Here is a mini-update on the La Palmera Mall and Portland Texas Kmart center from March 2020. I combined both posts since I only got a handful of photos.
Just before the local lockdowns shut down this mall and most malls across the country, we visited La Palmera Mall in the evening. I took advantage of this time to get some photos of the food court and parts of the mall I missed previously. The mall was not very busy at all and some stores had already started closing.
Food court
Mall corridor near the food court.
Telemundo stage in the food court where the live news is broadcast.
The aquarium in the food court.
A view of the entrance to the food court and escalators.
Now for the Portland Kmart center. I wanted to get some day photos of the center, so here they are. As of March 2020, the site was still vacant.
The Bealls was in the process of closing. I am not sure if this was a store that was going to become a Gordmans, but as we now know all of the Stage stores will close in the coming months. This store had an additional Bealls Shoes next door. I sadly did not have a chance to visit the store due to time constraints.
The loss of Bealls is going to hurt this center. The Dollar Tree will be the last big box store left after Bealls closes.
As of the posting of this article, we have passed 990,000 page views. I have a special article in the works for the million page view mark. Hopefully we can get there by next week.
I always love malls that have aquariums. I don’t know what mall it was that had fish in Houston, but I think it was either Memorial City Mall, or The Galleria.
ReplyDeleteBoth of those malls have aquariums. Memorial City has an aquarium near the play area where you can pay to feed the fish. The Galleria has a sizable aquarium near the office tower elevators as well. The Woodlands Mall has a similar aquarium near the outdoor courtyard entrance of the mall.
DeleteI think the one I remember was at Memorial City Mall because of two things: 1, you could feed the fishes, and 2, it was near the Sears enterance. It was sometime before they had even announced that the Memorial City Sears would close.
ReplyDeleteIt was still there in December of last year. I have not been to Memorial City Mall since then. I just went and looked back on my photo archives and I have a photo of the aquarium. When I was last down at Memorial City Mall, I made sure to document the mall for the blog.
DeleteLa Palmera Mall looks like quite a nice mall. It's rather generic in many ways, but it appears the mall operators have spent a lot of money to keep the mall modern.
ReplyDeleteI visited the Summit Mall in Akron, OH, some years ago and they had a TV studio for one of the local stations in the food court as well. I'm not sure if those 'studios' ever actually get used to record news segments or if it's just some kind of advertising for the station. It seems to me that a mall would be a difficult place to shoot segments because of how busy and loud the place can get. Granted, I'm sure they weren't very busy in March 2020 even with spring breakers surely being in the area then.
The Portland Kmart looked like it was in sad physical shape even five years before it actually closed. That building (and parking lot) is surely going to need some work if it is ever to see an A or B tier tenant again. The Bealls shoe store is interesting. I wonder if they had more selection than what a typical Stage store had or if they just had the normal shoe department in a separate location for some reason. There is/was a Kmart in Los Angeles which had a separate shoe store in recent times.
The vintage looking TSO sign in that shopping center is interesting. It's kind of surprising that TSO can survive with all the discount store competition these days, but maybe their eye doctors remain busy and that helps give the store just enough customers to stay relevant. I don't know.
It looks like you'll get to 1,000,000 visits here pretty soon. There's been a lot of new content on the blog lately so I'm sure that's helping the situation. I'm excited to see what you have to celebrate the 1,000,000th visit.
They were filming a newcast one time I visited the mall. It was crowded so I did not get any photos. The mall in Beaumont had a studio that was used, but it was in an old store space not out in the open like this stage was.
DeleteThat Kmart in Los Angeles looks like they needed extra space for the shoe department to make the site work. I really like the sign they used for that space. One of the locations had a nearly full restaurant that looked to be a Kcafe. I wonder if that is a normal turnout for that store or if that was an unusual day.
The good thing about that space in Portland is that it is right off of the highway. All of that highway is under construction right now, from a few miles East of Kmart to the new bridge over the industrial canal. Once all of that wraps up, maybe the shopping center will see things improve.
I am just about finished with the million view post. It will be a lengthy post, but well worth checking out.
I wonder if the Mall of the Mainland ever considered painting up a fake TV studio. Gloria and Nikki would have been really blown away by that, lol. Speaking of which, it seems that the blog is getting more daily visitors than the Mall of the Mainland had in their last few months. I guess that's not really saying much though, lol.
DeleteIt seems that the Los Angeles Kmart in question closed in the fall of 2018. The store was quite close to Hollywood and was in a busy shopping district. As for why that Kmart and Kcafe/Little Caesar's Pizza Station was for so busy, it looks like those photos were taken on Christmas Eve 2014. One thing that you'll probably only see at a LA Kmart is the woman shopping with her dog that is dressed in a Santa outfit. But, anyway, it is pretty impressive to see that Kcafe filled up like that. Even the old school Kmart cafeterias were rarely that full in their glory years. The Kcafe has kind of a retro look too.
I remember seeing a site map for that Kmart some years ago. If I remember correctly, that is a two-story store, but it's on a very small footprint. I'm not sure if the building was something else before it was a Kmart. The ground level is the second floor and there is a full shopping floor on the basement. They probably did need to put the Kcafe and shoe department where they put it to make everything fit. That shoe sign is neat. I wonder if having the shoe department like that increased sales.
Now that I think abiut it, the last retail anchor, Palais Royal at Mall of the Mainland is gone or closing. That will mean that only a couple of small shops are the only retail left at the mall. Where will Gloria and Nikki shop now?
DeleteA two story Kmart with a busy Kcafe is too good to be true in 2020. It is a good thing there are pictures of this place because it shows what Kmart could have been if it had been taken care of.
Yes, Gloria and Nikki will not have many options left at the Mall of the Mainland (or whatever they are calling it these days, Shops on the Mainland or something). I suppose there is the vitamins shop, the comic book shop, and the place that sells packing peanuts at the self-storage place in the ex-JCPenney. That's probably enough to excite Gloria and Nikki, but if it isn't, they may have to start visiting another mall with more action like the Macroplaza Mall. They'll probably be fooled into thinking that George Lopez is shopping there if that Plaza Paseo era mural is still there, lol.
DeleteFunny you mention the mural at Macroplaza. It was painted over and it is just a plain wall now. I am not sure what is going on at the mall. I forgot about the vitamins shop. Losing Palais Royal is going to make that mini-mall feel empty.
DeleteThe food court for La Palmera used to be upstairs when the 85 remodel at Padre Staples Mall happened. Once the mall became La Palmera, it was moved downstairs. The Portland Kmart opened in 1980 with that shopping center, the Dollar Tree there used to be an Eckerd drug store but I'm unsure when that closed. I do know that it was an original tenant along with Kmart back in 1980.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know the food court was upstairs at Padre Staples. It makes sense for the food court to be downstairs unless there is a draw like a movie theater.
DeleteI would have loved to have seen that center back in those days. An original Kmart logo, neon Eckerd logo, with the Bealls.
Funny you should say that because there actually was a movie theatre upstairs. I only ever went there once as a kid to see The Rugrats Movie when it first came out. Where the food court is now was where Dillard's was and during the 1985 expansion, it was reloacted with the lower level becoming Palais Royal and the upper level becoming the movie theatre. Both closed around 1999/2000 and those two spots sat vacant until the change to La Palmera. Bealls was also a junior anchor when Padre Staples opened in 1970 but it closed before Stage went under.
DeleteAs for the Portland Kmart, it's since been demolished: https://www.caller.com/story/news/local/2020/01/27/k-mart-building-portland-demolished-chick-fil-corpus-christi/4587699002/
Thanks for the additional information. I would have really enjoyed seeing the mall prior to the most recent renovation.
DeleteI also appreciate the update on the Kmart. I was never able to visit the store while it was still open. That lot was Super creepy at night so the area residents have to be glad it is gone.