Northwest Mall Update February 2010

February 2010; here are a few shots of some of the closed stores at the mall. The middle of the mall does not have many vacancies yet, but the closed Macy's wing is starting to lose stores. The first picture is the former Waldenbooks store in the Macy's wing.





Here are the two restaurants that have closed since December. The first picture was the Pizza place.




December Photos



Northwest Mall has lost more tenants since my last visit. The Pizza place that had been there for years has shut down; leaving a huge gap in the front of the food court. Five inline stores have closed, and Waldenbooks closed their location at the mall. Northwest Mall seems to be in trouble unless they can get an anchor to open up in the former Macy's spot soon. I would hate to see this mall close because Houston has lost many malls over the past ten years, but the mall as is will not survive much longer. A strong redevelopment plan needs to be put in place and a good start would be to lure a discount retailer into the old JCPenney spot like they did at Almeda. There is also an aging standalone Sears store nearby that would be an excellent replacement for the Macy's anchor if they wanted to move to the mall.

There are some pictures from my most recent visits in December 2009 and February 2010. Notice in the December pictures how slow the mall was at around 7pm on a Saturday night two weekends before Christmas. The mall was nearly empty the Monday after Valentine's day also.






The Northwest directories from different places in the mall.




Compare the pictures above from Northwest with the Almeda directory below. These two malls are nearly identical and they were created by the same developer.



The doors to the Macy's are still closed up, but the signs still remain on the building.