We are back for a much better update of the Rolling Oaks Mall. We visited this mall back in 2012 and those photos were just terrible. Since our most recent visit Macy's closed their location in April 2021, so both end cap anchors are now vacant. JCPenney and Dillard's are currently the two remaining anchor stores. Sears closed in August of 2020 probably on the 9th along with the Fort Worth and Arlington locations.
Corrections made to the text of the former Bealls space. I originally had it listed as Palais Royal which was incorrect. Thanks South Texas Retail for helping me keep the blog as accurate as possible.
Speaking of Macy's here is that anchor.
Mall entrance signage.
IW Inflatable Wonderland. A large family center with a movie theater and plenty of options for entertainment.
Chik Fil A was very creative with their sales during this period of Covid restrictions. A drive thru using the food court location, there were quite a few cars lined up near the mall entrance.
The JCPenney has an interesting look.
The never-built anchor expansion.
Sears looks pretty busy, right? Well looks can be deceiving. This parking lot is being used by Amazon for delivery trucks and employee parking. This Sears was the last store in the San Antonio area and closed in August of 2020, about a couple of months before my visit.
The Sears just did not match with the lighter colors of the mall. You will see the difference below. The anchor could have used a good power washing, but still it just doesn't fit with the rest of the mall.
The one cool thing about this Sears is the logo. Not too many of these logos survived the 2000's.
The road sign facing Loop 1604.
The mall entrance in front of the JCPenney. This area may have possibly been another anchor pad.
Sears just sticks out like a sore thumb.
Dillard's
We enter the mall at Dillard's which leads us right to the food court. The food court was healthy with nearly all spaces filled.
We will head towards Macy's to start.
The Macy's corridor has a lot of children's activity tenants on both floors.
Children's play area and a mall day-care center Drop and Shop.
A cool piece of artwork in front of an old store space.
Looking to the mall from the front of Macy's. We will walk back to Macy's in a bit.
On the first floor in front of Macy's.
Looking back towards Macy's. One of those escalators sounded like it was about to break down.
The tent-like ceilings here draw a lot of attention. A lot of malls that were built with these tent-like ceilings are struggling or closed. These are a true late 1980's mall design fad.
We continue our walk back towards the food court area of the mall.
We are now at the busiest part of the mall, even though Covid still had a lot of people staying home. Lots of chain stores here.
The elevator really stands out here. The food court is just upstairs.
JCPenney has a really nice entrance here. This design holds up really well.
This vacant store near JCPenney caught my eye.
Just look at all of the Christmas decorations stored here.
This is the healthiest section of the mall. H and M and several chain retailers remain.
The advertisement for the Scruffy Nerd Herders store had me laughing, they definitely got my attention.
A lot of dying malls have these little yard areas for games. I never see them being used though.
The escalator to the never built anchor, we are near Sears.
This court is awesome with all of the flags honoring our country and armed forces.
The tent ceiling stands out here as well.
An up-close look at the mall directory.
The recently vacated Sears store. The store front was just as out of place as the exterior of the store. I guess Sears wanted their anchor to stand out.
The sign was still on. It was nice to see this older sign still going despite the store being closed.
This area of the mall has some retro storefronts like this one.
Looking into the mall from the front of Sears.
Looking from the Sears court towards the food court.
The never built anchor pad space.
The former Bealls space.
Some really cool artwork covering up an empty store space.
The second floor Sears entrance.
More views of the Sears court.
More artwork on an empty space next to Sears.
A junior learning academy tucked into the vacant corner near Sears.
Xtreme Tattoo and Body Piercing. Getting a tattoo inside of the mall would be an interesting story, but I didn't get one. A tattoo of the mall while in the mall would be a real talking piece, lol.
More awesome artwork on empty store space.
Pretty sure this is an old Clarie's space. The neon trim was still lit up. I bet this looks awesome at night.
Looking towards the food court and busiest section of the mall.
A better view of the former Bealls space.
Here is that store we saw the advertisement for earlier Scruffy Nerd Herders. Their store had a lot of video games, comics, collectables, sports cards and more. Unfortunately, per Google reviews this location closed and they are selling online only now.
The corner of JCPenney and the mall corridor. This Oasis spot on the right is just some relaxation chairs under the fake palm tree.
Now for more views of the food court area of the mall.
Decent selection of choices, this was only half of what there was.
Dillard's is just ahead to the right.
Pretty lively looking section of the mall. If a food court can be busy, there is always hope for a mall to rebound.
Keep in mind that some of these food vendors were on weird hours. Covid hours of operation back in October 2020, remember those.
A recording studio near the food court.
The entrance to the IW Inflatable Jumping Place. Yes, the sign had the retro chasing lights.
An empty store space with this mall directory and coke machines.
One of the few chain retailers in the Macy's corridor.
More views of the Macy's corridor.
Heavy Metal Wrestling coming soon. Now this was a bit out of place since most of the stores on this side of the mall focused on children and family activities. This would probably fit in better in the vacant Sears corridor next to the tattoo shop.
Now for the Macy's store. This was the first store I had been to that had a Backstage store. Now just about every large Macy's has one, but this was a new concept to me at the time.
This Macy's store was your typical former Foley's from the early 1990's. Nothing exciting to see here.
The checkout area with the Backstage logo. If these concepts fail, we have them documented for the blog at least.
Back into the mall for some last looks at the place.
For those of you that don't like carpet in a mall, here is a great example as to why not to do it.
Looking from the food court area towards the elevator.
Dillard's mall entrance.
Macy's with the far away view to the North.
A final look at Dillard's.
Stay tuned, more to come!
Rolling Oaks Mall looks caught somewhere between dead mall status and a mall that's hanging on, but with some level of difficulty. Usually malls like that end up becoming dead malls at some point, but hopefully the mall can hang on and at least maintain what they have now.
ReplyDeleteThe JCPenney anchor here looks rather odd. In fact, it's a bit surprising that the JCPenney is still open because in Houston at least, they were usually the first anchor to bail on a struggling mall. In this case at least, the JCPenney outlives the Macy's. The JCPenney was built much later than the rest of the mall I think and so maybe that's why it survives when others have closed. It also has that rather generic look that department stores started using around the mid-1990s. If that building didn't say JCPenney, I just as easily could have guessed it was a Foley's or something of that sort.
On the other hand, I agree with you that the Sears here does not look that nice on the outside. It looks like they just used unpainted concrete block bricks. The combination of that and it not being cleaned does not look nice. It looks like the exterior and the mall entrance stayed pretty much untouched since the store opened as it still has the 1984 logo and it didn't get the typical white tile facade that Sears with the 1994 logo often got. The 1984 era logo wasn't too common in Houston towards the end of Sears' run. I think West Oaks had it, but I can't think of any other Houston Sears in recent times that had that logo.
It's too bad Scruffy Nerd Herders didn't work out, but hopefully the Radio Controlled store has had better luck. At least a store like that might remind people of the good ole' days when Radio Shacks were common at malls.
As for the rest of the mall, it certainly has that more modern late 1980s-1990s feel to it. In some ways, this is the look that's about as modern as it gets with indoor malls. There remains a mix of expected mall stores and then a bunch of local businesses. That is neat that Chick-Fil-A ran a drive-thru here in 2020 and also that Chick-Fil-A piano is quite strange. A food court vendor having a drive-thru sounds improbable, but maybe it's something Chick-Fil-A did to keep these locations going during a time when there wasn't a lot of traffic.
I don't know how common this is at Chick-Fil-A locations, but the location at FM 1960 W & N. Eldridge seems to have their own delivery operation with a few Mitsubishi Mirage and Nissan Versa subcompact cars. These must get a lot of business because I see those cars, especially the Mitsubishis, all over the place when I am in the area. It's almost impossible to go on FM 1960 W between 249 and 290 and not see one of those delivery cars going somewhere.
Anyway, we'll have to see how this mall does in the near future given that it really does appear that this mall could go in a couple of different directions.
I wonder how the mall is doing with the Macy's now gone from the picture. The businesses near Macy's can probably survive without the anchor traffic since most were non-retail businesses.
DeleteI really like the style of the mall with the tent-like ceilings and round skylights throughout the mall. I can see how modern and exciting this mall was back in the 1980's. I am glad that the middle of the mall was still doing well, and I hope that it will continue. That side of San Antonio doesn't have another mall since Windsor Mall closed.
Chik-Fil-A has been one of the fastest adapting businesses for the past decade. They have consistently found ways to speed up the drive-thru service, branch out into delivery, and even this mall drive-thru. The mall ring road and road leading to the mall had a lot of directional signs to point you to the back of the mall.
A tattoo of the mall while in the mall would be pretty rad, haha!
ReplyDeleteFor sure, especially here because the road sign logo is still neon!
DeleteThe Palais Royal was actually a Bealls (Corpus Christi was the only place in South Texas that had a Palais Royal location), also where the H&M is used to be a Wyatt's Cafeteria which later became Luby's, then a Chinese buffet. University of The Incarnate Word uses the road sign now even though it doesn't use that space in the mall. Rolling Oaks isn't really all that special to me unlike North Star but my grandparents did take me there when we went to San Antonio. I remember there was a Waldenbooks and Radio Shack upstairs. Oddly enough, it reminds me a little bit of The Woodlands Mall but that is still thriving. I still think there was no point at all for Rolling Oaks to be built since it's in the middle of nowhere and Windsor Park was always the more popular mall anyway but I never got to go to Windsor Park before it closed.
ReplyDeleteI see, the Bealls and Palais Royal designs look so similar, thanks for the correction. A cafeteria in malls pre-1990 was pretty much a must-have especially for a new mall. I am very surprised that Luby's was purchased and kept open. Cafeterias just don't have much appeal these days. Wyatt's, Picadilly, Luby's, and Furr's are all names that have either disappeared completely or operate at a small fraction of their peak size.
DeleteI guess the area where Rolling Oaks was built was projected to be the next big suburban hot spot. In reality, the hot suburbs are located West, East, and South of the mall. The growth seems to have passed right by the mall for the most part and more towards I-35 and US 281.
The Woodlands Mall is a good comparison, the original mall design and feel is similar to a late 80's mall. The only thing they are missing there is the massive tent roofs. I only got to see the inside of Windsor Park Mall once in late 2004 not too long before the mall closed. I wish I would have had the foresight to document that mall at the time. We had a mini camcorder with us on that trip.