Here is a new mall to the blog and the first of three in Corsicana Texas. College Park Mall opened on November 17, 1983 with JCPenney, Bealls, and Walmart as the anchors to the mall. Tenants included Aladdin's Castle, Athlete's Foot, Cato, Circus World (pictured on this link), Corn Dog 7, Don's Humidor and Coffee Beans, Famous Chocolate Chip Cookie, Gordon's Jewelers, Hastings Records and Tapes, Kinney Shoes, Peanut Shack, Regis Hair Stylists, Revco Drugs, Royal Optical, Summit Stationers, T-shirts Etcetera, and United Jewelers and Distributors. The mall opened in 3 phases, with the final phase opening on March 7, 1984.
The mall is listed as 222,000 square feet of retail space. That number may not include the former Walmart/Atwoods building. JCPenney closed sometime presumably in the late 90's early 2000's and became Goody's which lasted until the company folded in early 2009. The first section of the mall to be redeveloped in late 2012 was the JCPenney corridor.
Today the interior mall has been mostly absorbed by the big box stores as the property gets redeveloped one piece at a time. A small portion of the center court remains. The interior mall is only accessible when the driving school is open.
April 2021
Bealls closed in 2020 along with the rest of the chain. Later in 2021 the larger Bealls store was replaced by Burke's Outlet which has since been renamed Bealls. The original Bealls anchor in the center court of the mall moved to the former JCPenney space in late 2012.
The only remaining mall entrance. At the time, I did not know that the car parked at the door is from the driving school to show that they are open.
Atwoods was formerly Walmart until they moved across the street to a Supercenter location in the early 2000's.
Craftsman tools before they were common to see at Lowe's.
Atwoods still retains the look of the former Walmart, but the floors were stripped away at some point. I am curious to see how the Atwoods in Lufkin turns out inside of the former Kmart. Atwoods is what I picture as a modern-day general store. They sell food, drinks, clothes, guns, tools, garden supplies, animal food, live chickens, and so much more. You can easily spend an hour at this place.
The stretch from one end of the mall to the other. We are standing at the entrance to Atwoods.
As the evening progressed the car at the entrance was gone so we were able to get a look inside. Sadly, the doors were now locked.
The Bealls mall entrance stands out.
Planet Fitness
The Atwoods building still looks like Walmart.
July 2021
Med Now is also listed on the directory, but not pictured. There is a space in the back area of the near the former JCPenney where that business was/is located.
Now we will get to see the inside of the mall that remains.
Lots of cobwebs. Maybe this should have been the Halloween special instead. The mall interior was baking in the July heat with no A/C.
The center court of the mall pictured here is all that remains. The redevelopment here is very similar to what we have seen in Marshall and Nacogdoches where large store redevelopment began chipping away at the interior mall.
Pretty sure this was the Corn Dog 7 that we saw in the old Corsicana Daily Sun article.
Too bad the directory is still not place. From the looks of the directory mall logo, the directory was probably old school.
The original Bealls mall entrance.
The former jewelry store gates were open on one side. You can see the walled off former mall corridor here. Ollies and Planet Fitness take up this side of the mall now.
Old school Bath and Body Works.
This was probably the Peanut Shack. The former JCPenney corridor would have been just past the wall on the left side.
The walled off area was the JCPenney corridor. The spaces were filled in with outward facing tenants.
The corridor leading to the Walmart/Atwoods tucked away in the center of this photo.
The only business open in the interior mall, the driving school.
The skylight design is similar to what we have seen in many small-town Texas Malls of the early 1980's.
Now we will head back outside.
This was the only door unlocked to enter the mall.
Now for more exterior shots of the mall. The former JCPenney/Bealls lot had a lot of illegally dumped trash.
The back of the former JCPenney still has the old school look and covered up entrance.
Look at the carts that you can use at Ollies. Coincidentally, there is a long abandoned Super Kmart across the main intersection from the mall. In 2021 Ollie's only had a few Texas locations, now there are numerous stores across the state.
So now we will get a store tour of the Ollies.
Ollie's has so many quirky signs all over the place. I took photos of a bunch to see as we tour the store.
A view of Ollies and the Atwoods side of the mall as we walk towards the former JCPenney.
Inside of the former JCPenney now Burke's Outlet. Just a few months ago, this space was vacant.
The Bealls shoes space was still vacant on our visit. This store space is now occupied by Shoe Sensation.
Inside of the Bealls shoes.
More shots of the exterior of the mall.
The original Bealls location. The back of the mall was pretty empty on my visit. There is a sign for the Navarro College Cosmetology and Massage Therapy school. I am not sure if the college is still using this space.
I found this labelscar on the back wall of the mall near the former Walmart. I could not make out the letters to see what this says.
Merry Christmas to you and your readers, Je. I'm glad to see a Christmas bonus here on the blog! I suppose at the time that you took those photos, Ollie's was still a foreign thing to those of us in Houston. For me at least, Ollie's isn't so foreign now given they are in my area. Still, it is interesting to compare how Ollie's fits themselves into various different retail spaces.
ReplyDeleteJust really quick about Ollie's, I was recently at the Jones & FM 1960 Ollie's a few days before Christmas and I was at the Big Lots just before that. As opposed to what I thought would be the case, the Big Lots was actually busier than the Ollie's. In fact, I was able to get a first parking spot at the Ollie's and all of that. I wasn't sure what was up with that because I really thought Ollie's would be busier. Oh well, FWIW, I was able to find stocking stuffers at Ollie's and not Big Lots so at least there's that. Big Lots did have a cassette/radio mini-boombox they were promoting in their Christmas electronics display so that was kind of unexpected. I'm sure it isn't very good quality, but it was neat to see it anyway.
Atwoods is certainly still something quite foreign to us in Houston. For whatever reason, those farm & fleet type stores have not made much of a presence in this area. We do have Tractor Supply, but only on the far outskirts of town like Tomball. By comparison, when I was in Portland/Vancouver earlier this year, they had a few of those types of stores in the regular suburbs. I was a little surprised to see that given what we're used to, but maybe those types of stores are slowly making their way here. I think they would be useful.
I think a store like Atwoods is about as good as Lufkin could have hoped for in terms of filling that old Kmart. They sell a lot of the same kinds of stuff and, like Sears, they're a bit more oriented on home goods. I think those Craftsman items are the Black & Decker ones and not the old Sears ones. I've yet to buy a B&D Craftsman tool, but I bought so many tools from the last few years of Sears that I'm not in great need of anything.
I think that Atwoods would have looked nicer with a regular tile floor, but I suppose that look does work at a store like that. It might not look so nice at the Kmart so we'll have to see about that.
It is a bit strange seeing that car parked up at the mall entrance like that. I guess it serves the role of being an obvious reminder if the driving school is open or not. I wonder if United Jewelers & Distribution was originally an anchor or junior anchor, their stores were decently sized back in the day given they were competing against the Wilsons/Service Merchandises of the world and so forth.
The whole Bealls/Bealls Florida situation causes a lot of confusion! As for that old Bealls turning into Navarro College's cosmetology school, I suppose the exact same thing happened with the Mall of the Mainland Foley's/Palais Royal which is now a community college cosmetology/massage school. I guess it makes sense for those to be out in a high-traffic public spot since people might come in to get hair cuts and such from the students.
This post is about as far off as you can get from Christmas, but it is a new mall for the blog.
DeleteYou are right about Ollie's it was something we hadn't seen in this area yet. I wonder why they were not busy when you went.
I bought a few small Craftsman tools from Lowes over the past couple of years and a weed whacker. The labels on the packaging are not the same, but the tool quality doesn't seem much different. I actually bought a toolbox set from the Sears in Lafayette earlier this year as a present. Those tools are about the same quality as what I bought from Lowes.
I think the tile floor was taken away in the former Kmart in Lufkin for the Atwoods store as well.
With as many trips as we took to Dallas, this mall was not on my radar until recently after watching Retail Mix USA drop by the mall. What was even more surprising is that Corsicana had three malls at one point. The two traditional malls and the outlet mall on I-45. Corsicana has maintained a population of between 20,000 and 25,000 since the 1980's. Not exactly enough to support even one mall. Surprisingly, the outlet mall is still going even with the loss of the VF store that anchored the mall.
It is possible that the Planet Fitness was the United Jewelers store in the past. I remember going to those stores many, many years ago. Looking at the old newspaper article, you can almost feel the excitement they must have had for the new mall in 1983. The Circus World photo was a treat, you just don't see a lot of information about that store since Kay Bee was the main mall toys store across the US. At first, I had no idea why that car was parked at the mall entrance, but there are small signs for the driving school on the doors of the car. If that place moves out, that will probably be the final nail in the coffin of the interior mall. As it is, you have to be there when the school is open to enter the mall.
I am sure a lot of people who were Bealls shoppers are disappointed with the new Bealls stores. Bealls is pretty much just another Ross or TJ Maxx type of store with off-brand closeout merchandise. The Stage version of Bealls carried higher quality items and was the only place many towns had to get department store quality items.