring new revenue and jobs to the area.
There are still hopes that the parent owner, Presidium LLC, will turn the area into apartment buildings since housing in the area is limited, but they will be required to remove any remaining health hazards before building a new development. The longer they wait, the more the hazards will grow and impact the health of the neighboring community.
Fresh Take Georgia reached out to Presidium for a comment, but received no response.
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