This was the scene earlier today outside of the Northwest Mall in Houston Texas. This mall has been covered several times over the years on the blog. We are very sad to see this mall go and hope the store owners and employees are able to rebound quickly from the abrupt closing of the mall. The tenants were reportedly only given a months notice about the closing. There are 5 tenants including Palais Royal and the Antique store in the former JCPenney that will remain open, but the interior of the mall is now closed.
Click the title to read more about the closing and check out the vintage mall photo slideshow in the article.
Here are a few teaser photos from the final day of the mall operations. I visited the mall both of the final 2 days of operations. Nearly every store or restaurant was in the process of packing up, but a couple of businesses looked like they were sticking it out to the end and had not visibly packed up items to leave.
The fountain was still running.
By the time I arrived on the last day the remaining food court outlets had closed and were removing items or cleaning.
A massive post about the nearly 50 year old mall is in the works so stay tuned.
It is sad to see Northwest Mall go. This is one of those malls that used to be a regular spot for me decades ago. I didn't get a chance to see it after I heard the news of it closing, but I visited the mall several times around 2014 and it really didn't change much since then. I'm glad I was able to visit the mall frequently here in it's last years, but unfortunately it didn't look much different then than it did in those pictures of it's last day.
ReplyDeleteI did drive by the mall a couple of days ago though and they did take down that big banner saying "Northwest Mall is open!" Oh well. At least we have NW's twin, Almeda Mall, still doing pretty well. I look forward to your post about NW Mall. Hopefully it can give the mall a fitting funeral.
The mall had most of the same stores for the past several years. Only a few had changed and the food court stayed mostly full even until the end. Champs TSO and Foot Locker were the only major recent losses to the mall. Sure the mall had a lot of vacancies, but the owners of the small businesses that mostly filled the mall were able to make enough to keep going up until now. The new owners probably just did not want to deal with managing the mall anymore. I really disagree with the short notice that the businesses were given to vacate the mall.
DeleteThat looks a nice place. Thanks for sharing! Anyway, you should also try to visit Abreeza Mall. I'm sure you'll love it too.
ReplyDeleteThat is very far away for me, but it looks like a really nice place.
DeleteDid you ever get around to writing that big post about Northwest Mall?
ReplyDeleteIt is a work in progress, hopefully not too much longer. I have well over a hundred photos of the final days at the mall.
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