Town East Mall in Mesquite Texas is a bustling mall located East of Dallas. The mall is listed at 1,223,724 square feet of retail space and opened in 1971. This mall has three floors with the third floor being the food court area. Even though this is a sizable mall, the floor plan and layout of the mall make it feel smaller. This is a very busy mall with tons of good shopping and eating options.
Anchors are Macy's, Dick's Sporting Goods, Dillard's, JCPenney, and the now closed Sears.
Here are some photos of the Sears store, we will visit this store in more detail in the future.
As you can see, this Sears store had a unique logo. Very few Sears stores received this logo update which was used in the mid-2000's. This is the first level of Sears. This Sears also received a fairly recent interior update unlike any store I have visited.
A modern F.Y.E. store. At this point the store had not reopened after the Covid lockdowns.
As you can see from the directory, this mall has an odd shape. The layout is unlike anything I have seen before at a mall.
One thing to keep in mind as we tour the mall. Some stores had still not reopened at this point after the Covid lockdowns a few months before. A lot of stores had limited days and hours as well. The mall is doing very well in 2022. In this photo we see part of the third level food court.
Each anchor corridor had these enormous signs in front.
Even though the design of the mall is fairly bland there are some nice touches like this massive light fixture.
The corridor going to Dick's Sporting Goods which is a recent addition to the mall.
The center of the mall above the food court. This point can be seen clearly from just about everywhere around the parking lot of the mall. This is the view from the Dick's Sporting Goods corridor of the mall.
The Sears logo looks just as good on the second floor.
The backside of the Sears corridor sign shows which direction to find the other anchors and featured stores.
So good to see neon signs at a modern mall.
Going up the escalator to the third-floor food court. We have a very clear view of the second-floor Sears corridor.
View of the mall from the third-floor food court area near JCPenney.
View from the food court to near Dillard's.
These are what the food court stalls look like. There are a lot up here and most were filled on our visit.
Another view from the third floor looking towards Macy's.
A view from the food court down escalator towards the Sears corridor.
Now for a few views of the first floor of the mall. The play area is located just past this Town East Mall logo.
Some parts of the first floor are fairly bland.
Other parts are vibrant and full of natural light.
I know this post is a bit on the shorter side, but we will have a full tour of the Sears store here in the near future. This is a perfectly good mall that is doing very well.
Like I mentioned earlier, this is the center point of the mall which is visible from all around the mall.
Stay tuned, more content to come!
It is nice getting a look at a currently successful mall. Town East Mall had a little bit of fame a few months back when it had one of the last Sears stores in the state, but naturally even that Sears didn't hang on for too much later than the other Sears stores. Not too many Texas Sears got that version of the Sears logo so it is interesting to see it here. I didn't particularly like that version of the Sears logo, but I didn't hate it either. It did take some getting used to even though it's not wildly different than the 1984/1994 Sears logos.
ReplyDeleteThis mall having both FYE and Sears made it much more interesting than most Texas malls. I suppose the FYE is still around. I wonder how FYE is doing these days. It does not appear that they've closed any stores in this region recently and, if anything, they might have added to their store count with the return to Katy Mills. I do occasionally order CDs from FYE's website so I'm glad that they're still hanging around.
This mall does look rather bland on the inside for the most part, but that's not an uncommon theme in successful malls. The mall is sorely lacking color in many areas, but that food court sign does look pretty neat. Perhaps the lack of shoppers in the photos gives the mall an even more sterile look, but I suppose the lack of shoppers was to be expected in August 2020 given Covid situation at the time. Anyway, it'll be interesting to take a look at the Sears here.
One of the most interesting features of this Sears store besides the redesign of the store was a Smart Sense product section in the Sporting Goods department. Smart Sense is/was the name of the house brand of Kmart products. This was probably the closest Texas ever got to a Sears/Kmart combo store, even though this was just a limited selection of Kmart products.
DeleteThe logo of the Sears store looks better in person. With nearly all of our nearby stores having the same logo for years, this one was cool to see. My favorite logo is of course the red neon cursive logo that I haven't seen since I was a kid. I documented the Sears at Oakwood Mall in Gretna Louisiana that had the labelscar showing of that old logo.
Speaking of Sears, the Hometown store at Macroplaza Mall in Pasadena Texas has closed. They were going to be there until the end of June per the employee, but that plan changed. I visited the mall, and it was even deader than my visit just a short while back. I counted 10 businesses left, including the church. At least two more have left. I would be very surprised if the doors are not locked for good this year. There is also some recent fire damage to the truck delivery area of the former Macy's. On the other side of the store, there is what appears to be a setup for someone living there. The Goodwill across the street in the former Mervyn's/Steve and Barry's has also given up. That shopping center was 100% occupied for a while now.
I was disappointed that FYE was not open on my visit, but a lot of stores were still playing things safe during the early months of Covid. The mall is slightly bigger than Deerbrook, but the layout makes the mall feel small. This is a perfectly good, modern mall, but it needs a little more to make it great. The addition of the Dick's Sporting Goods is not as good as we have seen at other malls. The store is only one-level and does not have a lot of retail space in comparison to the Deerbrook, Willowbrook, and The Woodlands Mall additions.