Monday, February 15, 2021

Sunrise Mall Brownsville Texas Jan 2020

Sunrise Mall Brownsville Texas

Here is the mall that killed off nearby Amigoland Mall. Sunrise Mall opened 5 years after Amigoland in 1979. In 2000, the mall added the JCPenney and Dillard's that were previously anchors at Amigoland. That expansion and a later food court addition gives us the mall we have today. Sunrise Mall is over 700,000 square feet of retail space, but has recently taken some anchor hits. Sears, Bealls, and Agaci all closed in late 2019 through early 2020. Agaci was later replaced, but the Sears and Bealls are still vacant. All of the anchor closings were on the same side of the mall so there was a huge difference in customer traffic from one side of the mall to the other. Overall, this is a fairly healthy mall on the main highway through town. 

Cinemark and Food Court entrance

Bealls which closed in mid 2020.

Dillard's

Sears, this store closed 6 days before my visit.





Agaci was already closed at this point but the signage was still up.

The Sears locations here in the Valley certainly have some charm. 



Now lets go inside.


The mall has an interesting floor plan. It makes the mall seem bigger than it is.


The mall has a fairly bland design in this area.




The food court area was pretty busy and had a much more modern design than the rest of the mall.



Old school Gamestop

JCPenney marks the halfway point in the mall corridor.



Here is where the design of the mall really gets interesting. The H&M/Bealls corridor has this awesome ceiling design.

Here is a detailed look into the Bealls. The Bealls was closing during my visit, but was initially going to reopen as a Gordmans. Before the store closed, the plan to convert to Gordmans was scrapped leaving this anchor empty. In a span of 6 months, Stage stores went from converting legacy stores to their Gordmans concept to bankrupt and closed.

Anyway, here is the inside of Bealls.


You can't have a store closing sale without the naked mannequins.

This store was looking pretty tired and needed a remodel. A lot of Stage stores were tired and stuck in the past. The Gordmans concept would have been a boost to the company, but unfortunately the push came way too late to save the company.









Back into the mall we go.

Another look at that awesome court in front of H&M/Bealls.

The closed Agaci with the closed Sears in view.


The Sears/Dick's court has the most impressive design. You have to wonder why the other half of the mall has the bland design.

The Sears mall entrance is very impressive.

Here is what we could see through the mall entrance.



Missed the store closing by 6 days!!!! From the looks of the inside of the store, it was just a regular 90's style interior.


This is the only large anchor in this half of the mall now. Dick's Sporting Goods is not really much of an anchor unfortunately. Most people seem to visit these stores without entering the mall.

Another peek into the mall corridor before we end the tour.

Nighttime view of the mall signage.




15 comments:

  1. This mall is not nearly as interesting as Amigoland Mall, but there are still some interesting parts to this mall. The Sears/Dick's Sporting Goods section of this mall looks really neat and is probably a throwback to the opening of the mall in 1979. Speaking of which, that Package Pickup sign at the Sears looks very similar to the one that was at the Willowbrook Mall Sears. That makes sense given that the Willowbrook store is only a couple of years newer. I suppose those signs weren't uncommon at Sears from that area. Still, I like how all the different Sears from that era had slightly different designs and layouts. Sears didn't really standardize things until the 1990s.

    I suppose JCPenney does not have to deal with people slipping on banana peels at the Sunrise Mall location like they did at the Amigoland Mall location that had the grocery store, lol.

    The food court at this mall looks quite impressive. Aside from retro features, that might be the highlight of things. That said, I assume the Luby's will be added to the list of closed places at this mall if it's not already closed.

    Anyway, thanks for checking out the 'other' Sunrise Mall in Texas. It's pretty neat even if it's not as neat as Amigoland. Hopefully the mall can survive all the store closures of recent times and all the other challenges of modern times. I don't know if the pandemic has slowed the flow of international shoppers, but it probably has to at least some extent.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think this is a pretty good shopping mall. There are a lot of shopping options along this stretch of I-2. The dying Valle Vista Mall is about 25 minutes away, the Outlets about 30 minutes away and La Plaza is about 50 minutes away. I really liked the half of the mall between JCPenney and the former Sears. The Lafayette Acadiana Mall Sears also had similar signage.

      The food court was definitely designed to stand out. They had a great variety of restaurants too, with some local flavor mixed in. I think you may like the upcoming La Plaza Mall food court a little more, it is really cool.

      The Corpus Sunrise Mall post will be coming soon as well. I took a very spooky walk around the mall just after nightfall. I am going to post a teaser on my Youtube channel before I post the mall. The flickering backdoor light at the Burlington anchor is the stuff you see in horror movies.

      Delete
  2. I’m very much looking forward to the Corpus Sunrise Mall finale since I grew up going to that mall but unfortunately, never got any pictures of it for my blog as I moved to Houston in 2011 and just started the blog last year. I’ll talk more about this on that post

    Also have you covered River Drive Mall and Mall de Norte in Laredo yet?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I had to cut both of those malls out of my October trip unfortunately. I may try to visit them in the future, I will keep everyone posted. I did get to revisit Wonderland of the Americas, Rivercenter, Rolling Oaks mall, and make my first trips to Sagewood mall in Alice, Town Plaza mall in Victoria, and River Hills mall in Kerrville. I also missed out on revisits to Richland mall in Waco and a visit to the Heartland Mall near Brownwood Texas.

      Delete
  3. I was actually the one who recommended that you visit Sagewood Mall (was previously commenting anonymously on the Sunrise Mall and La Palmera posts since those were my childhood malls) and I'm very excited to see that one since there's little to no photos of it online with the exception of the video I sent you.

    Here are some other malls that you might want to revisit or look into:

    Mall De Las Aguilas in Eagle Pass

    Palestine Mall in Palestine

    Pampa Mall in Pampa

    Music City Mall in Lewisville (TX not KY)

    Oak Park Mall in Seguin (I already suggested it to you before)

    Sun Valley Mall in Harlingen

    Cielo Vista Mall in El Paso

    Plaza Del Sol Mall in Del Rio

    Sunset Mall in San Angelo

    Sikes Senter Mall in Wichita Falls

    Nolan River Mall in Cleburne

    Irving Mall in Irving

    Marshall Shopping Center in Marshall (yes, it's actually an indoor mall and not a strip mall)

    And Westgate Mall in Amarillo (they had 3 malls in the 80s but I don't know what happened to the other 2)

    Malls to revisit would be North Star Mall, South Park Mall, and Ingram Park Mall

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That is a pretty good list of malls to visit. If I ever travel out to those areas, I will make sure to visit those places. I appreciate the tips, a lot of these places are not covered anywhere yet.
      I do have some of these malls photographed for the blog. the Palestine and Marshall Malls from Summer 2020 and Cielo Vista Mall from Summer 2019.

      Delete
    2. I have a couple of suggestions as well. If you're out in West Texas again, it might be worth visiting a couple of spots in New Mexico not too far from the border. Pretty close to El Paso is Las Cruces and they have a couple of malls of some interest. The main one is Mesilla Valley Mall which is a typical mall anchored by an ex-Sears, JCPenney, Dillard's, Conn's, and Barnes & Noble. Las Cruces also has one of those small malls in a shopping center called Loretto Towne Center. At least I assume the indoor mall is still open there. It looks really retro there from the Google photos of the place.

      Further away in Alamogordo, NM is the White Sands Mall, a really retro looking place and the mall was formerly anchored by a Kmart it seems. Alamogordo is also home to the Lowe's Signature Market, the fully carpeted supermarket. That's certainly worth a visit if you're in the area.

      Delete
    3. You might want to head over to Cielo Vista again because as of now, they have the last full line Sears in Texas (the Mesquite store already started their store closing sale in February)

      Delete
    4. We will see what the future holds. Those are some great suggestions, I am not sure when I may have the chance to go down there again.

      Delete
    5. We will see what the future holds. The only times I have been to El Paso were by plane. I live in the Houston area so West Texas is a treo for me 😀. I will probably visit the Baton Rouge Sears pretty soon.

      Delete
  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  5. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, Ridgmar has really emptied out since my last visit. If I am ever back in that area I will revisit the mall.

      Delete
  6. Another one that I just found out about recently is South Plains Mall in Lubbock. That would be another one to cover

    ReplyDelete