[EXCLUSIVE] New Ulta Beauty to Open in Familiar Intown Location

Ulta Beauty, a cosmetics and skincare retailer often found in suburban shopping centers, will next year open a new location in a legacy intown center.  The new store, measuring about 11,000 square feet, will open in Toco Hills shopping center in a large portion of what was most recently an Office Depot.  The office supply store, which had been in the center about 15 years, closed in November.  

Bolingbrook, Illinois-based Ulta, which operates more than 1,200 stores nationwide, already has about twenty stores in metro Atlanta.  The Toco Hills location will be just the chain's third inside the perimeter (ITP) joining existing locations in West Midtown (The District at Howell Mill) and Buckhead (Buckhead Station.)  Many years ago the company also operated a store at Northlake Tower Festival in Tucker but it has long since closed, with new talk that it could return to the area at the "reimagined" Northlake Mall.  

Despite serious struggles in the retail industry, Ulta continues to be a bright spot.  The company announced December 3 in its Third Quarter Fiscal 2020 results: net sales of $1.6 billion compared to $1.7 billion in the year-ago quarter.   Earlier this year (pre COVID-19), Ulta opened a new store in Johns Creek Town Center in Suwanee/Johns Creek.  The nearly 10,000 square foot store opened adjacent to PetSmart in previously exposed outdoor space that was once the garden area of a long-since-closed kmart store. 

In November, Ulta announced a "strategic partnership" with Target that will put more than 100 mini Ulta "shop-in-shop" stores in select Target stores around the country.  The stores, which will start to open in mid-2021, will be 1,000 square feet and will be staffed by Target employees trained by Ulta.  It's unclear which, if any, metro Atlanta Target stores will receive the Ulta shop-in-shops but it's worth noting that there is a longstanding and popular Target store less than a mile and a half away from the planned Toco Hills store at 2400 North Druid Hills.  

The site plan for Toco Hills shopping center indicates that the remaining portion of the former Office Depot as well as all of the former Nearly New Shop will be divided into four spaces.  The spaces, which range from 2,420 to 4,010 square feet, are reportedly being shopped to restaurants, among other would-be tenants.  

Elsewhere in Toco Hills, Bezoria, a locally based Mediterranean quick serve eatery, seems to have abandoned plans to open in the former The Local Pizzaiolo spot.  The roughly 2,400 square foot space is marked as "available" on the site plan for the center, whereas it had previously indicated Bezoria was "coming soon."

Are you excited for the opening of Ulta Beauty at Toco Hills?  What other restaurants, retailers or services would you like to see open at Toco Hills?  What is your favorite/most frequented Toco Hills tenant?

Please share your thoughts below.