Friday, September 27, 2019

RIP Sunrise Mall Corpus Christi Texas 1981-March 2019 Update from my January 2019 visit

I visited the legendary Sunrise Mall just in time.
As of March 2019, the interior of Sunrise Mall was closed to the public. 

I last visited the mall in 2012 and a lot had changed since then.
Only 3 businesses inside were still open Factory Shoe Warehouse, Workforce Solutions, and War and Peace LTD which was in the final days. The second floor, center court, and the Wilcox Furniture corridor were closed off.   

Anchors of the center are Sears, Wilcox Furniture, Planet Fitness, Freedom Fitness, Burlington Coat Factory, and New Life Church. Sears which opened in 1974 is slated to close in December 2019.

These images were taken on 2 separate visits in January 2019.
Here is my video addition to the mall.


As you can see, the second floor was closed off to the public. Boards covering the top and bottom of the stairs and escalators prevented any one from getting up there.

This is the only business now left open inside of the mall. I am guessing that the entrance is now walled off from the rest of the mall.

Too bad the neon signs were not on, these looked really awesome.


The center court and Wilcox Furniture corridor were barricaded. There was at least one security guard on the premise so I was not going to enter.

This office recently had moved out of the mall.

Too bad this area was taped off.



The famous escalators that were part of a scene in the Legend of Billy Jean movie. The waterfall in between the escalators was shut off.



The Port food court sign, this also looked awesome when it was on.

This small extension of the mall looks strange compared to the rest of the mall. The mural is awesome though.



A view of the closed off second floor through the windows of Sears.

How the mall looks from the Sears entrance.

This looks like it may have been an Oshman's sporting goods previously.


Christmas spirit at War and Peace.


This was the busiest section of the mall with War and Peace and Factory Shoe Warehouse.

Pretzel World had recently closed as well.

More of the stunning center court.

Even though the trees were looking sad, this center court is vintage 1980's at its best.

This cookie place had been gone a long time, the menu photos were so faded.

A bar had recently closed up shop here and left the mall for greener pastures.

This service corridor had locked bathrooms. There are some signs leading you to this empty store to the left.

In the back of this empty store is the mall restroom. Yes just a small stall with no soap or TP. I had to step in and take a look, but I did not get a photo of the stall. 


More center court goodness.






Going back towards Sears.

This was the last store in the mall. It lasted until March 2019.
Sears will close in November 2019.

The mural in the corridor next to Sears. This hallway is much different than the rest of the mall. I believe it was added later to connect the Stein Mart to the mall.


These stickers on the entrance doors are awesome.

The Wilcox Furniture building has had some extensive renovations.

The sign is looking sad, I wonder if the missing panels fell off during Hurricane Harvey in 2017.


More signage on the mall property.

Gotta love the old school entrance.

This is the side of Mervyn's that is not occupied by Planet Fitness.

As you can see, Planet Fitness slightly modified the rest of the former Meryn's building.

Sears Auto Center is attached to the store.

Sears, Planet Fitness, and a mall entrance together. From this view, the mall does not look dead.

War and Peace was still open on my visit. The owner told me they were going to be there until January 15th.

The other side of the above sign was missing the Sunrise logo.

Sears

The mall entrance where the Workforce Solutions is located.

Burlington takes up one floor of the former Frost Brothers anchor.



New Life Church, this was the former Stein Mart.

Here are the photos from my second visit the next day.

At the mall entrance between Planet Fitness and Sears.

Only one set of doors was open.

This Academy had also left for greener pastures.

So many vintage store fronts in this mall. 



Sadly, the directory was long gone. Only old advertisements were left.




I really wanted to see the second floor, but I was not brave enough to make a run up here.

War and Peace had two store fronts and lots of items on display in this section of the mall.


This tree summed up how the business was going at the mall during the Christmas season.


Now for some more center court goodness.



Going towards the Burlington Coat Factory.

Water stains are visible all over the ceilings of the mall.



The front of Burlington.

Looking into the mall from the front of Burlington.

Yep, not going to try to get upstairs here either.

This beam was in poor condition. 

J Riggings sign visible.




The corridor that leads to the mall entrance between Wilcox Furniture and Planet Fitness.

The service corridor with the locked bathrooms.

The inside of the store with the only mall restroom left.

Better close-ups of the cookie place.


A close-up of Pretzel World.

One of the most awesome views to see in the mall.

A few more random shots throughout the mall.







Sad plastic flowers.

From this view the mall looks lively.


Skylight and glass reflection.

Former Mervyn's mall entrance, space now occupied by Planet Fitness.

The road signs along the highway from a different angle.

Sunset at the Sunrise Mall.

Farewell Sunrise Mall.

32 comments:

  1. Sunrise Mall is one of the most famous dead/dying malls in Texas. I'm glad you were able to check it out before it died for good. As far as dead malls go in Texas, perhaps only Highland Mall was more famous. The infamous post card and fake storefronts at the Mall of the Mainland put it in the conversation though.

    Sunrise Mall is one of the most bizarre mall stories I've come across as it was located essentially right across the street from it's biggest competitor, the older Padre Staples Mall/La Palmera. Although there was more distance between Memorial City Mall and Town & Country Mall as well as Sharpstown Mall and Westwood Mall, in all cases the older mall won out over the newer mall. It's interesting how history worked out. Like with Westwood Mall, I suspect this mall was built due to Sears not being able to get into the existing mall. One Sears decided to locate off the existing mall, I suppose a decision was made to build a mall around Sears. In some ways, Sunrise Mall feels a bit like the old Town & Country Mall.

    There's so much in these pictures which are a throwback to the 1980s. It's hard to believe this mall is the same age as Willowbrook Mall. They certainly have not aged the same. That wood paneling may very well be an old Oshman's. The stone that's around the wood paneling looks just like the old Oshman's at the various malls here in Houston. The design of that old Pretzel World is a real throwback. When's the last time anyone thought of J. Riggings?

    It's very strange that the bathroom is in an old store stall. It's quite sad that they didn't even have TP and soap. I suppose that might have been the biggest sign that the end was near even if one ignored all the vacancies.

    That Burlington Coat Factory seems quite vintage. It might be older than even the oldest Burlingtons in Houston, but I'm not sure. The Burlington near Willowbrook Mall, which is located in an old Home Depot, must be at least 2-3 years older. The Stein Mart at Sunrise was, I believe, an old HEB. I don't think the HEB was ever connected to the mall though. I can't think of too many enclosed malls in Texas which had grocery stores as anchors.

    Well, anyway, sunset has fallen on Sunrise Mall. With that, the dying mall scene in Texas has become that much more boring. Oh well, at least with the photos, we can relive the memories of Sunrise Mall. I will say that when this mall was in it's prime, it must have been a great place to shop. Any mall which had both a Montgomery Ward and Sears was bound to be a nice place to shop.

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    1. It was built very close indeed. There was a comment I read a while back that said the malls were planned to be connected at one point by a skywalk. I am not sure how true that was, but we have some malls here connected to office buildings by skywalk.

      This mall does have some similarities to Town and Country Mall. The shape of the mall is similar, the parking garages, and even the exterior of some of the anchors reminds me a bit of that mall. The original anchors in addition to Sears, were Frost Brothers and Joskes which were considered higher end department stores at the time. Town and Country was the higher end mall competing with nearby Memorial City Mall, yet another similarity.

      With the exception of a late 1980's expansion, the mall interior had not changed since it was built. The Legend of Billy Jean movie really gives this mall a legendary status, you can see just how good the mall looked in the 1980's by watching the movie.

      Burlington opened in the 1992 according to the Corpus Christi Caller-times. It has a unique store front with the shiny black and mirrored store front. It looked really cool when the sign was still on.

      I bet there are many retail artifacts around the mall. A lot of the stores on the second floor were covered up by drywall. I would love to see what is behind those walls after all of these years.

      The Stein Mart could very well have been the HEB. It is hard to tell since HEB had so many different types of stores over the years.

      The mall owners had a good opportunity a few years back to repurpose the mall with office tenants. They had several offices mixed in with mall tenants on my last visit in 2012, but they are all gone except for one.

      The Sears will be gone soon, but the Wilcox Furniture anchor still has some hints of the former Montgomery Ward store. I wonder if you can still see into the mall from the furniture place. Sears will be missed and officially signals the end of the old Sunrise Mall. More than likely the interior mall will sit vacant for a long time before it is inevitably demolished.

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  2. The former Stein Mart was indeed a HEB. It closed around 1990 when the store at Moore Plaza opened. Both it and the Sears predated the mall by a few years. It was not connected to the Mall until after Stein Mart moved in though.

    While it was before my time, I've heard that the mall formerly had a rooftop parking deck where the 2nd floor corridor is between the center court and the Sears. This was removed in the late 80's expansion, but what I think was one of the former ramps to it can be seen near Frost Bros./Burlington

    It is surprising how overmalled Corpus Christi was, though neither Parkdale Plaza or Cullen Mall provided much competition to Padre Staples or Sunrise. I'd imagine that if Dillard's hadn't built another store at Padre Staples to replace their original store, they would have moved to the Joske's at Sunrise. If that'd happened, we would probably be talking about the death of Padre Staples and the success of Sunrise today instead.

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    1. Thanks for the clarification of the setup at the mall. Padre Staples seems so small in comparison to Sunrise. It is just a straight shot from one end to the other with a partial second floor. The mall is listed at almost a million square feet, but it must include the exterior restaurants in that total. If Padre Staples is truly larger, it can't be by much.

      Here is a cool article I read while doing research about the mall for this article. https://www.caller.com/story/news/special-reports/building-our-future/throwback/2018/10/17/sunrise-mall-corpus-christi/1674269002/

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  3. Based on those prices, that cookie place has been out of business for a very long time.

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    1. Absolutely, it looked exactly the same but slightly less faded in 2012. I wonder if anyone on the blog remembers when it closed.

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    2. It closed sometime in the late 2000's. Was a Great American Cookie Company before then.

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  4. I should also mention that the Montgomery Ward also had an auto center but instead of it being in the parking lot of the mall like most locations, it was located across the street of the mall due to lack of space. Here's what it currently looks like on Google Maps but if you look at 2007 Street View you can kind of make out what it looked like as a Montgomery Ward auto center: https://goo.gl/maps/DuBokHyeLaEAp3wHA

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    1. Thanks for the link, they did a really good job of converting that old building into a successful new use. That is a strange place for an auto center, it is behind the property tucked away from the mall.

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  5. The Tide Dental was a Florsheim Shoe store and the place in the middle of Chelsea's Bar & Grill and the store with the only mall restroom was a Whataburger, the store that says "The Sunrise Room" was a James Avery Craftsman and right next to that was Benjamin's Surf & Skate (later moved to a strip mall across from sunrise) next to J. Riggings was Casual Corner and across from that was the old Ray's Mexican Restaurant (later moved downstairs, old one became Foot Locker I think) and Camelot Music, the place that says "Learn To Dance" was the old Aladdin's Castle arcade (before it moved upstairs) and next to that was a Zales Diamond store. I was also told that there was a Gap and Banana Republic in the mall at one point.

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    1. Thank you for sending over the info about the mall spaces. I never saw the mall when it was doing well, but I am very glad to have seen it at all.

      I am guessing now that the area where Pretzel World, Cookie Company, and Whataburger were at was the food court before the actual food court was built.

      Would you happen to know the name of the large empty space on the first floor headed towards Burlington?

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    2. The large empty space was an Oshman's Supersports USA store. It replaced the old Oshman's (the store with the wood paneling and stone around it next to Sears) sometime in the early 90's. The Workforce Solutions place across from the Supersports USA was Ray's Mexican Restaurant (already mentioned on another post by someone) and later became a Chinese restaurant that I can't remember the name of but I remember seeing it briefly during the late 90's-early 2000's.

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    3. Thank you for getting the name of that store for me. It definitely makes sense now, I remember the store by me had a similar color scheme in certain parts of the store. If that store had the neon cursive sign, it would have looked so awesome with that Burlington sign.

      The Workforce Solutions was still open in March when I last went to the mall. That corner of the mall was probably the worst spot for a restaurant.

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  6. Here's a Facebook page I found of someone who took pictures of the mall during it's final years: https://www.facebook.com/pg/SunriseMallDeadMall/photos/?ref=page_internal

    Here's what that Oshman's Supersports USA looked liked with some of the neon on: https://www.facebook.com/SunriseMallDeadMall/photos/a.346095992404362/347252235622071/?type=3&theater There's more pictures of this store on that Facebook page

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    1. Thanks for sending those links over. That Oshman's was definitely retro. I never saw the store with the neon on like that, it has always been dark in my visits.

      It is crazy that you could walk in there, flip on several light switches, and the neon would be back to life. This should be preserved and would be an awesome movie set for an 80's mall. It is a shame that ownership of the mall for years let the mall die off.

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    2. The old Oshman’s store in Sunrise looks like the Humble and Willowbrook locations, which were converted to Sports Authority stores before closing in 2016.

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    3. It certainly does, it has the same metal fixtures and indoor setup. I can't believe the Humble and Willowbrook stores were never updated. The photos of athletes in those stores were very dated.

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    4. The one in Sunrise never got converted into Sports Authority, I think it closed sometime in the early 2000's. That was the only Oshman's in the whole Coastal Bend area too.

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    5. Oshman's stores never had a chance when Sports Authority took over. Their expensive prices and dated stores were a losing business formula. We had a lot of stores that survived until the Sport Authority bankruptcy closed all Texas stores.

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  7. I recently picked up a subscription to a newspaper service and was able to find out LOTS of new info on more Sunrise Mall stores. J Riggings was indeed an original mall tenant when it opened and there was also a Video Connection across from the Frost Bros which later became McDuff Electronics once Tandy bought them out. I also found out there was a Wyatt's Cafeteria in the mall but I'm unsure where it was.

    Wilcox Furniture will be closing later this year which will bring the number of tenants to 5 now: https://www.caller.com/story/news/2021/03/23/after-68-years-wilcox-furniture-closing-heres-how-get-deal/4668532001/

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    1. McDuff would have been really awesome to see inside of Sunrise Mall. The dark tones of the mall would have really helped make the electronics pop out. I didn't shop at J Riggings back in the day, it wasn't really my style. Wyatt's could have been at the mall entrance where Mervyn's opened up. The Wyatt's chain closed right around the time the mall had the expansion, but that is only a guess.

      I got a handful of Wilcox Furniture photos, I wish I had gotten more. That store is a neon paradise, but a salesperson was following me for a good bit of my walkthrough so I didn't feel comfortable getting too many photos.

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    2. Hi South Texas Retail, was the name of the place before McDuff Video Connection or VideoConcepts? VideoConcepts was an electronics store chain owned by Eckerd that was later bought by Tandy along with McDuff. Here's some information about them, including photos, from the MallWalkers Blog. I could see Tandy converting some VideoConcepts stores into McDuffs.

      As Je says, these electronics stores looked pretty awesome in malls back in the day. The combination of neon and glitzy electronics really brightened up those dark malls. Of course, almost all of this is gone in modern times.

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    3. So the Video Connection was actually VideoConcepts (I get the two names mixed up sometimes). The mall also had a B Dalton and Waldenbooks (the former was an original tenant and the later opened in 1984) and here's something else you might've not known, the mall was originally called Airline Mall when it was just Sears and H-E-B there and the Sunrise name came as early as January 1978. The Joske's there was the first and last location in Corpus Christi as they had been trying to enter the area for a while. It's unfortunate that they had to chose this mall over Padre Staples for their first Corpus store though

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    4. Thanks for clarifying the name of the old VideoConcepts. Anonymous had written the above reply to your original comment.

      The hallway leading from Sears to that weird entrance must have been the original mall. That corridor is a lot different from the rest of the mall. I really liked the mural that was there for many years. I was not happy to see it defaced with some graffiti on my last visit to the open mall.

      A lot of malls had the 2 bookstores competing against each other back in the 1980's. It was certainly a great time to be a book fan back then. Sadly books and magazines are obsolete and continue to decline in popularity. Most of the major retailers have downsized their books and magazines to a small section towards the back of the store.

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    5. I saw that picture and it breaks my heart that someone did that because that was one of my favorite parts of the mall. It was created by an artist named Eric Penn in 1993 according to the Sunrise Mall article the Caller Times published on Sunrise Mall: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.caller.com%2Fstory%2Fnews%2Fspecial-reports%2Fbuilding-our-future%2Fthrowback%2F2018%2F10%2F17%2Fsunrise-mall-corpus-christi%2F1674269002%2F&psig=AOvVaw2DKVTGq6b2uRgILgtSYYbE&ust=1621738509504000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CA0QjhxqFwoTCNjUpvCk3PACFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD

      Also something else to note about Sears, it didn't open it's second level to the mall until the 1987 expansion and I'm guessing that the area that had the two lone displays might've been storefronts at one point. Regarding the Wyatt's Cafeteria I mentioned, I talked to my aunt who lives in Corpus about it and she says that it might've been where Mervyn's would later be so you could be right about that.

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    6. Thanks for sharing the additional information on Sunrise Mall. I didn't know about the Sears 2nd floor entrance not being a part of the mall originally. I guess that is why the elevator was located to the right of the mall entrances.

      A lot of people still want to visit this mall as a lot of the YouTube retail community hasn't been able to document the mall. Dan Bell was the only major deadmall YouTube creator that made it down there.

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    7. I think your coverage of it was much better anyway and I'm looking forward to the final post you have planned of this legendary mall

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    8. I certainly appreciate the props. I really wish I had found a way upstairs to see how that part of the mall looked just before the mall permanently closed.

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  8. As of July 2020: Burlington is still there but recently announced a few weeks ago that they will be closing/relocating to the former Stein Mart at Moore Plaza at end of this year or early 2022. Business still does good at Burlington though despite the mall's struggles, and it will do even better at Moore Plaza since they have so many major stores. Wilcox Furniture, another one of the mall anchors, closed a few months ago. The remaining anchors are only Freedom Fitness, Planet Fitness, and some church.

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    1. Thanks for the update. It is a strange coincidence that Burlington and Stein Mart both were tenants at Sunrise Mall. The dominos are really starting to fall at Sunrise Mall, the property is nearly abandoned now. It sounds like the days are numbered before the whole property is torn down. Maybe they will have an auction of stuff inside of the mall in the future to give everyone a chance to go inside one last time. You never know.

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    2. So now Freedom Fitness is taking over the old Sears: https://www.caller.com/story/news/2022/01/26/freedom-fitness-making-move-old-sears-sunrise-mall/9226248002/

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    3. They really are going head-to-head with the competition. Planet Fitness is practically right next door to them now. It would be awesome if they reopened the mall as a running track.

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