This mall is the most disgusting property we have visited so far. A dead bird in front of one entrance, lots of muck from the rotting property, animal damage, and a huge bee's nest in the back entrance of the old JCPenney. To top it off, the parking lot was in complete disrepair with huge potholes. My visit to the mall was nearly three years ago and not much has changed here with the exception of the boarding up now complete.
Sagewood Mall is located in the small town of Alice Texas, about an hour West of Corpus Christi. This small mall of approximately 153,000 square feet was built in 1968. JCPenney, Bealls, and HEB were the original anchors to this mall. US Dollar was a later tenant in the West anchor. I was only a few months too late to visit the interior of the mall. As of April 2020, State Farm and Jackson Hewitt tax services were still operating inside of the mall, but my visit was in October of 2020. Firestone and Goodyear are the only two tenants operating on the mall site, and both have exterior entrances. Everything else has been boarded up. Even though the mall spaces are listed at $12 per square foot, it looks like the owners have given up on the mall. Alice Texas has a population of less than 18,000 residents and has been losing residents since before 1970, around the time that this mall was built. This site will probably remain as it is and continue to rot away.
Update 10/1/2023 Thanks to Anonymous and Mike from Houston Historic Retail, the mystery West anchor was revealed to be an HEB grocery store.
The history of the mall is really challenging to find online. If there is anyone that can send us the names of the stores that operated here in the past would be great as well.
Here are a couple of vacant stores that had exterior windows to look inside.
US Dollar/HEB. This was a 1968 mall built before Walmart and Kmart really expanded into malls.
Looking into the one mall entrance that was not boarded up. The US Dollar/HEB entrance was to the left.
The inside of the US Dollar/HEB.
The inside of this store is beginning to fall apart.
The back of the US Dollar/HEB anchor.
Inside of one of the vacant store fronts in the back of the mall.
The back of the mall looked really sketchy, but we continued on.
This is the glass we looked through earlier into the mall.
One of the discarded signs for US Dollar.
There were a bunch of bees at this former JCPenney entrance so I could not get close. You can see the unpainted bricks where a sign once was attached. Either the catalog or salon sign.
The other side of the JCPenney. You could not see into the store with the tint on the windows and glare from the sun.
The smell of freshly cut wood. Something that had not been smelled on this property for quite some time. Unfortunately it was because the mall was in the process of being boarded up.
This was the best photo I could get in between the boards of the interior in this side of the mall.
The views of the mall from the Goodwill mall entrance. Thankfully the view through the glass was unobstructed to look into the closed off mall.
I really wish that I could have found a way into the mall. This one was relatively untouched since the day it opened.
The Goodwill side of the mall entrance.
The roof was in poor condition as indicated by the stained ceiling tiles throughout the store.
Here are a couple more photos of the mall interior from Goodwill.
Another mall entrance next to Goodwill.
Views of the mall from the boarded-up entrance near Goodwill.
Heavy building damage from neglect.
One of the open exterior windows looking into a former mall store.
The one mall entrance that had not been boarded up. In addition to a bunch of muck on the ground, there was also a dead bird, yuck.
We also went into the Firestone to get a peak into the mall from their mall entrance.
The State Farm which was one of the last businesses operating inside of the mall.
The West anchor US Dollar/HEB entrance.
A look at the Firestone store leading to the vacant mall corridor.
Now for more views of the exterior of the mall.
The Goodwill which appears to still be operating here as of the posting of this article in 2023.
The JCPenney anchor pad.
The JCPenney had a much larger store front than the small town JCPenney stores built in the late 70's and 80's.
As you can see from this wide view of the mall, this is a relatively tiny mall.
If you look closely above the mall in the center you will see the faded Bealls sign. Bealls moved to a shopping center down the street before ultimately closing in 2020 with the rest of the chain.
The updated Firestone looks nice in comparison to the rest of the property.
The former US Dollar/HEB.
Another view of the only mall entrance not boarded up. You can see the sign on the glass which was a generic Covid sign that a lot of places had at the time. It also showed that the mall was open in the early stages of the pandemic.
Now some views from the edge of the parking lot. The lot and street here are in such bad shape, you need to really be careful driving through this area.
One last look at the mall before we leave.
The road sign to the mall has seen its better days.
More to come, stay tuned!
Given some of the dead malls you have visited over the years, it really says something to say that one is the most disgusting of the bunch. However, given what is in these photos, I think you're right that this is the worst! I can only imagine how this must have looked, and smelled, in person! Perhaps it is best not to imagine that! Perhaps it was for the best that you visited this mall at a time when mask wearing was common!
ReplyDeleteMike from HHR tried to leave a comment in this post, but he informed me that Blogger was giving him all kinds of errors. In case his messages didn't go through, he wanted me to relay the message that he did some research and discovered the grocery anchor at this mall was indeed an HEB. Mike wanted me to send this along: https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth996839/m1/16/
I wonder if the Firestone at this mall was always a Firestone or if it was a JCPenney Auto Center that Firestone took over. I suppose it could be either. If it was a JCPenney Auto Center, you'd kind of expect it to either be closer to the JCPenney or be an outparcel in the parking lot. I don't know. It is kind of funny that Firestone has a corporate store at this decaying mall, but as we know from here in Houston, Firestone has had many of their locations for decades and they seem okay with having older locations. If nothing else, people driving around in this broken parking lot might need new tires!
It is funny to see tires being stored in an otherwise pretty nice looking indoor area. I once went to the Summit Mall in Akron, OH, the tire and rubber capital of the US, which had Firestone and Goodyear stores in the mall. I think the Goodyear store is still there and it is a very nice looking location. Granted, Goodyear is based in the area so you'd expect them to give a good effort there. Summit Mall is actually a successful mall though so it is very different than this one!
That Goodwill looks quite different from our Goodwills. Usually ours don't sell so much furniture, but there are some Goodwills which have more furniture than others. I can't say I've ever seen used mattresses at a Goodwill, but oddly enough, I've seen new mattresses being sold at a Goodwill! I don't make it to Goodwills nearly as often as I used to. You'd think that with them having a lot fewer locations than they used to that they'd have more selection at each remaining store (which isn't a trash bag clearance store at least), but such is not the case, unfortunately.
I really appreciate the link to the old HEB ad that clarified what the original West anchor was at the mall. Thanks to you and Mike, the post is complete.
DeleteThis mall is almost in as bad of shape as the Super Kmart in Corsicana. At least they stripped the inside of that building, but it doesn't look like much will be done at Sagewood since most of the mall is boarded up now. It is really a shame since this mall was an awesome time-capsule.
The parking lot near Firestone actually has a different access point to bypass the original road because of how bad that road has become. Unless you are driving an off-road vehicle or jeep, I would pay close attention to this parking lot.
Firestone is the only nice spot in this whole mall. The Goodwill is in pretty bad shape. With the condition of the exterior of the building, we can also speculate that the roof is in bad shape as well. If that area got as much rain as we do in the Houston area, it could be much worse. I haven't seen a lot of auto centers in malls proper, but there were a lot of auto centers either attached to an anchor or just across the lot.
This mall was built around the time the population peaked in the area. I guess there was optimism that the area was going to grow more than it did. Alice is also close enough to Corpus Christi that shoppers can chose to drive a little bit for better shopping options. I wonder what caused this city to stagnate and lose population over the years.
This Goodwill reminds me of some of the stores I have seen outside of the Houston area. The stores in the Houston area are much cleaner and do a better job presenting the merchandise. There are not a lot of options for Goodwill to move elsewhere besides building a new location. One option would be to renovate the old JCPenney and move into that larger building, but who knows how much that would cost. I can only guess that the building is in very poor shape since it has been closed for several years now. The last record I could find of that JCPenney being open was from 2004. I couldn't locate a store closing list for the store so we can only guess when it closed at this point. I still haven't visited a thrift store in a very long time.
No problem, I am glad Mike was able to solve that mystery. I did a little digging and found an ad from 1998 for a tire shop called Expert Tire which had a location at Sagewood Mall. I'm not sure if this is the current Firestone, Goodyear, or something else, but I suppose it could be the Firestone: https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1120083/m1/6/
DeleteThis Goodwill looks like a low-budget operation so I can't imagine they would want to spend the money fixing up the JCPenney because that will probably need a lot of renovation work. Goodwill's only hope might be to find a new shopping center, if there is one, if they want an upgrade...and they probably do need one.
I'm not sure why the population declined in Alice. It looks like an oil town, which might explain a population loss in the 1980s, but not so much in the 1970s. I guess everyone headed to Houston, Corpus, or somewhere else. Unfortunately, that wasn't good news for the mall.
Well after possibly the longest break I have taken from the blog, I have a couple of days to catch up here. I apologize for the very late reply to your comment.
DeleteI can't remember ever seeing an Expert Tire store over the years. It is possible that the location was in the mall and Firestone moved in later after that business closed or moved away.
There is a nearby shopping center that had a vacant old Stage store, but it could have been filled before Goodwill had the chance to move. As it stands the Sagewood Mall site will just fall into complete disrepair.
Alice does seem like a town that retirees would enjoy, but growing families would not stick around in since opportunities are better in other towns or cities.