Sharpstown Mall Change on the Horizon + update on Westheimer Square

Check out my update on the Westheimer Square shopping center and this update on Sharpstown Mall.




There is change in the air at Sharpstown Mall. The owners are aggressively filling the nearly empty food court with new restaurants. There are four outlets with signs advertising new restaurants coming soon and there is one new restaurant that opened next to the formerly only restaurant in the food court. There are also a couple of new tenants on the first floor since our last visit. An improved food court will help to attract new business to the mall, and this is a step in the right direction. If they can get the empty Macy's building filled or demolished; the mall will really improve. I think that it would be in Sears best interest to swap their land with Macy's and move the store from the Southwest Corporate Center to the mall. Then the corporate center could expand into the Sears site and the development would be complete. The former JCPenney site is much harder to fill and would be better off demolished since the store has been empty for over a decade. I am excited because this mall and the nearly dead Almeda Mall are potentially rebounding. I need to take a trip to the Northwest and San Jacinto Malls to see if those malls are rebounding as well.

Pictures from 10/14/2009

Belle Promenade Mall at Night 1999

Here are my videos of Belle Promenade Mall taken at night in May of 1999. The first video is Dillard's just after the store closed. The second video is the former Picadilly entrance and JCPenney after the store closed. Note JCPenney still had the lights on after the store was empty. The United Artist Cinema is in the JCPenney video as well; the cinema lasted a year after this video was taken. Please excuse the focus; the camera did not have a manual focus setting to prevent the camera from losing focus at night.

This is a list of some of the stores that graced the mall. JCPenney, DH Holmes (Dillard's), Champs, Kay Bee Toys, Claire's, Bourbon Street Candy Store, GNC, Eckerd's, Picadilly Cafeteria, Spencer's, Dollar Tree, Waldenbooks, B Dalton Books, Things Remembered, Sbarro's Pizza, Chik Fil A, Fun Arcade, and the United Artists Cinema. The Fun Arcade was in the center court and had entrances that led to the food court and the center court of the mall. The Fun Arcade later moved outside of the mall. I think the arcade moved in the renovation in 1993 to make way for the carousel, but I am not 100% sure on that. The renovation was when the food court had the raised seating area removed. There were so many stores that were in this mall over the years, but I can only remember these. I have another video of me and my brother at the mall that will not be uploaded; in 1986 when our parents took us to get a child identification video. The video shows very little of the mall and it is very embarrassing since I was eight years old at the time.

Here is a not to scale basic layout of the mall.

Gulfgate Shopping City

Welcome to the Gulfgate Shopping City. Originally opened in the mid 1950's at the intersection of what is now I-45 and I-610. This center was originally constructed as an open air mall with four anchors; the mall was later enclosed. This mall was very popular for many years, but declined in the early 1990's. One of the reasons for the mall's decline and eventual demise are the numerous amount of malls in southeast Houston. Along a 25 mile stretch of I-45 south there is Gulfgate, Almeda, Baybrook, and Mall of the Mainland. Throw in Pasadena Town Square and the Galleria nearby and this small mall could not compete. The mall was not updated much after the 1980's and had lost two anchors that were never refilled. I only remember Service Merchandise and Dillard's as being open in the 1990's there. There was also a small cinema that was accessible from a footbridge over I-610 that was part of the mall. I visited this mall in 2000 just before it was shut down completely. At this point all of the anchors were closed and only a small section of the mall still had stores in business. Outside of this area a foot locker was all by itself in an empty corridor. Strangely, the hallways were completely open in the empty sections and they made no effort in closing them off. I should have brought a camera with me since the mall is now completely gone. There are many historical photos of this mall available online. Check out the following link for an overview of the site before the mall was enclosed http://www.texasfreeway.com/Houston/historic/photos/images/i45_i610s_undated.jpg . The line of stores from HEB to Anna's Linen's were the first to open in 2004 and the Best Buy section opened in 2008. There is also a Lowe's across the street that is included in the development, but it was not in the original mall footprint. The site is bustling with activity and the new stores do well here. I still wish that they could have revamped the mall because the site is one of the best and most accessible in central Houston.

Here are some of the signs around the shopping center. The two tall signs are updated versions of the original mall signs. The original signs had pink and blue neon and read Gulfgate Shopping City. The bridge in the last picture went to the cinema which has been replaced by a bus terminal.






Here are photos of the new development that has been built over the former mall site.

Welcome back to Almeda Mall

Almeda Mall has come back in a big way. Macy's and Burlington are now open and the mall was much busier today than I have seen it for a while. Great news for this once declining area of Houston.




Macy's has re opened and the store has been completely rebuilt. The new design is very similar to the Macy's at Deerbrook Mall that was re built after Hurricane Ike. Macy's invested a ton of money into this store, so they intend to stay.



Burlington is now open; the layout of the store is very strange. They took up a little more than 1/2 of the first floor of the old JCPenney and they only re opened one exit door facing I-45. They also only opened up half of the old entrance to leave room for another store to take the remaining space available in the old building. I am very surprised that Burlington did not take all of the space available like they did in Sharpstown Mall.




This is a photo of the corridor outside of Burlington. Steve and Barry's was located on the left of this picture.



Burlington only took up a little more than a quarter of the old JCPenney building. Here is a labelscar from the former catalog entrance.



As a bonus.
The boards have been removed from the old Circuit City and the lights are on again. There are no signs advertising the new development yet.

Prien Lake Mall Lake Charles Louisiana

Welcome to Prien Lake Mall



Prien Lake Mall opened in 1972 and it is owned by Simon Malls. I am not sure of the original anchors since there is very little information available online for this mall. In the mid 1990's JCPenney, Montgomery Ward, and the White House were the anchors. The mall was nearly doubled in size in the late 1990's and added Sears (moved from downtown Lake Charles) and Dillard's. The new anchors are much larger than the older anchors and both are two stories tall. Montgomery Ward closed with the rest of the chain in 2001, and the site was completely remodeled and replaced by Foley's a couple years later. Foley's also opened a home store in front of the mall. Foley's was re branded as Macy's and closed shortly thereafter. Now Kohl's has remodeled half of the former Macy's and is set to open later this month. The White House closed and was replaced by a Cinemark Theater. The mall is the only one in the Lake Charles metro area and does very well. The Simon website shows an old picture of Prien Lake Mall with a Kay Bee Toy Outlet in the middle of the photo.

Here is the directory of this simple mall. The entire left or west half of the mall was added on in the late 1990's.


This half of the former Macy's is still waiting redevelopment. There are several labelscars on this former anchor.



At this mall Sam Goody still lives! This store is located in front of the new Kohl's.



Here are some interior photos from my phone camera. The Aladdin's Castle is closed but the 1980's era neon is still on for now.

Town and Country Mall: City Centre at Town and Country

Welcome to City Centre at Town and Country formerly known as Town and Country Mall.

Opened in 1983 and closed June 30, 2004 this was the only completely three story mall in the Houston area and one of my favorites. The mall was located on Beltway 8 near the I-10 interchange. Town and Country Mall was built a mile away from Memorial City Mall to compete as a luxury high end mall. Shortly after the mall opened; both of the freeways nearby began lengthy reconstruction. The mall was very hard to get to and shoppers went elsewhere because of the traffic. The mall began to decline and never recovered from this setback. The anchors were Neiman Marcus (closed 2005), Joske's later Dillard's (closed 2003), JCPenney (closed 2001), and Marshal Fields later Saks Fifth Avenue (closed 2000) were the anchors at this center. I remember going to this mall in the early 1990's with my family a few times and the mall was not crowded at all. The mall at this time did not have many stores on the third level except for the Tilt arcade. All of the anchors had three level access except JCPenney; the third level near JCPenney had a bunch of seats but no restaurants open even in my first visits there. Another uniqueness about the JCPenney was that it was designed exactly the same on the inside as the Belle Promenade JCPenney in Marrero Louisiana. Joske's was bought out by Dillard's and changed over. Dillard's had expanded the store across a significant portion of the third level of the mall. The Saks Fifth Avenue anchor opened as a Marshal Fields and shut down, but was quickly replaced by Saks. Neiman Marcus was a typical store with a clearance center on the third floor. The mall did not have a food court but there were a few fast food outlets on the first and second floors near the center of the mall. Upon my return to Houston in 1999; this mall had suffered tremendously. The mall had roughly 25% of the in line stores in business and the third floor was empty except for a few offices and Tilt. We went to this mall on Black Friday in 2000 and most of the clerks we talked to were making jokes about how dead the mall was. They also were talking about the mall probably closing soon and being demolished. Within three years of our visit; three of the anchors had announced plans to close or just shut down with no notice (Saks). Memorial City Mall expanded and added more space to their mall taking away most of the customer bas of Town and Country. The mall was bought in 2003 with plans to convert the space to other uses, and a renovation began. In late 2003 I took my wife to Town and Country to show her how slow it was. We walked around the mall and by around 8pm that weekday; we noticed that we were the only people left in the mall. We tried to leave but all of the doors were locked. We finally found a janitor and he let us out. My wife was very pregnant at this point, so our misfortune did not please her one bit. The renovation stopped shortly thereafter and then plans of demolishing the mall came out and the mall tenants were given a two month notice to leave. We went to the mall during the last month in business and in the former JCPenney building a company was having an open auction, so I got to check out the store one more time before it was demolished. The mall was down to around ten stores. The mall closed in the summer of 2004 and was demolished while the Neiman Marcus stayed open. Neiman Marcus signed a lease for fifteen years to stay, but closed before the redevelopment of the property began. The Neiman Marcus building was demolished and it is now a Studio Movie Grill. I guess they were able to unload their lease for a hefty price because they have not returned to that location. The parking garages were left intact from the mall but the entire structure has been replaced by a mixed use development called City Centre that opened in 2008. Town homes have been built on top of what was the JCPenney and a lifestyle center was built on the rest of the property. There is also a high rise condo building on the edge of the property facing Beltway 8. The new development is very nice and upscale just as the mall was when it opened, but the new project will have much greater success.

Behind the blanket is the red neon sign from the old mall; you can see the outline of the old logo. One of the parking garages also had the same red neon sign.



Here is a rudimentary diagram of the layout of this mall; that is not to scale. (Don't laugh!)



This is the one and only picture that I took of the mall just before it was demolished in 2005. This was the entrance from the Beltway to Dillard's; the former Dillard's is to the right.



The three parking garages are all that remains of the former mall. Each garage was attached to the mall on each of the three levels, so this mall was huge.



These fountains in the center of the complex are a huge improvement over what was here before.




Here are some more pictures of the City Centre development.

Westwood Mall: Southwest Corporate Center

Welcome to the Southwest Corporate Center formerly known as Westwood Mall.



Anchored by Sears, a small movie theatre, and Dillards; this two story mall did not last very long. It opened in the mid 1970's and closed at the end of the 1990's. The mall was built two freeway exits southwest of the Sharpstown Center to cater to the growing population of the area. The mall was renovated once in the late 1980's also. Foley's at one point was in talks to move their Sharpstown location to Westwood in the mid 1990's, but that never panned out. The mall began to rapidly decline when the First Colony Mall in Sugarland opened in the mid 1990's. A shooting at the Wyatt's cafeteria in 1993 did not help the image of the mall and may have been another contributing factor to the declining sales at the mall. The death knell for the mall was the closure of Dillard's in 1997. The few remaining mall tenants were given the option to leave and break their leases. Sears was left as the lone anchor tenant while the rest of the property was redeveloped. I never went to the mall when it was open and there is not much information available online about the mall history; the Houston Chronicle archives helped to create this article. Today the mall has been turned into offices called the Southwest Corporate Center with Sears still attached and open for business. The entire mall including the Dillard's was gutted out and remodeled to this design. The new development has had three names since being re-positioned as an office complex. The center went from Westwood Technology Center, to Southwest Technology Center, and now Southwest Corporate Center. This has been a great example of mall re-use but this model will not work everywhere. If anyone of my readers has any other information please let me know.




Sears is the only retail outlet available at the former mall. Sears owns its own building and opened before the mall did. Maybe the Sears would consider relocating to the Sharpstown Mall if they did not own that site.



This was the former Dillard's at the mall. This is as close as I could get without a parking pass.



Here are a few shots of the mall. The pictures are not easy to get since most of the former mall complex has been fenced off for private parking.





From this next view it looks as if this part of the mall had a second floor entrance; Dillard's might have had a second floor entrance as well. Once again; this site is very hard to get pictures of due to the gates around most of the complex.

Northline Commons: Formerly Northline Mall

Northline Commons is the cookie cutter shopping complex that has replaced the dead Northline Mall. This article is an update to my previous Northline Mall post. Several of the stores are carryovers from the mall such as Palais Royal, Foot Locker, Marlon's, WaMu, and CiCi's Pizza. The center still has a small section of parking lot from the Montgomery Ward with the old style parking lot lights left, but that is the only remnant of the mall that was there. This center is doing well and may beat out the redevelopment at Gulfgate with more available land for development.

Sharpstown Mall Update August 28, 2009

I had not been in this mall since my last update at the beginning of the summer. The mall has lost a couple of retail tenants and opened up the new ice cream shop on the outskirts of the food court. I did not notice any new retail tenants since my last visit. Some signs have been removed from the closed stores but many still remain. The former Finger's mall entrance has been unboarded, so there may be a new tenant there soon. The directories have been updated as well. There was a good crowd here on this Friday afternoon and the upper center court was really busy with a 97.9 radio station promotion at the Foot Locker. The jewelry stores in the center court were also busy today. Nearly all of the empty store spaces now have signs advertising that the space is available. The former Circuit City store across the street is being renovated to become a large thrift store, so the area may be on the verge of a small rebound that the mall can benefit from.

All of the directories have been updated.




Palais Royal and the center court






More pictures from the former cinema.





The food court is still mostly empty, but there is a new ice cream outlet called Miigloo in the first picture.

Houston Center

Welcome to the Houston Center. This mall is situated in between the Houston Center buildings and has connections to the neighboring office towers. The mall does brisk lunch business and contains a huge food court. There is also a quizno's on the opposite side of the mall from the food court. This mall was built in the 1980's as an upscale mall called The Park Shops. Many of the high end stores closed and the mall has struggled as a retail destination, but the restaurants do very well. Jos A. Bank, Waldenbook's, Hallmark, Dress Barn, Radio Shack, and various downtown related businesses are the only retail outlets here. The mall also has access to the underground tunnel system of Houston. The mall does not have any true anchors unless you count the Macy's a few blocks away connected by the tunnel. The mall was renovated in 2006 and the name was changed to Houston Center. The mall also opened up some stores on the outside of the mall. When the 2003 Superbowl was held in Houston my wife and I saw Mike Ditka here at the mall doing a live ESPN broadcast on the patio (see photo #2). Security was heavy, so we did not get an autograph. The patio used to have a view of the convention center, but now there is a skyscraper blocking the view. With the Houston Pavilion Center only three blocks away; this mall will have some serious competition. For now they co-exist; the Houston Center is busy in the day, and The Pavilions is going for the night traffic.
The Houston Center is nothing special, but functions as a great place to grab a meal in the day.



A directory view


Here are a couple of crappy indoor photos. I will take more next time when I am without my kids.