The Louisiana and Texas Retail Blogspot: August 2022

While digging around my old files, I came across this post.

Hurricane Harvey made landfall on August 17, 2017. Hurricane Harvey caused destruction from Corpus Christi all the way through Southwestern Louisiana. The category four storm caused wind and flood damage at landfall, then proceeded to stall out and bombard the Southeast Texas coast with relentless rain for several days. Many lives were changed forever from this catastrophic storm.

The Atascocita, Humble, and Kingwood areas sustained major flood damage when the San Jacinto River and Lake Houston went into major flood stages. Kingwood was sealed off completely from the flooding for a couple of days. This shopping center which we have covered in the past, sustained damage to every single building.

Construction trailers can be seen in the parking lot here.

Marshalls and the recently closed Sports Authority section of the center.

Sports Authority was lit up and the sheetrock cut out from the flood damage. A few months later, this retailer was split in half and completely renovated for a World Plus Market and Buy Buy Baby.

Several Sports Authority shopping baskets were left outside.

The inside of the Marshalls was stripped out as well with the flooring gone as well. Marshalls Reopened early in 2018.

On a day when this shopping center would have been full of cars and shoppers, it was eerily quiet.

Inside of the Bel Furniture, all of the inventory was gone, and the structure gutted. This store also re-opened in early 2018.

The back side of Toys R Us which never truly reopened after the storm.

Here is an awesome post of the short-lived TRU clearance center that opened in late 2017.

Geoffery’s Bargain Box of Toys: The Toys “R” Us Concept you probably never saw – Houston Historic Retail

My post from the store The Louisiana and Texas Retail Blogspot: Toys R Us Humble Texas evolution (southernretail.blogspot.com)

5 years later, all of these same retailers except for Justice are still here.

Same story here. The Bel Furniture moved into the former Toys R Us building last Summer.

Pier One Imports is now gone, but Ulta and Kirkland remain.

Another look at the Toys R Us. I wish I could have gotten this sign for my collection. It stayed up for several months after the storm passed.

A few more shots up-close of the Toys R Us.

Best Buy was the only retailer here that re-opened with a bare-bones store in November 2017. Some of the outlot restaurants opened in 2017 as well.

Fast forward to the Summer of 2019, you can't even tell that the center ever flooded out.

Here is the Sears store at Town East Mall in Mesquite Texas. This was the first visit of my 4-mall Dallas and Fort Worth area trip in August 2020. Here is my early short Town East Mall post, click here.

The entrance on this side of the store had been sealed off.

The newish logo.

This Sears location had received a renovation not too long before this visit. The store had different signage and unique checkout areas.

Check out the department signage here, very different than other Sears stores.

Inventory was thin in some areas of the store as shown here. Not as bad as other locations in 2020, but not great either.

One of the checkout areas. This setup is similar to what many retailers have done. A set of checkouts with one line to stand in while you wait on checkouts to open up.

Near the escalator area. This store was in really good shape.

I wonder if this area had a skylight in the past that was covered up.

Second floor

The former electronics department. The baby department, vacuums, and mattresses had been stretched out across this area.

This signage was new looking. I had not seen this in another location. We are looking from the old electronics department towards the escalators.

Back to the rest of the electronics department.

Mattresses round off this corner of the store.

This store had a pretty sizable electronics department.

Appliances.

Closeout appliances.

Without a lot of closeout appliances, this area was thinning out.

Sporting goods.

Appliances looking towards the middle of the store.

Outdoor work clothes, this store had a large selection.

Lawn and Garden were pretty much eliminated by Sears in 2020, not much is left here.

Most of the former Lawn and Garden space was filled with items from the stockroom. Random tools, clearance items, old paint, industrial floor cleaner, and even some office supplies were out for sale.

No more batteries left either in Lawn and Garden.

Here is a display of Smart Sense items within the Sporting Goods department. Smart Sense was the Kmart generic brand of medical, hair and body, sundry, and household items. This was as close as you could get to a Kmart in Texas in August of 2020. It was pretty cool to see this setup, this was new to Sears stores and never made it down to the Houston area.

The other side of the Smart Sense display.

Another look at the random stuff for sale in the former Lawn and Garden department.

I forgot to mention floor tiles. These were extra floor tiles from the store flooring. If you wanted to put down Sears tile in your house, this was the place to get it from.

The industrial cleaners along with more floor tiles.

Some of the soft plastic display flooring was for sale as well.

There was so much random stuff for sale in this part of the store, I had to get some up-close photos. This is the kind of stuff that is usually for sale when stores close. This store ultimately closed on April 18 2021. You will get to see this store again here on the blog. That visit is from April 15, 2021 when I visited this store with Retail Mix USA, click here for that video.

Vintage Sears mini toolbox.

Just so much random stuff for sale.

Outlet covers, paint roller trays, clipboard, just random things.

The outdoor furniture area was thinning out as well.

Now for the tool department.

A little bit of Lawn and Garden stuff remained mixed in with the tools.

Tool sets spread out to fill the space.

Lots of space to fill, but not a lot of inventory left.

Even with just a few aisles left in the tool department, there was still not enough left to fill the shelves.

An interesting end cap advertisement.

A look across the store from the edge of the tool department.

More of the tool aisles.

I was surprised to see some hammers. The last two Sears stores in the Houston area had run out of hammers months before they closed.

The tools did not match the department signage anymore. They were just filling shelf space as best as they could.

This is about a quarter of the size of what this selection of tools used to be. They did a nice job of filling up this area, but a lot of popular sizes were sold out.

This newer department signage really looked nice.

The remains of the electronics department were in that cart. Mostly charger cables, cell phone cases, and a couple of random items left.

Another look as we walk towards the center of the store.

Escalator area in the center of the store appliances to the right, kids clothes/mall entrance to the left, and housewares behind me.

Housewares were located in the center of the store.

The housewares area was looking very thin.

From this photo the area looks good. Some of the new signage is here as well.

Inventory looks good from this angle.

But when you look closer, the shelves are not very full.

The former photo studio and drivers Ed. down past the housewares section. A curtain was put up to cover up the closed photo studio. In my later visit, we will walk into some of those areas of the store.