The former Sears at Town Center at Cobb is starting to again show signs of life. It is faint, buried in Cobb County paperwork, the usual swamp of case numbers, zoning codes, and site plan schedules. But it is there.
A 2026 Cobb County filing shows exterior redevelopment plans for the old Sears building under the project name “Town Center Mall Landscape & Hardscape Redevelopment.” The filing appears on the county’s site plan review schedule (case number SPR 2026 00009). The listed owner is Ernest West Village LLC. The zoning is PSC, or planned shopping center.
Cobb County paperwork rarely feels like an interesting comeback. This one does.
Sears opened at Town Center at Cobb in February 1986, back when the American mall was still the place to be. A time when a Saturday trip to Sears could mean a new washing machine, a socket set, some back to school clothes, or maybe a riding mower.
For more than 34 years, Sears filled one of Town Center’s major anchor spaces. It was big, familiar, and built like a department store from an era that believed retail could outlive everything.
It did not.
The store closed in August 2020. By then, it was the final Sears left in Georgia. The lights went out, the doors shut, and another piece of old mall America was left behind, too big to disappear but too valuable to leave untouched.
The former Sears property was never exactly like the rest of Town Center. Sears owned its own building and land, separate from the main mall owner. So while the core mall later found itself tangled in foreclosure, ownership changes, unpaid bills, and utility trouble, the Sears parcel had its own path.
Town Center’s main mall property has had a difficult few years. After Simon’s ownership, the core mall went through foreclosure and was later purchased by Kohan Retail Investment Group in 2023. The trouble did not stop there.
In January 2025, Georgia Power cut electricity to the core retail section of the mall over delinquent bills. Power came back, but the damage was done. Town Center was back in the news, and in March 2025, the mall avoided a courthouse auction after its ownership group paid nearly $1 million in property taxes and related debts. The mall stayed open, but the episode made it clear enough that the old mall was struggling.
The former Sears parcel, sitting apart from that mess, suddenly looked less like dead retail and more like an opportunity for something new.
Transformco, the parent company of Sears, held the former Town Center Sears property for several years after the store closed. In March 2025, the company sold the building and surrounding acreage for $9 million to Ernest West Village LLC.
That sale changed the story.
Ernest West Village LLC listed a registered agent at 1647 International Court in Norcross. That is the same address used by CFC of Georgia Inc., the parent company and operating entity for Nam Dae Mun Farmers Market.
Georgia Corporations Division records also connect Ernest West Village LLC and Kennesaw International Farmers Market LLC to an address at 400 Ernest West Barrett Parkway, Unit 1155, Kennesaw, Georgia 30144.
The corporate categories tell their own little story. Ernest West Village LLC is categorized under real estate and rental and leasing of nonresidential buildings. Kennesaw International Farmers Market LLC is categorized under retail trade, supermarkets and other grocery stores, excluding convenience stores.
This corporate structure could leave room for a larger format inside the former Sears box. The Kennesaw International Farmers Market LLC may be the anchor, but the scale of the building gives Ernest West Village LLC room for a large food court, restaurant spaces, or other retail tenants around the market.
None of that has been announced, and the current filings do not show the final layout. Still, for a roughly 171,000 square foot former department store, the possibility makes sense for groceries in the big box, with room for potential food and retail around the edges.
Nam Dae Mun Farmers Market currently has locations in Duluth, East Smyrna, Lilburn, Lawrenceville, Norcross, Stone Mountain, Morrow, and West Smyrna, with a Chamblee location coming soon. The possible Kennesaw location is not mentioned on the official locations page at this time.
So no, there is no confirmed opening date. No official Kennesaw listing. No public statement from the company saying the old Sears will become a Nam Dae Mun.
But the connections are hard to ignore.
The old Sears was built for people walking in from a mall corridor or a parking lot for appliances and jeans. A large international market would need a different setup, including improved entrances, cleaner pedestrian routes, parking adjustments, loading access, cart circulation, landscape changes, exterior signs, and a site plan that can handle grocery traffic instead of a department store model.
That may sound dull. It is dull.
It is also how dead retail comes back.
Before the grand opening photos, before the shopping carts, before the first customer walks out with a sack of rice the size of a small kid, there are site plans. There are review schedules. There are redevelopment filings with names like “Landscape & Hardscape Redevelopment,” a phrase so dry it could suck some of the summer humidity out of the air.
But in local real estate news, those dry filings matter.
What can be confirmed now is that Cobb County has a 2026 site plan review filing for exterior redevelopment at the former Sears building at Town Center at Cobb.
Still, after years of silence around the old Sears, the property is no longer sitting there like a retail corpse under fluorescent lights. The paperwork is moving. The ownership has changed. The site is under review.
For the Town Center area of Kennesaw, that counts as good news.
An updated look at the former Sears building in June of 2026:
[…] Cobb County has two locations, both in Smyrna. The East Smyrna store is at 2350 Spring Road SE, near Cumberland and Cobb Parkway. The West Smyrna store is at 2148 South Cobb Drive. There are rumors that a new Nam Dae Mun might be opening in Kennesaw. […]