Here is a quick Greenspoint Mall update from 2021.
We start the photos here at the old Sears Auto Center which has since been demolished. Mid-rise apartment buildings now cover this site and were awkwardly built just a few feet away from the main Sears building. In the future, I will have a mega post covering Greenspoint Mall. Things have rapidly deteriorated since creating this update in 2021. In fact, I would say the odds of Greenspoint Mall surviving 2024 are 50/50. Only a corridor and a half of the mall remain open. The rest of the interior mall is closed off. Fitness Connection and the Uniform Superstore which have exterior entrances only are open for business as usual.
I was able to save some red tiles off of the main Sears building. A lot of the tiles which were painted that bland cream color are falling off onto the ground. A little paint thinner and some elbow grease revealed the bright red original color. I will show those tiles off at a later time.
Now for the rest of the mall.
I am pretty sure that this was the last visit I made before the barricades went up sealing off most of the mall. More recent videos show water pooling in the closed off corridors. We have seen the rust spots inside getting larger over the years.
African Imports moved into the center area of the mall.
Georgios also moved into a spot near the food court, then moved to Willowbrook Mall.
I really want to see what is behind this wall. It has been over a decade since this small area leading to the former Sears was walled off.
More rust!
The empty food court. As of 2024, only a small walkway here is still open to the public. Metal barricades seal off the majority of this area now.
Former Tilt Arcade.
The fountain remains shut off.
This whole corridor is off limits in 2023. The Uniform Superstore moved to a building that has exterior only access near the center court mall entrance.
The old Montgomery Ward entrance.
And more rust!
Auchan baskets!
Found more rust!
Rainbow and Champs pictured here are gone.
Now to see the frozen in time Premiere Cinemas. The cinema never reopened after Covid.
Footaction is gone as well.
Taste of Tropics kiosk is gone.
Jimmy Jazz is the last store open in this corridor. Metal barricades block the hallway from going any further. Finish Line is also still here right next door.
Hook Up Fashions is still open as well. This business moved from the old Macy's corridor.
Electronic One is gone.
The former Foley's labelscars are pretty awesome. This building is really falling apart as it stands in 2024. Glass is broken all over and cinder blocks are falling off on the East side of the building. A 2023 video tour of the building someone posted on Youtube shows a lot of mold and water damage inside of the building.
Hopefully this sign is saved when the mall inevitably closes.
The famous Greenspoint Carnival.
As I mentioned earlier, this is not my last Greenspoint post. I have several 2023 photos and I am working on more in 2024.
Here is a teaser from the weekend after Thanksgiving 2023.
It is hard to tell which photoset is more sad, this one or the Macroplaza Mall ones from earlier in the day. Greenspoint Mall has more stores which are still open, but the condition of the buildings at Greenspoint are often in sad shape. At least Macroplaza looks a bit more solid even though it isn't that much younger than Greenspoint Mall. Greenspoint Mall has been neglected for a very long time though.
ReplyDeleteI guess you've seen those urban exploration videos of Greenspoint Mall which I mentioned in my reply about Macroplaza. That Foley's building is in really sad shape. It is easy to tell how it is crumbling on the outside, but the state of the interior was even worse off than I was expecting. That place was left to rot. I remember how fancy that Foley's was at one time, but Macy's really let it go and it was starting to rot to a certain degree even when it was still open.
Mike from HHR has researched the topic, so he'd be the expert on this one, but there is a connection between that uniforms store and Auchan. I think the local managers of Auchan ended up starting those uniform stores. I think the story was that school uniforms were a hot seller at Auchan and so the managers thought they'd do well to sell uniforms on their own. I think that's the story behind the French Toast brand of uniforms as well. So, anyway, I guess that explains the Auchan baskets. Mike will know more of the story, but I guess that is a good Cliff Notes version of it.
It is sad that the Montgomery Ward mall entrance area is closed off. That's usually where we entered the mall, if not from the Wards itself. I wonder if that knockoff Bag-n-Baggage store is still around elsewhere in the mall. That really dusty closed eating area was there as well. It has been 6-7 years since I've been to Greenspoint, but it was in sad shape then and I can only imagine what shape it is in now.
Exxon closing their offices really finished off that food court. It is hard to imagine how busy that place used to be especially when Brother's Pizza was around at the mall.
I was surprised they even built that theater there and I was not surprised when it closed. It is a sad situation, but at least they tried. I'm glad you were able to rescue some red tiles from the Sears, those were a distinctive feature of that store and auto center. That will make for a great reminder of the mall's better days...and crumbling days.
I look forward to seeing the newer photos from the mall. It sounds like things are going downhill faster than even I thought at Greenspoint. It isn't shocking, but I suppose the sadness will continue until someone has a good plan for redeveloping the land. The apartment idea next to Sears seemed to be short-sighted in many ways, but welcome to Houston I suppose. I hope that doesn't hinder the redevelopment of the rest of the lot.
Macroplaza Mall is in really good shape despite some roof leaks in the Sears corridor. Greenspoint has leaks everywhere, I even noticed a few buckets attached directly under the ceiling. Not sure if that is the best idea since the bucket will fill up and be even more difficult to drain out. I have a few photos of the different buckets I saw throughout my visits to the mall.
DeleteI am not going to lie, I am really curious to see the inside of that old Foley's building. The video was hard to follow since he didn't have good lighting. The old restaurant neon sign was an awesome find, I hope that can be saved somehow. That was the first place I tried out a Nintendo NES system as a kid. A very special memory that started a lifelong hobby of video games. I guess I could have tried the NES out anywhere else, but that is where my first experience with the system happened.
The Auchan connection to the Uniform Superstore is pretty cool. The Uniform Superstore has been in business for a long-time and they have multiple locations around town.
Bag-n-Baggage did relocate in the same corridor near the Finish Line with the same old school sign. I bet it was a real pain to move all of that stuff that they have in there.
You are going to really enjoy the more updated photos of the mall. There are lots of things I discovered while roaming around the mall. The food court is especially sad, I remember when it was full, and more spaces were added for more restaurants in the Sears corridor. Exxon leaving the nearby towers was definitely the nail in the coffin for the food court. The shutting off of climate control and most of the lighting throughout the mall is really hurting the remaining businesses. When we went there during the Summer of 2023, the temperature inside of the Finish Line was 85 degrees and they had a large fan running. Every other store we went into had a large fan as well and we were covered in sweat by the time we left. Not exactly a good shopping environment.
I am glad that I realized the Sears tiles were the red ones when I saw a pile of them sitting on the ground. I may go back for a few more. I am sure the owners of the Sears property got tired of waiting for the mall redevelopment to start that they kickstarted things. Once people start moving into the buildings, I am sure that they will pressure management to get rid of the old Sears. Maybe the owners of the old Sears are going to use money from the residential development to fund the demolition of the Sears building.
I have one more article under construction of the Fry's NASA post closure in April 2021, and I will post it later tonight if all goes well. This will put me up to 498 posts. Post 499 will be the Music City Mall in Lewisville Texas and Post 500 will be the Deerbrook Mall Sears on the 15th Anniversary of the blog on April 24. After that I have another 20-25 posts in my backlog, but nothing really groundbreaking. My remaining Houston area malls that will be new to the blog, Sears Willowbrook and North Shepherd, more neon Fiesta content, and a few revisits. There is one last new Louisiana mall Bon Marche to add, but that one if not very exciting since the property was completely redeveloped. San Jacinto will be a multi-post article since I have several years of photos. The well is running dry of new ideas.
It sounds like Greenspoint Mall may need buckets on the floor to catch the overflowing water from the buckets hanging from the roof! Given the rustiness of those ceiling beams, I would be concerned with them hanging water buckets from those beams because who knows if the rusty beams can even support that weight. I'd hate for a bucket, or beam, to fall on a shopper...not that there are many shoppers at Greenspoint Mall these days.
DeleteSpeaking of collapses at Greenspoint Mall, do you know much about the Montgomery Ward roof collapse at Greenspoint Mall about a year or so after the Wards opened? I found a little something about it in the Houston Chronicle and Post archives, but neither covered the story as well as you figure they would have given there was a major roof collapse at a mall as big as Greenspoint would have been at the time. Maybe it was covered in more detail and I just have not found much about it. It did look like a significant roof collapse from the single photo I've seen of it. Fortunately, nobody was hurt unlike what happened at Northline Mall with that wall collapse many years later.
I am looking forward to seeing those new Greenspoint Mall photos, they look really awesome. Those photos peeking inside the Macroplaza Mall were a big hit in the Houston retail community, we were all pretty shocked about that Macy's being cleared out like that.
I am looking forward to the 500th post/15th anniversary celebration post! As a heads up to your readers, Mike and I have something planned over at HHR to celebrate the 15th anniversary of this blog shortly after your 15th anniversary post goes live. I think you're really going to like what we have planned.
I can understand the point about the well running dry with new blog ideas. There really isn't a lot going on in the retail world around this area which is really blogworthy. You might enjoy covering those old Kroger Family Center stores which started out as Kmart-like discount stores in Baytown and Orange. The Orange one dates back to 1962. These are just regular Krogers now, and Mike and I already covered the Baytown one last year on HHR, but these stores have a lot of history behind them.
Also, the 40th anniversary of Deerbrook Mall and the 30th anniversary of The Woodlands Mall are coming up this year. I think these would be interesting topics to cover on the blog. Well, the Deerbrook topic is far more interesting than The Woodlands Mall one, but there are some similarities between the malls.
I can't say that I remember hearing about the Montgomery Ward roof collapse. The roof has been an issue at Greenspoint for at least a decade now. Who knows in what condition the metal is at this point. If anything does happen, that will shut the mall down completely. There is no way any maintenance is being done on the property at this point. I am guessing the only reason the food court entrance is still open is because of the need to keep the bathrooms open to the public.
DeleteI managed to get lucky with my Macroplaza Mall timing. In late 2018 the Macy's corridor was partially closed. In 2019 the corridor was reopened as the mall seemed to be on the verge of coming back to life.
I appreciate what you are working on with Mike. I am just glad ya'll keep the blog lively and active. Since my schedule can keep me away for long periods of time, ya'll have continued to support me. As for now once I catch up the backlog, I still plan on updating my old posts.
Man, I really feel old with those anniversaries coming up. A few years back, I saw a black and white photo of Deerbrook Mall under construction. As for the Woodlands Mall, there is a neat line of businesses on the second floor of the Dillard's corridor. A tattoo shop, record shop, and retro video game and toy store all bunched together. In addition, the pet store was recently completely remodeled. I don't remember seeing a single empty space in the Woodlands Mall, but I may have missed some.
The Montgomery Ward roof collapse at Greenspoint Mall in 1979 probably deserved more coverage in the local media than it ended up getting. I pulled up the reports from the Chronicle and Post and it seemed that one shopper and one firefighter did receive minor injuries due to the collapse. The Chronicle report said the Wards was covered in water and water was flowing into the mall from the Wards so the situation must have been really quite bad. Now that I think about it, I think Northline Mall also had some sort of incident in the early days of that mall which led to a lot of water getting into the mall. Anyway, I suspect the Greenspoint Wards must have been closed for a while for repairs. I hope this link works because Newsbank links are often unreliable, but here is the Houston Post report with a photo of the damage: https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/news/openurl?ctx_ver=z39.88-2004&rft_id=info%3Asid/infoweb.newsbank.com&svc_dat=AMNEWS&req_dat=0D1C2A34C3EF45E0&rft_val_format=info%3Aofi/fmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Actx&rft_dat=document_id%3Aimage%252Fv2%253A10EEA3FE61C5B8B0%2540EANX-NB-17506EE118CDDE6D%25402443985-174FDDC0DDE3474E%25400/hlterms%3A
DeleteI know what you mean about feeling old knowing Deerbrook and The Woodlands Malls are now 40 and 30 years old respectively. I didn't visit Deerbrook Mall, not that I can remember at least, until some years after it opened, but I did go to The Woodlands Mall a few times very early on and so it is hard to believe that it has been 30 years already since those memories. I still view The Woodlands Mall as being the 'new' mall on the northside.
I did see the news report when that record store opened at The Woodlands Mall. I hope it is still there, it is neat that there is a legitimate record store in a mall. I know Katy Mills has FYE, but FYE really doesn't sell a lot of music these days relative to other things they sell now. I'm sure some of these K-pop mall stores sell records as well, but it wouldn't be anything I would want to listen to much less buy, lol.
Even after 15 years, your blog still continues to offer surprises like some of the photos we've seen recently. It is really great to continue to get new content, your blog does a great job covering the retail in the area including some sides of it which the public doesn't often get to see like those photos from the last days of the NASA Fry's!
Greenspoint has a lot of history. Despite being a troubled mall for more than half of the mall's lifetime, it has continued to soldier on. I guess so much has happened there that it is tough to keep track of it all.
DeleteIt is hard to believe that most of the malls in the Houston area are around 40 years or older now. We haven't had a new mall open since Katy Mills in 1999 almost 25 years ago!
The record store at the Woodlands Mall had a few customers when we visited in March. Even more surprising is that the Barnes and Noble at Deerbrook Mall record department has grown and has good customer traffic that I have seen. The price on those records is more than I am willing to pay, but a lot of people will pay them.
The third to last photo of the current state of the food court looks really dystopian.
ReplyDeleteIt's unfortunate to see to Greenspoint in the state that it is in especially since it was built to as prosperous as the Galleria. I remember that old Foley's/Macy's store was enormous and it was built to be a really nice store.
I pass by Greenspoint when I go to work, and they are really progressing on those apartments in the old Sears parking lot. I think if those apartments were built a few years earlier, the tenants would have helped keep businesses in the mall afloat.
Seeing how the Fitness Connection always looks busy and the carnival does well when they bring it around, I think the area still has a chance to turn around, just without the mall. I think the best outcome is to tear down the mall except Fitness Connection and redevelop the lot as a mixed use area.
The mall at night really looks so weird with very few lights going. If you go across the street to the flea market, it is a much different story. That place is very busy, and most spaces are filled. If you drop by to check the place out at night, I advise you don't go alone. Security seems to be cut back to the minimum. I have a lot more coverage of the mall from my 2023 visit so stay tuned.
DeleteI noticed the lights are now on at the apartment building directly next to Sears. The construction workers were actually using the old Sears as storage, so I got to peek inside one day when they had the doors open. That building reeks of mold and mildew. In fact, certain spots inside of the mall have that odor but not nearly as strong as the Sears building.
I blame ownership for the current state of the mall. With all of the issues going on with the different owners, the mall has sat in limbo. It is good that the owners of the Sears site finally decided to start their project. Fitness Connection definitely needs to be a part of the redevelopment of the property. They may need to move into a different building since they are located almost right in the middle of the property.
How did the inside of the Sears look when you peeked in? Were you able to get any photos of the interior?
DeleteI was able to get one photo, but it was so dark inside you can't see much.
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