West Hill Mall is in the town of Huntsville Texas; famous for Sam Houston State University and a huge statue of Sam Houston. Many of the state correctional facilities are here as well. For a city of around 30,000 people a mall should do fairly well since the nearest mall is over 45 minutes to the south in the Woodlands suburb of Houston. This is not the case for West Hill Mall; the mall only has closed off over 2/3 of the retail space for government offices and there are only a handful of stores left. A couple of the stores still have not updated their storefronts from the late 1980's to early 1990's and the mall seems to be very quiet. I wish I could have seen this mall in the prime years when the whole building was open. The design of this mall is very similar to the Deauville malls that were built in the Houston area in the 1980's that have vanished or have been re-purposed like the one in Kingwood that is now a hospital. You can see all the way across the mall from both anchor entrances since the mall space has been reduced.
We start our tour of the mall from the Palais Royal entrance.
The mall stops here; less than a 1/3 of the mall is still used for retail; the rest of the mall space has been taken over by the State of Texas for various offices.
These next two photos are from the same spot, but different angles. Just past the Cato store is the JCPenney entrance.
The next three pictures are taken from the middle of the mall; which is just a few steps away from the entrance to Palais Royal.
I tried to get a good photo of the mall map, but there was a nearby security guard (not pictured), so I had to be discreet. The two anchor stores on the left of the map are the JCPenney and Palais Royal, so you can see how much of the mall is closed off.
This is the view as you enter the mall from JCPenney; you can see the other end of the mall from this view (look above the trashcan). As you can see there are some 1980's style storefronts still intact here.
Gotta love the mirrored glass JCPenney entrances.
This is the only entry to the mall that does not go through an anchor.
The back of the mall is very similar to the back of a regular shopping center.
The mall has tons of vegetation covering the building, so it is very hard to get far away shots. Pictured here is the wing used by the State of Texas DPS and other offices.
This is the only non-anchor entrance to the mall shops.
One of the former anchor spots (does anyone have info on the former anchors)
Palais Royal
JCPenney; very small maybe around 30,000 sq feet.
I am going to take a break on this blog until after the new year just like last year. I will have some great new articles including an article on retail for an entire section of suburban Houston. Once again thanks for reading and participating in my blog and keep the comments coming as I will still be checking this site often.
