Here is another vintage small-town Texas Mall currently owned by Culpepper Realty. I was not able to find the original developer online, if anyone has their name please comment below.
The River Hills Mall opened in November 1978 in Kerrville Texas, about an hour Northwest of San Antonio. Kmart, Bealls, and JCPenney were the original anchors of the mall. Fitness First Sports, which is still in business at a different location was the second inline tenant at the mall. The mall merchants filed to become an association on March 13, 1979. The mall has been a local hotspot for years since opening but suffered the first major blow in 2002.
Kmart closed on May 19, 2002 along with 32 other Kmart stores in Texas. To see what the Big Kmart store looked like click here. Belk took over the Kmart space and had their grand opening on March 10, 2004 and is still going strong. Bealls closed their store in 2020 along with the bankruptcy of the company. In November 2019, a news article ran a story about this store becoming a Gordman's. As we will see below, the store was never converted. There is a Facebook page for the store with the last post being on September 27, 2020. Bealls was used as a Spirit Halloween in 2021. JCPenney is the last remaining original anchor and even expanded into a portion of the mall.
Mall management has done a great job keeping this mall going. As we have seen over the years, many similar small-town malls have fallen. This mall is doing quite well and has bounced back from the Covid recession of 2020 around the time we visited. The mall was super clean, and the fountain was in good working order.
Lots of great information past and present can be found on this October 2021 Kerrville Podcast interview of Debbie Robinson marketing director of the mall for 29 years, click here. Unfortunately, the ownership of the mall may be looking to turn the mall into an outdoor center in the future. Doing this would be a huge loss in my opinion for Kerrville. I hope they will keep the mall as it stands today.
The Loopnet listing for store spaces along with some great photos of the property can be found here.
Now onto our visit of the store.
Now for some views of the exterior. The exterior is a mix of old and newer style designs.
The Belk store looks very nice and modern.
The former Kmart entrance to the mall.
This arcade will be shown in much better detail later on in the post. It is a real treat to see this old school arcade.
The look of this mall is really something special. This is the court in front of Belk.
Looking from the center court towards JCPenney.
The center court in front of Bealls. Burke's Outlet and JCPenney take up a lot of retail space in this section of the mall.
The center court looking towards Belk. This amazing fountain is still running strong. The Rio Ranch Cafe to the left is a nice little food and snack outlet.
Vintage GNC, it was closed on the day we went. The store is still in business.
A unique JCPenney mall entrance.
Hibbett Sports on the right and the JCPenney mall corridor extension to the left.
The extension mall entrance was closed on our visit. Keep in mind that this was 6 months into the Covid restrictions. This entrance has more than likely reopened.
The view of the JCPenney section of the mall. Vintage 1978 look to the fullest.
Murals have been added to portions of the Burke's Outlet walls to keep this section of the mall lively. Burke's Outlet has taken up a huge section of this mall corridor.
One of the empty store spaces at the center court.
Looking to the fountain from the same spot as we were at above.
The center corridor leading to the mall entrance.
Another mural on this side of the Burke's Outlet wall.
The community board of the mall.
A closer look at the above board shows the Kmart anchor along with the mall walker path. This sign has been here for quite some time since the Kmart closed in 2002.
More vintage storefronts in the center corridor.
The center court mall entrance.
The center court is stunning, you rarely see this kind of
Here is how the interior of the Bealls looked on my visit. Spirit Halloween briefly occupied this spot in 2021.
The old school Clarie's just to the left of the former Bealls.
The Belk wing had the most vacancies on my visit. As of late 2021 most of the mall is leased so this area probably looks much more lively now.
Looking from the Belk corridor towards the center court and JCPenney.
Maurices
Factory Connection, several small-town Texas malls have this store.
A view of the Belk entrance blocked by this lively tree. You have to wonder why most mall managers took plants out of malls. Malls were intended to be air-conditioned sidewalks, not for lines of kiosks.
More of the Belk/former Kmart corridor.
Belk blends in very well with the retro aesthetic of the mall.
The Belk court appears to have a gate at one of the mall entrances. I guess there were some after-hours businesses here that were open after the mall closed at night. Maybe the arcade stays open late.
A really cool vintage storefront in front of Belk. Wood panels, mirrors, and cutout windows. I wonder if this was a restaurant.
Looking from Belk into the mall corridor.
Now for a look inside of the vintage JCPenney store.
This is the section of the store that appears to be an addition. Housewares, bedding, and kitchen stuff is located here.
This JCPenney store has a Sephora, this may be the first small town store I have seen with a Sephora. This is where the JCPenney extension opens up into the main store.
Vintage ceiling air vents.
The mirrored jewelry counter is a giveaway to the age of this store.
A look towards the store extension.
Back to the mall corridor we go.
Now we are back to the Belk mall entrance by the arcade.
Level-Up arcade formally known as the Fun Games arcade. This arcade has been in the mall 30+ years!
We had a fun time in the arcade, we were the only ones inside at the time. This was the cherry on top for this awesome mall experience.
The arcade had some vintage games along with newer arcade machines such as these Mario Kart ones. There were 50+ machines in the arcade.
The view from the Belk parking lot is really nice. These homes on the hill have awesome views of the city.
A view of the mall from a downtown parking garage.
More to come, stay tuned!
I was looking at Kerrville on Google Maps and there are 2 HEB stores within 0.6 miles of each other. I’m surprised one of them hasn’t closed yet
ReplyDeleteThat is interesting, there must be enough business to support both stores. The one in front of the mall looks fairly new.
DeleteThe HEB across from the mall is a former Albertsons, that closed in 2011. HEB bought the space immediately and opened a second store to supplement their main operations across the river. The Albertsons did steady traffic, mostly comprised of those in the county who had something against the Butts, of which there were plenty. It closed as a wave of closures with many other stores in the state. Chances are HEB purchased the location to kill any other competition from entering the area. As of 2011 the only non-HEB option for groceries in Kerr County is Wal-Mart.
DeleteI keep forgetting Albertsons still had a large Texas presence once they pulled out of the Houston area. Having 2 HEB stores in a town of this size gives people some really good grocery shopping options.
DeleteA thorough and thoughtful look at a mall that holds a special place in my heart. I'm thinking someone will eventually open up in the former Beall's. This mall is in essentially a perfect spot. Just enough traffic to drive it, and no other competition in the area. I can't say I'm positive the mall won't find it self redeveloped, I don't think it'll happen any time soon. The interior corridor here is just big enough to make it worth operating. Also, you're totally right about that arcade. My wife and I have wasted hours there, while others in the family Black Friday shop.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the props on the post. I really enjoyed this mall trip, we made at least 3 laps around the mall.
DeleteI wonder if Target may have an interest in the old Bealls spot in the future. With Target opening some smaller stores, this would be a nice fit for that store concept. I hope the interior of the mall stays intact for many more years. Very few of these malls still exist in their original form.
Palestine Mall is another one that has barely been touched even though the retailers are almost completely gone from that mall. Marshall Mall, University Mall, College Park Mall, and even Heartland Mall have been chopped up in favor of more big box retailers. I will cover all of these malls that I haven't already covered in the near future. University Mall in Nacogdoches will be an especially sad post since the majority of the other half of the mall is being de-malled. A small hallway fronting a line of old storefronts, and a remodeled center court are all that remain of the mall there. The only business in the center of the mall is the T-Sandwich shop. With each of these developments, parts or the majority of the interior mall is being converted into big box retailers. I guess when you live past 40, you see a lot of things change. Malls are just not viable in many of these towns, but 40 years ago they were booming.
Thanks for sharing your experiences at the arcade, I actually still have about $5 in tokens there. I put some tokens into a jacket pocket and forgot about them somehow. We spent $20 on the initial round of tokens, then another $10 when I thought we had ran out. We had fun here and I may return to Kerrville one day. I have a post from the Entertainmart store downtown, which was obviously an old Hastings.
Wow, that wood paneling and all those other earthtone colors! I'm transported right back to 1978! This is pretty amazing, I'm glad you were able to document this mall. That's really neat that there is a podcast about this mall. That's a nice touch and is probably only something that would happen at a small town mall like this one.
ReplyDeleteThat mall walkers poster must be quite old since it still has Kmart on it. I had to laugh at the part about being considerate and yielding to shoppers. I'm guessing mallwalkers don't have to be too considerate these days given the amount of shoppers around, lol.
It's funny, and ironic, to see a Bealls next to a Burke's Outlet. It's really like seeing one Bealls next to another completely different Bealls! The JCPenney setup here at this mall is very strange as well. It's odd seeing JCPenney as an inline tenant right next to their main store! Most JCPenneys of this time had the mirror facades, but this one has something that looks more like their marbled mall entrances in the early 1990s like at Willowbrook Mall. Of course, it's not quite that, but it doesn't look too far off. The store must do well if it's survived this long as a lot of other small town JCPenney stores have closed and it has a Sephora as well.
That arcade is really something! I'm sure you had a lot of fun there. That really is a blast from the past and something which would not be seen at a big city mall. I'm glad that you had a lot of freedom to check that place out. Sometimes it's good to be the only person in a store/mall.
As to Anonymous' comment above about HEB, it's not completely unprecedented for two HEBs to be so close together. I know that in Del Rio, TX, there are two HEBs in the downtown area that are probably less than a mile apart. One is quite small and retro.
In other retail news, a fellow Houston retail enthusiast visited the Willowbrook Mall Sears Hometown store this week and found that Sears has put up their old mall entrance sign again that had been removed after the original Sears closed. Well, at least we assume it's the old Willowbrook sign, but maybe it came from another Sears location. Anyway, I guess slowly the location is starting to look more presentable.
The residents of Kerrville have done a great job of keeping this mall going. We have seen so many of these small town malls fail or get converted into big box retailers. It was so awesome to see one that not only still has an original 1970's interior, but has continued to be successful as a mall.
DeleteI bet a mall walker would get annoyed if you got in their way. I have seen a lot of very focused individuals mall walking. That sign was a pleasant surprise as I thought a recent directory would have been posted there.
Burke's/Bealls has a presence at a lot of the same small town malls where Stage/Bealls closed. Burke's/Bealls has slowly been expanding since Stage failed and shut down. I was glad that this location had not been converted to Gordmans since the old sign was still up. Another similar company to Gordmans and Burke's Outlet is Tuesday Morning. Tuesday Morning has been quietly expanding since their own bankruptcy. I know they don't carry clothes, but they are a discount/closeout chain with a lot of similarities outside of clothing.
I have seen at least one other JCPenney store that was extended into mall space. The Pierre Bossier Mall JCPenney has two mall entrances side by side like this store does. I covered that mall ages ago, and really should give a proper update. Maybe I will, if I find myself in the Shreveport area again.
Old school mall arcades are rare these days. Besides the massive Tilt Studios and small arcade game selection at the mall movie theater, you just don't see these in malls anymore. There are a lot of retro themed arcades where you can pay to play by the hour, but they are not the same. Cool, but sometimes you want to step back in time without the cigarette smoke haze of that era.
Historic Houston Retail gave his take on the mall and dual HEB stores. One was a converted Albertsons. With grocery prices shooting through the roof these days, HEB has been one of the stores to have better deals. If they only had Kroger, it would be a struggle these days. They are really jumping prices up much faster than the competition.
It sounds like things are getting better at the Willowbrook Sears. The Pasadena Sears never had their old sign removed so it looks almost the same as before. One of the letters is broken, hopefully they fixed it.
HEB is certainly a low price leader and the quality of their own brand products is quite high. Unlike some other grocers, they still keep a large number of manned registers open. Those are the positives of HEB, but in many markets where HEB has entered, they've squeezed out almost all the competition except perhaps for Walmart. Even in Houston, HEB is starting to flex their muscles especially in the newer master-planned developments. I don't think Houston will be quite like other parts of Texas where they are the only grocer, at least not in the immediate future, but it looks like we could be headed in that direction.
DeleteKroger's biggest strength right now might well be their existing footprint in Houston. They are in a lot of neighborhoods where there might not be room for an HEB. That gives them an edge in those areas, but I think they're losing out on the newer suburbs where there is room for HEB and customers are preferring to shop there. While pricing isn't Kroger's strong point at least compared to HEB and Walmart, they do have a better selection of national products than either of those two. Some Kroger stores feel more upscale, but Kroger has been applying very cheap remodels to a lot of their stores. It's hard to say why some stores get good remodels and others get the tacky ones. For example, Kroger recently put in some very nice fake wood flooring in the entire Texas City location in an old Greenhouse store, but yet other locations in presumably more desirable areas are going in the opposite direction where the flooring is removed completely leaving behind very bad looking, tile scarred concrete.
Back to HEB for a second, I know some of their loyal shoppers have become rather upset in the last couple years about the number of employees fulfilling online orders by pushing around giant carts around the store and employees grabbing things off shelves often without much consideration for in-store shoppers. Seeing how in-store grocery shoppers are more prone to buying on impulse, it's possible HEB might be making a mistake punishing their more profitable in-store shoppers by ruining their shopping experience in favor of supplying groceries for very low profit margin (probably no profit margin) online shoppers. As it is, their stores already look like warehouses and I suspect the 'shopping in an Amazon fulfillment center' atmosphere might get even worse in the future. I suppose that's just the nature of the degraded B&M shopping experience in modern times.
I tend to visit malls at times where the mall walkers are not as present, but often at dying malls, mall walkers are all one will see. Some of them are quite dedicated and come prepared for the workout, lol.
Yeah, all those earthtones probably did a good job hiding the nicotine stains that interiors probably got in the 1970s, lol. Cigarette haze aside, it's great to see this well-preserved museum of the 1970s sticking around. Hopefully there aren't any plans to redevelop the place. It sounds like the mall still has some viability in the community.
HEB owns a lot of land that they can expand to as new developments pop-up around the city. I know of at least one in the Northeast side of town off of Highway 99 and FM 1314. They probably have several more along the future track of Highway 99 to the East and South of the city.
DeleteYou mentioned the bad side of shopping at HEB is the online carts being rolled around. During the day, way too much is going on inside of these locations and you can have several near-misses when pushing around a buggy. I try to go in the last 2 hours of business or just go for a handful of items during the weekdays. We also have a Walmart neighborhood store that is pretty convenient as well. Kroger has fallen to a distant 3rd on my shopping runs with their price increases over the past year. Costco has become a new grocery stop for us, unfortunately they are not a one-stop shop for groceries.
Kroger did an upgrade to all of our area stores except for Humble about a year after the Marketplace stores opened. It was strange since the Marketplace stores were only a year old at the time. The Marketplace stores seem to have the most inventory issues as well, the smaller Kroger near me does a better job of keeping shelves fuller.
HEB has made a lot of improvements in the past couple of years, at least the locations near me. I have been finding a lot of winners in their store brand product selection. HEB has been cutting back their in-store coupon offers as the grocery prices go up, but we still save more by shopping there over Kroger.
The mall promoter mentioned in the Podcast about a long-term plan that may turn the mall inside out. I would hate to see such a preserved time-capsule lost. Kerrville has enough outdoor shopping centers and a nice walkable downtown. The weather there can be as miserable as it is here and colder during the Winter. That area needs an indoor shopping option. I bet there are a ton of stains in the tiles that you can only see by looking down. The floor looks nice and polished so that is not an issue.
HEB does own a lot of land. In some cases, they sit on land for years, like that old Kmart in Texas City, without doing anything with it. I know there have been some instances where HEB purchased land and got the local residents excited about a potential new store, but they're just sitting on the land with no real immediate plan to do anything with it. Orange, TX is an example of this as HEB bought the old Weingarten/Sears/Kresge shopping center there by the Big Lots that is obviously an old Kmart. The local news made a lot about a new HEB coming up there a few years ago, but all HEB has done is tear down the old shopping center without doing anything else. I suppose them sitting on the land keeps other grocers from getting a hold of that land...for better or for worse.
DeleteHEB does have several new stores coming up in outer areas such as Magnolia and Manvel. Meanwhile, it was stated by another Houston retail enthusiast the other day that Kroger has not opened a new store in Texas since 2018. Even Albertsons has opened new stores since then so I'm not sure what's going on with Kroger in Texas. They might be sensing that they can't compete with HEB and are just sticking with their existing stores...many of which are in neighborhoods where it won't be easy for HEB or Walmart to enter the area.
It's good news and bad news with HEB brand products. The good news is that many/most of their store brands are very good quality. They sometimes even beat the national brands. The bad news is that HEB doesn't stock a lot of national brands so you're kind of forced to buy their own brand or have a limited choice of national brands. Walmart isn't much different in my experience and of course Aldi, Sam's, and Costco are like that as well.
Fortunately, Kroger has not updated their many stores in my area in quite a number of years now except for the two Louetta stores that were heavily damaged by Harvey. The Highway 6 & West Rd. old Greenhouse Kroger was recently renovated with the dreaded 'Remix' decor that is derided on blogs covering Kroger. I don't think it looks as bad as it is claimed online, but it does look kind of cheap like a lot of Kroger's most recent decor packages. Because of that, I'm pleased that Kroger isn't renovating our local stores because I don't think the end result will be positive.
I just don't understand the appeal of outdoor centers. I know that if new indoor malls are ever built, the stores will also need exterior entrances to please the retailers as that is what they want. But, still, the weather is miserable in most of the country for at least certain periods of time in the year and indoor malls provide shelter from that. But, of course, it seems developers and most shoppers don't see things the way we do.
Maybe you're aware of this, but it came to my attention today that there is a clothing store in Mexico named Foley's. They claim to have been around since the 1970s. I wonder if they were inspired by Foley's stores in Houston. Their logo does look like a US Foley's rip-off. Not only does Mexico have viable Sears and Woolworth stores, but they also have Foley's!
HEB is doing a lot of things right these days. I hate to hear about them tearing down old retail plazas. Any grocery store opening in a small town could cause quite a buzz. Especially with the retro Market Basket they still have in place. HEB would be a much more modern store, even though retail enthusiasts like us prefer the neon and mirrors of the older stores.
DeleteThe Kroger statistic is a surprising one. I can't believe the Spring location on Highway 99 has been open almost 5 years. Time passes by way too quick. Kroger also may have opened up their future locations early to get a jump start over competitors. The newer sections of highway 99 will be the test for Kroger, will they open more stores or are they oversaturated in the market.
An indoor/outdoor hybrid mall seems like the best option for areas like this one. The thing is most retailers want to only have one entrance/exit to manage their labor costs. Having an exterior entrance seems to be the choice of most retailers these days.
I did notice the Foley's brand in Mexico. I actually took a photo of a shirt with the logo on it. They had a small display in the Liverpool store in Juarez with the branding on the clothes. I did find out the same information online as well. I do wonder if they had the city under the stores years ago, like Foley's/Houston. A lot of the fancy stores in the Galleria have that brand/city name to make it sound more luxurious.
Well add another mall to list that I need to visit.
ReplyDeleteFor sure, it is a must visit. This mall is very close in size and anchor lineup to University Mall before the changes.
DeleteIt's nice to hear this mall has been so successful. I'm sure the longtime marketing director has played a major role in that. I absolutely love the hand drawn mall walkers map!
ReplyDeleteI had never really thought about malls as being air conditioned sidewalks before. That's a really interesting perspective.
This mall definitely fits the description. The interior matches the exterior views of the woods quite well. I saw this video from Retail Mix USA from a little over 3 years ago. https://youtu.be/F2PlqspnEbE
DeleteThe mall walkers sign was covered up by an advertisement.