What did my local mall look like the day when covid restrictions statewide were lifted on May 4th, 2020? Mall retailers were allowed to begin to-go service to customers on April 24, 2020 as a soft reopening.
Well the first change is the Sears which closed back in April. Somehow the store closing sale continued even though Sears was not an essential business.
5:30 in the afternoon and the mall is a ghost town. Only a handful of businesses reopened.
Seats closed off.
JCPenney still closed.
Bath and Body Works still closed.
Dillard's still closed.
The last bit of 90's left in the mall, the neon elevator.
Normally these corridors would have been pretty busy.
The few stores that were open had customer capacity restrictions and facemask signs.
The first anchor that was open for business so far. Dick's Sporting Goods. This second level mall entrance now closed off. It is still closed off most of the time even with business mostly back to normal as of this post.
Macy's was also open, almost like an oasis in the mostly dark corridors.
H&M had just barely opened before the holidays and it was closed for the mall reopening.
Customer traffic in Dick's Sporting Goods was just as bad as in the mall. Maybe 5 people besides the employees.
The movie theater is the one part of the mall that is still not back to normal.
A handful of restaurants were open but for to-go orders only. All seating was closed off.
Seeing the mall like this was a huge shock. I had a lot of questions at that point.
Did we go to far with the lockdowns?
When will things return to normal?
Will things return to normal?
Will these stores that didn't reopen come back at some point?
As of the posting of this article, things have mostly returned to normal at the mall. As of 2021, the mall has lost some inline tenants from bankruptcies and smaller retailers that couldn't recover. One of the most popular food court restaurants has been locked out of their business since October. The AMC is open but with greatly reduced offerings. Sears was reopened by Spirit Halloween for three months so we were able to see the inside of the store one last time. The Sears building currently is sitting vacant awaiting redevelopment or demolition.
Now for some more shots of the freshly closed Sears.
2nd floor mall entrance.
1st floor mall entrance.
I would want the old Willowbrook and Deerbrook Sears to be like the former Macy’s at West Oaks Mall, where a new tenant takes over the building, but leaves the interior intact.
ReplyDeleteI would like to see that as well. The ownership will more than likely let the anchors sit empty until they are bought out though.
DeleteI'm surprised Dillard's was closed. I know they took some flack for staying open when many of their competitors did not. I can't remember for sure but I think they ultimately did close down for a short period after all the pressure. However, I don't remember my local location being closed for long, if at all. Certainly not in May, I don't think. Although it could just be that that was during a time when I didn't get out much either.
ReplyDeleteI did find this article mentioning they were reopening stores in Mississippi on May 5, so they would only have been closed for two or three weeks if that. https://sgbonline.com/dillards-to-reopen-55-stores/
I don't know. The entire past year has been very fuzzy and weird in my memory, haha.
I should have kept up with the mall during the Covid lockdowns. I had visited the Dick's Sporting Goods there a few times since they were open the whole time. Dillard's was listed as a to-go retailer during the curbside only phase of the reopening on April 24. They also may have been closing earlier since the mall was open until 6pm that day. Dillard's is one of the few solid retailers that still has genuinely good customer service.
DeleteI was glad that Texas did not go crazy with shutting everything down and pulling people over that were not essential employees like other states did. With the exception of sit down restaurants/bars, malls, and clothing stores, just about everything else was open.
2020 and the first six weeks of 2021 have been a lot to take in. From political unrest, to extreme weather events, to Covid-19, and economic uncertainty, this has been a lot to deal with.
It is really neat that you were able to chronicle that historic time in US, and globally, here on the blog. This is a really neat blog post idea. Although we're certainly still feeling the impacts of the pandemic right now in 2021, there will come a time years down the road when the events of 2020 will become forgotten and younger people will have no idea what happened. It was a good idea to chronicle those extraordinary days as they were happening.
ReplyDeleteBelieve it or not, I've yet to visit an indoor mall since the pandemic started. The pandemic itself isn't really the cause of that, but rather the fact that there isn't much drawing me to a mall these days. The closures of the Willowbrook and Deerbrook Mall Sears, the last two Houston Sears at successful malls, was a huge blow to my interest in shopping at malls. I did, however, visit the Cypress outlet mall (whatever it is called, lol) maybe only a week or so after this visit you made at Deerbrook. The scenes were quite similar. Probably at least half of the stores were not open and there were very few shoppers. I had entire large corridors of the mall to myself at times. It was a surreal experience. It was like shopping at Northwest Mall or the Mall of the Mainland circa 2013, but this was at very successful malls with high leasing rates.
The obvious issues aside, Deerbrook Mall is looking nice in the photos. It seems to be holding up well. It's still easy for me to get this mall confused with The Woodlands Mall, but they had the same developer, Homart/Sears, so I suppose it isn't a surprise that there are some similarities. A lot of these two-story malls from the 1980s and 1990s have a fairly similar look to them I suppose. I see that Deerbrook has one of those CVS vending machines.
The Sears here looks like it was abandoned for longer than what it really was. I suppose the faded paint, faded sign, and weeds in the lawn give that image. In that regard, the Willowbrook Sears probably looked more maintained when it closed even though it is slightly older. Anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if these Sears stores become Halloween stores once again this year unless the properties are redeveloped. Seeing how the Baybrook Sears has been sitting empty for a few years now, I'm not exactly expecting any sort of rapid redevelopment plan.
This trip was a spur of the moment idea, and I am glad that I was able to document this day. It will hopefully be a once in a lifetime event. This reopening was even more dead than when malls reopen after weather events. The mall has rebounded very well since this day so the future looks good for Deerbrook.
DeleteThe loss of Sears is a huge blow to me as well. It was a store that I frequented and sometimes my only stop when visiting the mall. Dick's Sporting Goods was the other anchor that I liked, but they eliminated some of the departments that I shopped in so it is not worth visiting anymore.
There are a lot of similarities to this mall and the Woodlands Mall. Deerbook is a decent mall, but the Woodlands has a lot of better shopping and dining options. Now would be a perfect time to tear down Sears and build an outdoor area like at the Woodlands, Baybrook, and First Colony Malls. There is enough space to put a nice development that will be more inviting than that old husk of Sears.