Backlinks - Linking to new domain

[FullMedia90]

Hello Moz community!

My established client recently franchised their business by adding a metro area location. We have thousands of back links built to the corporate website, a lot of which have anchor text that are geo-targeted to the new metro area website. We still find the corporate website important, but would rather focus our efforts now on the newly franchised location.

Does anyone have experience with successfully having old links changed to a new domain and if so how? When changing directory listings, such as everything on get listed, is it better do do slowly or as much at once as possible?

Any recommendations or information would be appreciated!

Thanks!