Here is another update from my archives, the Rivercenter Mall in San Antonio. As you can see the cool neon mall logo signage was replaced with a plain "modern" font. At least Margaritaville kept their festive neon sign up. My last post here wasn't the greatest so I decided to do another one during our great 2020 road trip.
This post may be misleading to some since we were walking around after mall hours. This mall has a lot of traffic normally, but we were able to get better photos at this later hour.
Macy's closed their store here in April 2021 along with the Rolling Oaks Mall location and the building is awaiting redevelopment. The other anchor Dillard's closed in 2008 and was completely redeveloped as you will see below. The mall still has a good mix of local and chain businesses and remains very popular with tourists and locals.
The majority of the mall is two floors, but the food court and river-facing businesses have a lower level making that section of the mall three levels.
One set of escalators to the right that goes to the bottom level.
Now we head towards the redeveloped part of the mall that was not open on our previous visit. This whole section of the mall was the former Joske's/Dillard's that closed several years ago.
As you can see, they did a pretty good job of matching this part of the mall to the older section of the mall. A two-level H&M is the anchor at the end of the new corridor.
The mall directory.
One of the cool things they left behind were these old doors from the Joske's days.
Dave and Busters and the AMC theater are two businesses that keep the mall doors open later than normal. There are also more restaurants and even a hotel entrance attached to the mall corridors.
Yikes, this was probably the emptiest I have ever seen this area. We were out around 10pm on a weeknight. Keep in mind, we are right around the corner from the Alamo.
They did a really good job preserving the old exterior of the Joske's/Dillard's building.
They even added some historical photos into the mall corridors.
Now for the second level of the mall.
I almost forgot about this section of the mall with the upstairs cinema.
I really like that these were not removed as part of the renovations. Nothing like mid-80's lighting schemes.
As you can see, there are multiple skylights that have the 80's lighting scheme still in place on the second level of the mall.
More scenes from the mostly empty mall.
You can see the view of the riverwalk through the large glass windows on the right side of this photo.
This is one of the corridors of the mall that kind of dead ends at the street. There used to be a bridge crossing over the riverwalk on the upper level, but this part of the mall was walled off due to low traffic.
More views of the mall.
Another cool area of 80's design are these glass tile floors. A few sections of the mall near the riverwalk have these as well.
The neon looks really nice with the lower tint of the mall lights after hours.
The entrance to the huge Marriott hotel.
One of the outside views from near the hotel entrance.
This one is for you anonymous!
And another glass tile floor.
Escalator to the food court/riverwalk level.
Food court and riverwalk level.
The glass tile floors from below.
The view of the massive Marriott hotel that is attached to the mall.
The grand entrance to the mall at the end of this segment of the riverwalk.
More of the restaurants and cafes at this end of the mall. The businesses on this stretch are located outside, but are attached to the mall.
The former Joske's/Dillard's building exterior.
Here is the section of the former Joske's/Dillard's that was left open to keep the historic church intact.
Views of the riverwalk from the mall. For a small fee, you can also hop on a boat for a riverwalk tour here as well.
One last view of the skylights before we head out.
Rivercenter seems to be doing alright even with the loss of the traditional anchors. Joske's becoming Dillard's here in Houston wasn't that big of a transition, but I'm guessing there was a lot of anger about that when it happened in San Antonio and with this location especially. I'm guessing the feelings were similar to that when Sanger-Harris became Foley's in DFW around the same time. It is a shame Joske's/Dillard's is no longer around at Rivercenter given the history there, but it looks like the redevelopment of their space went as well as anyone could hope for in modern times.
ReplyDeleteIt is neat to see images from the mall after it had closed. A Chucky poster would probably be scary at a dead mall, but maybe less so at a mall which has simply closed for the night! A Dallas Cowboys Pro Shop is enough reason to keep me away from Rivercenter, lol. I still have bad memories of getting stuck in a parking garage there in around 2000. Seeing a bunch of Cowboys stuff would only make matters worse!
Those lights in the floor are pretty neat, it is sad that most malls don't have neat elements like that anymore. Hotel mall entrances are always a neat thing as well so it is neat to see that here. There are certainly some older touches at Rivercenter, plus the historical local flair of the Joske's, but the mall doesn't feel out of date either.
Nice pictures! The 80s lights in the skylights and the glass block floors are very neat to see, and don't look out of place or dated even amongst all the other tasteful interior renovations. Cool to see the glass block floors from below, too! And I agree that it is nice to see the mall kept the exterior and the doors intact from Joske's, as well as those historic images they added inside.
ReplyDeleteThey did a really good job of keeping the old-school look of the mall intact. The nearby North Star Mall used to have historic photos of the mall as well but removed them at some point. I wonder what is going to happen to the mall with the final traditional anchor loss. San Antonio has a lot of shopping options, but this location downtown is a premium site. I would hate to see it turned into yet another hotel or residential property.
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