Huntsville Texas; Dead Wal-Mart and West Hills Mall Update

Here are two articles from Huntsville Texas combined together. The first is an update on the West Hills Mall located at the corner of HWY 30 and Brazos Drive. The second is the former classic style Wal-Mart building located near the mall.

Palais Royal

JCPenney

The rest of the mall with part of the far southern anchor to the left of the photo. The entrance with the archway used to be a mall entrance. I am not sure what the two anchors on this side of the mall were.

Looking at the directory you can see the stores that have been closed up and changed to offices. Most of the stores on the directory are current, but the mall has not changed too much in the past five years. With an area population of around 30,000 and a large state university in Huntsville I wonder why this mall was not successful and has been mostly turned into offices. For a better view of the map http://www.westhillmall.com/mall_layout.php . The mall goes from 700 (Palais Royal) to 100 (JCPenney).

This is the only mall entrance that is not a department store.

I visited several JCPenneys over the past month that have the mirrored glass entrance.

Palais Royal is about the same size as the JCPenney anchor.

The mall is very small you can see the other side once you walk out of JCPenney. You could even possibly throw a baseball and hit the wall in front of Palais Royal because this mall is that small. The mall was originally much larger but most of the space has been closed off for office use.

The Cato has changed into a Factory Connection store. Cato moved down the street to a new retail development.

Part two dead Wal-Mart
This is a long closed Wal-mart that relocated over a decade ago down the highway to a supercenter location in Huntsville Texas. Most of these former Wal-Marts have been torn down or re-purposed. The former Wal-Mart was used for offices but the building still retains the same exterior minus the signage. This building is located just around the corner from the West Hills Mall. I would love to step into a 1980's vintage Wal-Mart Discount City with blue, orange, and brown colors, but I am sure that no more exist since the style of Wal-Mart has changed twice since the supercenter era. This building may soon become an Academy store since the offices moved to the nearby West Hills Mall.