Katy Mills is the newest enclosed mall in the Houston metro area (opened in 1999). It is one of the largest malls in Houston, and the mall is loaded with many outlet stores as well as traditional mall stores. The mall is located in Katy a suburb 30 miles west from the center of Houston. The mall was built before most of the development in that area and was designed to be a tourist destination. Since the mall opened; the area around the mall has seen significant development. The Mills company was taken over by Simon, but the mall has seen little change since the mall opened. The mall is booming in most areas, but there are a few sections of the mall where spaces have sat empty for a while. Many of the Mills malls were built too big for their trade area which has led to these areas of empty space in several of the Mills malls including Katy. Katy Mills does not have any traditional anchors for the center and has mostly discount or big box anchors. The anchors are Outdoor World, Marshalls, Neiman Marcus Clearance, Saks off 5th Clearance, Books A Million, AMC 20, Bed Bath and Beyond, Burlington, Sun and Ski Sports, and Old Navy. Steve and Barry's and Circuit City were anchors that have since closed.
The AMC 20 anchor
Some night shots of the exterior of the mall.
The mall maps
The food court is the size of a football field, but currently only a handful of restaurants are open.
The FYE was one of the largest I have been to and opened under a different name. This whole section of the mall was themed for entertainment but only an arcade and cinema are left. There were several entertainment businesses in this section of the mall when it opened.
The wing of the movie theater is covered in rotating pattern neon lighting; at night it looks really cool.
Another entrance
This anchor was most recently a Steve and Barrys
A few of the different designs found in the mall on the backside of the mall near Bed Bath and Beyond.
Sun & Ski Sports anchor
Burlington Coat Anchor
Outdoor world anchor
More of the designs near the Bed Bath and Beyond anchor.
This is the kind of photo that dead malls will put up over a closed store, Katy Mills is very much alive though. We are back in the entertainment section of the mall here.
More designs; this is leading towards the Rainforest Cafe.
This is the wing between Outdoor World and Sun & Ski Sports.
More from the Outdoor World Wing.
Just past the Outdoor World Wing; this is the fashion wing with most designer labels located here.
Books a Million anchor
Just past the food court where most of the designer shoe stores are.
Thanks for visiting
It looks like a Ross Dress for Less will open at Katy Mills in April 2014. Also, Which Way Pizza, Segway, and a Jumpstreet indoor trampoline park will open up in the fall. Also, here is a video for the Katy Mills Mall from when the mall opened. It may be a generic Mills commercial, but I don't know. IMO, I find this mall to be an odd, but not particularly interesting mall. But, hey, at least they'll have Ross. It's a bit of a shame that Homart/Sears did not build a mall in the Katy Grand Parkway area as was rumored back in the 1980s because I think that they would have built a more solid (albeit more traditional) mall. We'll see though. Further construction of the Grand Parkway may give this mall a boost.
ReplyDeleteKaty Mills is still doing well and the place is usually packed on weekends. The edges of the mall near the AMC and the Outdoor World have some empty space. The Ross is probably going into the former Steve and Barrys and the trampoline park probably near the AMC. That leaves the pizza place, I have no clue where that is going in at. The Grand Parkway is opening soon from 290 to I-10 so that should help. Katy Mills shares some outlet stores with the Premium Outlets on 290. The Grand Parkway will open right by both of these centers but I think Katy Mills has two advantages. One advantage is more nearby population and two the larger mall is indoors.
DeleteMay I see the video of it?
DeleteAnonymous not sure what video you are referring to.
DeleteThe old Mills commercial the other "Anonymous" referred to. Reply to him about that video. Maybe ask him so he could send us the link to the file. Thanks!
DeleteHere is the link https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7vxhe#.UcUD-b1OgQ8
DeleteThe Ross opening may not be exciting news for Katy Mills, but the recent news of H&M coming to Katy Mills will probably generate a lot of interest. I don't know if this opening will generate the buzz that was around when H&M opened at the Baybrook and Willowbrook Malls, but it should be big news. I can't say that this news will make me any more interested in visiting the mall than the Ross news did, but I'm sure some in the Katy area will be excited about this.
ReplyDeleteH & M has been a highly sought after retailer recently. I am not familiar with the stores yet. Do you know if the construction of the new Nordstrom has begun yet?
DeleteH&M is a clothing chain from Sweden that has had stores in the US for some time, but they did not have stores here in Houston until recently. Many fashionistas were upset that we did not have an H&M store and then were very excited when they opened at Baybrook and Willowbrook Malls. H&M is considered to have affordable fashion, but I had a friend from Milan, Italy who followed the fashion industry in Milan closely and she scoffed at the idea that H&M was fashionable. She considered H&M to be nothing more than a European version of Old Navy and considered clothes from her beloved Almeda Mall to be more fashionable. Nevertheless, fashion is relative I guess and if people here find H&M stuff to be fashionable, then I guess it is here even if it isn't all that fashionable by international standards.
ReplyDeleteAs for a Nordstrom construction update, I guess it depends on which location you are talking about. I don't know what is going on with the Baybrook Mall and Memorial City Mall area Nordstrom Rack stores. I had an update link posted recently on The Woodlands Mall Sears closing part 3 post about The Woodlands Mall Nordstrom. As for the Willowbrook Mall Rack location, it's interesting that you ask that today because I went to the Willowbrook Sears last night. I didn't get a good look at the former Joske's anchor pad since it was dark, but I did see that the area was fenced off and it looked like some work was started (though I can't say that with 100% accuracy). I'll try to get a better assessment of things on my next visit to the mall, but I can't really say when that will be.
A company waiting to put a location in Houston, sounds familiar. I guess better late than never. I was looking to find out about the Willowbrook location, I had forgotten about the other stores. I am struggling to find the time to read up on recent retail news, the Mall of the Mainland article took a bunch of time to organize and post, lol.
DeleteMy local mall is Gurnee Mills which was built by the same company and I'm not sure how any of these mills malls thrived. The stores aren't exciting and are mostly strip mall stores. Also, they are way too big, Gurnee Mills has 13 anchors and 2 Food Courts which is not necessary for a mall. And Simon is doing a terrible job at them, I've never seen so many independent shops in a mall as Gurnee Mills and the mall is doing well. And the independent shops are terrible. I was in one of the stores with my mom and I felt like the manager was secretly watching me and my mom so we just left. It's basically means Simon has no care in there malls, know that and doesn't want anyone else to notice. I really hope Simon actually files for bankruptcy so someone better can operate these malls.
ReplyDeleteKaty Mills also has a bunch of independent shops and a few vacancies near Bass Pro. That part of the mall has an empty anchor pad that was never developed and that part of the mall has always struggled even in the beginning. The rest of the mall has done well with a few vacancies here and there but nothing major.
DeleteThanks, je! This video was the best! If you have any other content relating to the mall, please post anything here. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
ReplyDeleteI really wish that I had gotten better photos of the mall before the remodel. The interior of the mall is so plain and boring now. I did find these photos from opening day which are really nice from 1999. https://houstonhistoricretail.com/2017/12/08/katy-mills-opening-day/
DeleteIf I come across anything else I will post it here.
I don't think you can find them there. Find them here: alienryderflex.com/katy_mills_opening/katy_mills_opening_01.html
ReplyDeleteHAPPY BIRTHDAY KATY MILLS MALL! Oct. 28, 2020
Copy this link and check it out! https://web.archive.org/web/20030923040526fw_/http://www.katymills.com/katy.pdf
ReplyDeleteI've heard that Katy Mills turned 21 today. Wanna see this? https://web.archive.org/web/20030622052615/http://www.katymills.com/index2.html
I found these photos:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.jkdesigngroup.com/katyphotos.htm
https://web.archive.org/web/20030622052615/http://www.katymills.com/index2.html
http://www.callisonrtkl.com/_archives/docs/brochures/RTKL_ID8.pdf
https://www.gregrosedesign.com/#/176872/2041877/
Thanks for sending over the links. The Wayback Machine link has the photo gallery archived as well with some cool photos.
ReplyDeletethank you for these wonderful pictures of what katy mills used to be like, i really do miss the old interior of the mall but i can see why they needed to change, and i really do like how it's one of those rare malls that still has an arcade inside, but the mall has been going somewhat downhill for quite some time now, first we lost sbarro pizza and got replaced with Villa which isn't very good, then we lost radioshack, which was my favorite store in the mall, and then we lost Bed Bath & Beyond, which was my second favorite store in the mall, one of my best memories of the mall was that one time sony had a booth for a demo of there brand new playstation move back in 2010
ReplyDeleteKaty Mills always seems to have a few dead spots within the mall. The corridor between Bass Pro and Sun and Ski Sports has always struggled. Same with the area of the mall near AMC, stores have come and gone with mostly generic replacements in those sections of the mall.
DeleteUp until a couple of years ago, Memorial City Mall had a Nintendo display every holiday season for about 5 years that reminded me of the old school booths.
I don’t remember a PlayStation move store in Katy Mills, but I remember Nintendo got mad at PlayStation for ripping of the Wii Controller. This caused the booth to be demolished.
DeleteOkay, I know, that was a joke, but hear me out.
I found even more photos of what Katy Mills used to look like. I’ll send some pictures in another post. P.S. those aren’t my pictures.
Microsoft and Sony both had their version of the Wii remote, but all three consoles were just going off of a gimmick. With the exception of the Wii Sports and Wii Play games, I did not see anything worthwhile from Nintendo that needed to be used with the Wii Remote. For example, the recent remakes of Zelda Twilight Princess and Mario Galaxy were made without the Wii controller functions. I did get a bit of exercise from the Wii early on, but the Wii Sports and Wii Play games were very short party games.
DeleteI certainly appreciate the links. Pretty much the only Mills Malls that have not been bleached by Simon are the dead ones like Pittsburgh Mills, Cincinnati Mills, and St. Louis Mills. I really miss the look of the 1999 version of Katy Mills, it was a site to see.
I just discovered an old photo of Katy Mills on Flickr in 2010 and yet, I can dare say that there actually was! I saw it was in the Food Court, especially near Carvel!
DeleteDoes anyone remember the existence of a Juicy Couture store there? I could've sworn there was one near or next to XXI Forever.
ReplyDeleteIf anyone can help with this question, comment below please.
DeleteThere actually was!
DeleteThanks anonymous!
DeleteLiz Claiborne/Kate Spade. I'm not sure what the other end of the store was. Now, I know, It's not Bennetton Sportsystem. It existed from 1999-2006, but I couldn't find it in a directory of some kind because it wasn't listed. I think it was the former location for Marshalls, but Marshalls existed around the time the directory which did not have Bennetton Sportsystem was released. I found some sources that I found on the web which contain the store. They were images of the mall which I found. Both of them are from the mall which can be found on Yelp, and several of those images I found in an inappropriate blog. No wonder Katy Mills put Bennetton when I didn't see it anywhere. If any of you guys out there have been to the mall on opening day or from 1999-2005 and if you have taken any photos, please send me links to them, whether they'd be on iCloud or Google Drive. But for now, I consider this lost media. I may soon create a page like this in the lost media wiki.
ReplyDeleteWhat email address would our readers send the links to?
DeleteMexico City had several Bennetton locations, I haven't seen any dedicated Bennetton stores here in Texas in years. Thanks for the comment.
I am not old enough to tell you, but I am just leaving this comment here so people can reply to this comment if they have any photos of Katy Mills opening day. If they do, they must create links to these photos, wither they’re on iCloud, Google Drive or OneDrive. They shall not send these photos to my email. They shall send it to this comment as a reply. I am hoping in the future I can get access to these photos so that I can see what Katy Mills looked like. In the meantime, take a look at the new photos I found!
Deletehttps://web.archive.org/web/20030810200339/http://egeeshop.com/US_Factory_Outlets/TX/Katy-Mills1TX.jpg
https://web.archive.org/web/20070124155802/http://www.katymills.com:80/stellent01/groups/public/@mallkaty/documents/webassets/katy_about_int.jpg
https://web.archive.org/web/20060112224302/http://www.katymills.com:80/stellent01/groups/public/@mallkaty/documents/webassets/katy_entertain_ext.jpg
https://web.archive.org/web/20070124155835/http://www.katymills.com:80/stellent01/groups/public/@mallkaty/documents/webassets/katy_hotbuys_int.jpg
https://web.archive.org/web/20070110124407/http://www.katymills.com:80/stellent01/groups/public/@mallkaty/documents/webassets/katy_register_int.jpg
I will never understand the reason why Simon took away the old look of this mall. Some parts should have never been renovated to give the mall a mixed color scheme. I get that things needed to be spruced up, but why did they just bleach the whole mall. Thank you so much for sharing the links with us.
DeleteHey je, May you please post the photos I sent you to a separate blog post? Also, tell me your thoughts on these cool pictures!
DeleteP.S. The JK Design website no longer has these pictures, but I saved a copy for myself: https://web.archive.org/web/20101230015238/http://www.jkdesigngroup.com/katyphotos.htm
I added the link to my latest update post to the blog. Thanks for sending it over.
DeleteThose photos were some of the best you can find from the early days of the mall. I wish I had some more from that era to add to the pile.
DeleteOkay, So lately I’ve done further investigations about the Benetton Sportsystem in Katy Mills. I know, this statement is obvious, but when a store has been removed from a directory, it could be marked as closed. I wasn’t able to find a 1999 directory of Katy Mills until these days when I discovered that Benetton was once there. Benetton actually existed from 1999-2000. I believed it existed from 1999-2006 (because it was still shown in a sign around 2006), but it may only be an error, so it closed long before it became the other end of XXI Forever. I assumed it was Benetton but I stumbled upon this photo of Katy Mills I found on Flickr:
Deletehttps://www.flickr.com/photos/creativeartisansgroup/4586616757/in/photostream/
and shows Benetton near Jockey. The sign read “NOTTENEB”, as it it was only a placeholder. These photos date back to when they were doing some final touches to the mall (say around early October 1999). These photos are really cool to add in your old photo pile. Enjoy!
P.S. The 1999 directory made me realize that Polo Ralph Lauren was once “EUROKIDS Designer Boutique”, but this directory also had stores that didn’t exist yet, such as Frederick’s of Hollywood and Midnight Rodeo (both opened in 2002).
Thanks for sending that Flickr set over, it had some really cool photos. It really shows us what we are missing since the renovation.
DeleteYou are absolutely welcome. No one checks Flickr usually these days, but it was a cool place to find more of these ancient relics from the past. It looks like you only gave people a link to the JK Design photos, possibly because many people would frequently come to the comments section of this blogpost to see the links provided. Also, If I might as well say… I found even more old photos! Check these out:
Deletehttps://www.chron.com/neighborhood/katy/news/article/Katy-Mills-Mall-provides-substation-for-police-13960743.php#photo-17638755
I have another link that I will post tomorrow.
Awesome, these are some very good photos of the mall.
DeleteI reposted your link after deleting the comment. There is a good Katy Mills photo in the slideshow at the bottom of the page. If I had to guess, it was a photo from early on in the malls history. Thanks for sending this over Anonymous!
Deletehttps://www.hospitalityonline.com/employers/255815
It’s been a while. Here’s a new photo I found!
Deletehttps://m.facebook.com/ShopKatyMills/photos/a.10150496176709159/10150496176724159/?type=3&source=54
I’m pretty sure you’ve seen this before, possibly because you were browsing the Katy Mills mall Facebook page around 2012, but I added this because it contains part of the exterior of Jillian’s (hence the Eat - Drink - Play tagline under the poster which looks like a poster or an action movie since it looks like it’s in the style of some kind of comic book). This must be from the Mills era because Jillian’s presumably closed before Simon took over the mall. It’s also because we can see the neighborhood sponsor in the entry sign, as well as the patterns on the “Pick-Up-Sticks” (that’s what they’re actually called according to old Katy Mills mall maps.
Now for a little story on this. At first, I assumed this was a picture I originally found on the Wayback Machine (since it was the header image for the mall’s old version of the website), but I decided to find a better version of the picture online. So I did a Google Lens image search (because everybody does that to see the source of the photo) and… surprise, surprise, …I realized that that was the old cover photo for the mall’s Facebook page!
Thanks for reading. More to come when I have more time.
Hello again. I found new photos!
DeleteI had to do something in order to get more old photos of Katy Mills. The easiest way to find old pictures of Katy Mills is that I turned to “alternate search engines”. Yahoo was the one and I decided to search old photos of Katy Mills mall. I searched, and found these photos!
https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/katy/news/article/Katy-s-economic-development-continues-strong-5101786.php#photo-5657998 (second photo in slideshow)
https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Rainforest-Cafe-servers-bring-class-action-4575598.php#photo-4733408 (thirteenth photo in slideshow, you can see part of Liz Claiborne Shoes)
https://texasbomanite.com/portfolio-item/the-mills-corporation/ (some of the flooring design photos contain partial remnants of the old Katy Mills, such as the directory, Sunglass World, F.Y.E., and even Sleepy Hollow!)
I also turned to another alternate search engine, that being Microsoft Bing.
Here is the photo I found.
http://katdish.blogspot.com/2009/12/twitter-goes-to-mall.html (this was shortly before they removed the old decor, because of that, you can see the 2005-2011 kiosk/cart label design and Polo Ralph Lauren.)
Thanks for reading. More to come when I have more time.
Happy Thanksgiving
DeleteI found this PDF with several photos!
https://www.aisc.org/globalassets/modern-steel/archives/2000/11/2000v11_flexibility.pdf
One photo features part of NASCAR Silicon Motor Speedway!
Thanks for reading. Happy Thanksgiving!
All I can say is WOW. I haven't had much time to keep the blog up-to-date recently. Hopefully these photos will bring back the good memories of the first 20 years of Katy Mills. Those photos of the flooring were especially awesome and bring up the question of why? Why did the floor have to go, and why did they need to change to the bland crap that is there now. Surely, they could have created a redesign that would have matched the floor. Unfortunately, most of the old design with the exception of some bathrooms is gone. Thanks for the links, they are greatly appreciated.
DeleteI’m pretty sure you’ve seen this before, possibly because you were browsing the Katy Mills mall Facebook page around 2012, but I added this because it contains part of the exterior of Jillian’s (hence the Eat - Drink - Play tagline under the poster which looks like a poster or an action movie since it looks like it’s in the style of some kind of comic book). This must be from the Mills era because Jillian’s presumably closed before Simon took over the mall. It’s also because we can see the neighborhood sponsor in the entry sign, as well as the patterns on the “Pick-Up-Sticks” (that’s what they’re actually called according to old Katy Mills mall maps.)
DeleteSorry. That’s a correction.
DeleteYeah, I think Jillian's closed a while back. The only sit-down restaurant we have tried at Katy Mills was the Rainforest Cafe (meh). There was a fire in one of the food court stalls on December 12th that caused a temporary closure of the mall. On December 13, the Grapevine Mills food court and possibly other parts of the mall were damaged by a tornado. This hasn't been a good week for Mills Mall food courts.
DeleteI am not old enough to tell you.
ReplyDelete