Governor’s Square Mall is one of the more popular places for people to shop in Tallahassee. The mall is located on Apalachee Parkway and is the premier shopping outlet in the community. The mall offers more than 100 stores and consists of two-floor levels. Although the place attracts many people throughout the day, it has become a burden for some students.
“Compared to the malls in Miami it really doesn’t have the variety it needs,” said senior pre-physical therapy major and Miami native Raniya Mims.
One of the biggest complaints about shopping in Tallahassee is that there aren’t any big shopping outlets outside of Governor’s Square Mall, so many students choose to either shop online or travel to nearby cities to get a better shopping experience.
“I haven’t consistently shopped there in a while,” said senior business administration major Christopher Williams. “Of course you eventually can find something to wear in there when you don’t feel like traveling or going online, but it feels forced most of the time,” he added.
While there are other shopping centers such as The Centre of Tallahassee, they don’t provide the popular name brands that Governor’s Square does. This leaves students in a situation where they just have to put up with the lack of variety – or go out of town. The mall has big-name stores such as Jimmy Jazz, DTLR, Pink, and Forever 21 but they are still missing a number of stores that are popular in today’s culture.
“I don’t like it because it doesn’t have enough stores, when I got up here I thought the mall would be better since it’s in a college town,” said freshman business administration major Emily Paul.
Tallahassee is often referred to as a college town because it is home to Florida A&M University, Florida State, and Tallahassee Community College. Students come from different backgrounds and places in the country that may have better quality malls or shopping centers. This leads to comparisons to what they were accustomed to before moving to Tallahassee.
Senior political science student Jarrett Hicks explained how Governor’s Square reminds him of a mall in his hometown of Jacksonville.
“I would compare Governor’s Square to the Regency Mall in Jacksonville in terms of quality because they both don’t really have anything and most of the time you’ll come out dressed similar to the manikins and you’ll see a lot of people wearing the same thing you just bought,” he said.