Today also marks the 15th anniversary of the blog. I am a little late this evening getting this post out, but here it goes.
Thank you to all of the blog supporters who have kept the blog going over the years. Your comments, updates, and article contributions are very much appreciated. As many of you know, I am running out of ideas that I would like to pursue for the blog. The demise of so many retail favorites over the years has left the well dry. There are still a few malls out there that I would like to cover for the blog that we will have to travel to see. In the meantime, I still have some great articles in my backlog and a couple of local malls that will get updates in 2024 including my impromptu Macroplaza Mall video visit from this week. The mall has declined to the point that it may close any day now.
Now for the long-awaited finale of the Deerbrook Mall Sears, store #1417. This was my Sears store for well over 30 years. This store opened with Deerbrook Mall on July 18, 1984, and was the last remaining original anchor at the mall. The store is listed at either 137,990 or 139,578 square feet of retail space (two conflicting loopnet listings) on 2-levels. Sears closed during the Covid pandemic in either mid-March or early April in 2020. The exact date is unknown at this time due to when the Covid restrictions forced Sears to close off this store. If you know the exact date of closing, please comment below. My last visit was on March 10, 2020, and at the time the store was scheduled to close in early April. Malls closed statewide starting March 18, 2020, and did not officially reopen until May 1, 2020. Sears closed well before the May 1st reopening of Deerbrook Mall. Either way, this was the closest Sears store to me for many years. At one point, all of our appliances except for one, and three of our televisions came from Sears. Over the years, we have since upgraded most of our Sears purchases from other retailers. Of course, we bought a variety of tools over the years that will more than likely last through generations.
As of the publishing of this article on April 25, 2024, only a handful of US stores remain open.
Sears
Burbank California (reopened October 22,2023)
Concord California
Stockton California
Whittier California
Coral Gables Florida
Orlando Florida
Braintree Massachusetts
San Juan Puerto Rico
El Paso Texas
Tukwila Washington
Union Gap Washington (reopened November 6, 2023)
Kmart
Bridgehampton New York #9423
Miami Florida #3074 (Downsized March 2023)
Tamuning Guam #7705 (Open 24 hours)
St. Croix #7413 Sunny Isles Shopping Center
St. Thomas store #3829 TuTu Park Mall
St. Thomas store #7793 Lockhart Gardens Shopping Center
Now back to the Sears store at hand. I really began documenting this store heavily as it became apparent that Sears wasn't going to last much longer. Some of these photos have already been posted on this blog, but the majority of them have not. I hope everyone enjoys this long-winded post and we can enjoy this look back at Sears.
Exterior in 2010
2015
February 2018
I guess you can say this was when the store was still doing good.
The electronics department was consolidated into this small area in the back corner of the store. The electronics department previously took up nearly the entire back wall of the store.
May 2018
Look at the sale for SYW members. I took advantage of these sales to accumulate tools, clothes, and home goods.
At this point, the store was still well stocked.
Spend $40 and get $20 in points free. This was an excellent deal, and the deals would change monthly.
A look at the reduced electronics department. The remaining electronics were moved to this quiet back corner of the store. As we all know, Sears had given up on their electronics departments at this point.
Wow, that melted plug could have become a major issue for the store if that had gotten out of hand.
How did this photo get in here? Sneaky look at the Dillard's record section at Deerbrook Mall.
December 2018
Really wish I could have gotten my hands on one of those 125-year anniversary signs.
Kmart branded tarp.
The short-lived toy department reboot. Just as in years past, the toy departments came and went.
Another Kmart item.
Monty Mongoose, the toy department mascot.
Too bad I was never able to score one of these signs. The best I could do was acquire a few of the shopping bags.
Another toy department display.
The mall entrance.
Sporting goods had spilled into the former electronics department display.
Once Sears sold off their Craftsman brand, we all knew it was over.
More views from around the store.
The 2018 Christmas display was a lot larger than the 2019 display as you will see below.
I really miss seeing this store lit up at night. The Sears logo is long-gone, and the building is mostly dark now.
We are still in December 2018, but on a different visit.
More views from around the store.
Spend $50, get $50. One of their better sales.
For some reason, they always blocked off the auto center products after auto center business hours.
As of 2023, Deerbrook Mall still had the same Christmas decorations you see here.
November 2019
Fast-forward to almost a year later. The stock in the store was really beginning to empty out. The Christmas display was not nearly as full as the year before. Little did we know at this point that the store was going to start closing soon.
Unfortunately, we never got to see the finished product.
The entire toy department was on clearance.
You can see just how much the toy department shrank.
The electronics department was down to just a few small shelves.
December 2019
Now many stores begin to empty out during the holiday season, but you could tell that no more stock was coming in anymore.
The final items from the toy department on the wall.
The tools were really beginning to look bad at this point.
The Christmas department was already on clearance.
The short-lived Parts Direct counter.
Electronics department again.
Housewares department.
The shop your way point deals were blank throughout the store.
The store was staying open later than the mall for Christmas shoppers.
Final day of normal business. Wednesday February 5th, 2020. Get ready because this will be the longest portion of the post. I knew this would be my last chance to photograph the store before everything changed forever.
We start on the first floor at the East entrance.
The South entrance by the auto center is in the far middle of this photo.
This area of the store featured kids clothing.
The old school Key shop and Optical.
The Auto Center.
Sears Optical closed prior to this visit.
Venturing from the kids clothing, we have the jewelry counter.
Colognes, perfumes, and watches were also in this section of the store.
Women's Clothing and Shoes round out the first level of the store.
Now we will hop into the store elevator.
We pop out into the housewares department.
Mattresses were spilling out into the former housewares department.
The signage in the housewares department was looking really worn out at this point.
Missing tiles in this corner of the store.
The front wall of the store with the mall space on the other side of the wall. This corner of the store always seemed to be the quietest part of the store.
Backpacks had been randomly stocked in this section of the store. This center area of the store on the second floor seemed to be an overstock area in the last years of business. If anyone remembers, Sears/Kmart had gotten into the closeout business just before their bankruptcy.
More worn out signage.
Little by little, the shelving units had been coming down over the years. Several stores had even closed off portions of the store to store the unused racks.
Luggage has always been kind of an afterthought in the store. They moved around their selection often.
Moving on.
Electronic housewares, this area was another section of the store that had aisles. The stacks of boxed products on the floor had been taking over spaces that were previously filled with aisles. In the few Sears/Kmart stores open in 2024, we can see the floor displays have taken over many stores.
The escalator area had a nice illuminated skylight.
Here are the remaining electronics.
And that is it. 👀
As you can see from the rest of this corner of the store, a lot of the big box items were placed here.
The driving school was down this corridor to the right and the bathrooms to the left.
Appliances and mattresses.
Former Parts Direct counter
More of the appliances and mattresses. The back wall of the store was formerly the massive electronics department.
The back wall of the store had recently been painted to cover up the electronic name brands posted all over the place.
Some of the new signage.
Refrigerator parts and filters.
The checkout counter was pretty much the only leftover from the electronics department that used to be here.
They did a pretty good job of refreshing this area of the store once they moved out the electronics.
Even the older section of the appliance department had new paint and signage.
Now let's move over to the tool and sporting goods area of the store.
Products were stretched out pretty thinly now.
Sporting goods had also moved around over the years.
Diehard Battery rack.
Before the exercise equipment had been moved back here. Bicycles, table games, and team sport items had been back here. A lot of the former items back here had been phased out.
The tool department was in the process of consolidation.
Fixtures were being moved to shrink the tool department.
You can see the dirty floors where fixtures sat for years.
Now for more tool department goodness.
More shelving was about to come down here as well.
More of the floor displays taking up space. This section was the toy department up until late 2019.
Although the aisles were going to be wider, the tool selection was drying up. As opposed to individual tool pieces, Sears has been transitioning to tool sets in their stores.
Right around the corner from the tools is the Men's department.
Mattresses near the escalator.
Now back to the tool department.
Craftsman tool displays have been filled with Workbrand tools. I would have to say these tools are not a bad alternative.
The Sears Marketplace in 2024 has some really weird stuff. You could find some deals back in the day with points and free shipping. I bought several retro Sears and Kmart logo t-shirts. They could probably make a lot of money if they brought back some of the retro logos for sale.
Lawn and Garden. In 2019, Sears began eliminating this department, so the selection here was already bare.
Grills had been stretched out to take up space.
More boxes to take up space. This was where the Christmas items were just a few weeks before.
More views from around the area.
A few odds and ends left over from the toy department.
We will backtrack through areas of the store that were previously photographed.
Now we will walk down the main central aisle of the store.
The mall entrance is just past the checkout.
This area of the store had the short-lived golf department. Men's clothing was expanded into this area once the golf department was cleared out.
I know you may be tired of seeing the tool department, but here it goes again.
Lawn and garden, again!
The West side second floor entrance with the package pickup door.
This should have been a popular option for Sears shoppers, but they didn't promote this option enough.
Now for one last look at the mall entrance to the store before things would change forever.
As we head down to the first floor, the changes are just beginning.
The first store closing signs in the process of going up. The sale officially started the following day.
The same entrance we used earlier now had the store closing signs in place.
February 15, 2020
Now the store closing sale was in full swing. Due to the fire truck at the East entrance, we elected to go into the mall first.
Not much to talk about during this visit. Products were slowly but surely selling out.
Had to get a good view of the escalator skylight.
This sign probably should have been pulled a while back.
As with all store closing sales, the deals were not too good at this point. A lot of items were on better sales before the liquidators took over. Always do your research before jumping into these sales.
The fixtures started coming out early. Usually, the fixtures don't come out until the final weeks of the sale. By day 9, they were already piling up.
One of the tricks that liquidators use to clear out the store faster is to clear out and consolidate sections of the store to make it look emptier. It adds pressure to buy now before things sell out. But as someone who visited this store a lot over the years, I know that the majority of products for sale had been sitting here for years. I also took advantage of the sales for SYW members to gain bonus points that were really good deals. These "deals" were terrible, but the masses will inevitably fall for these sales.
Key Shop
Baby department next to the key shop.
Auto Center.
Empty Optical department.
More views from around the store.
Views of the exterior at night.
February 25, 2020, 10 more days later and 19 days into the store closing sale.
Humble and Willowbrook closed at the same time. I visited Willowbrook on February 6, 2020, on the first official day of the store closing sale. That post will come out in the future.
What a difference 10 days makes.
Space is really beginning to open up all over the store.
I did my best to cover the areas of the store as close to my Feb 5 visit as possible.
The back corner of the store where the electronics were located is already picked through.
One thing that I noticed at the Sears store closing sales is that the mattresses usually last until the last month. The mattresses that Sears carried were usually more expensive than you would expect to find at Sears.
Compare these photos to my Feb 5 visit.
All of the clothing had been pulled off of the walls.
The hallway to the driving school. Trash can was there to catch water leak from the ceiling.
More of the former Parts Direct counter. This kiosk had a touch screen to look at the online website and select products.
Odds and ends for sale in the former Parts Direct area.
Another Sears career sign.
Sears management really fumbled the key brands that drew customers to their stores. Kenmore, Craftsman, and Diehard all had stellar reputations and were the brands that Sears had exclusive rights to. One-by-one, the exclusivity was sold off to competitors, further hurting Sears.
At this point, large pockets of the store were emptying out.
We are going to pop out into the mall and back into the store.
The door to the backroom was open to peek inside.
First floor fixtures now beginning to stack up as the shelving units come down.
Back upstairs to see a little bit more before we wrap up this trip.
I kind of regret not picking up a shopping cart. For $20 they were not a bad deal. I did eventually pick up a couple of shopping baskets from other stores closing.
March 10, 2020. Final month of sale. My visit to the store while it was a Sears.
At this point, the Covid voluntary restrictions were beginning. The store was not very busy, not what you would normally see at this point in the store closing sale. I guess people were too busy fighting over toilet paper at this point to visit Sears.
The store was really empty at this point.
Even the wet floor signs had Sears logos.
Plenty of floor model mattresses still left.
Now let's go back downstairs.
A lot of clothing still left on the first floor. The walls had been cleared, but the racks were full.
Another peek into the backroom.
Sears stores still had the locksmiths on site.
The auto center closed and was cleared out. This was normal to see at the Sears closing sales.
A few more shots of the empty kiosk where the optometrist was at.
Empty auto center. The few products left had been moved into the regular store to sell off.
The escalator signage.
Little did we know at the time, but this would be our last visit to the Sears store as Covid restrictions closed off malls temporarily. It is unknown if Sears continued the store closing sale or if the store closed when the Covid restrictions were put into place. The store had approximately 30 days left before the scheduled closing date on this visit. This will not be the last Sears store we will cover though. Willowbrook, Macroplaza, and North Shepherd are still in the backlog. The remaining Sears stores closed throughout 2020 and into January of 2021 with Macroplaza being the final store to close.
I also have some video footage of this store that I will post at a later time on my youtube channel.
October 2020. Spirit Halloween opened to give us a final look into the anchor.
As you can see, the Sears signs were in the process of being pulled down.
Now for what I thought would be the last trip inside of the store. A 2020 Spirit Halloween pop-up shop.
Behind the scenes.
There were some really weird costumes prior to the 2020 election.
You can see some water damage in the ceiling if you look upstairs.
Now let's walk around the store. It was painfully noticeable at this point that the building is in poor shape.
The sidewalks are sinking around the store.
Water damage.
Old auto center entrance.
Airplane flying over, perfect timing.
The auto center signage looks terrible. Some of these signs are still up in 2024.
A look into the former tool and lawn and garden department. This is where Spirit set up shop in 2021 and 2022.
The sky was a perfect backdrop for this trip. The Sears signage was taken down shortly after this trip.
Even the sunset was spooky that day.
A few looks behind the temporary walls and curtains inside of the Spirit Halloween.
2020 was such a strange year. I am so glad that mess is over.
In 2021 and 2022 Spirit Halloween also opened up inside of the old Sears building but on the second floor. The Mall entrance was the only access to the store. The store set up shop roughly where the Men's clothing was located. I don't have any photos from this setup of the store unfortunately, but there was not much to see.
Now for the bonus stuff. Sears fixtures and goodies from my personal collection. Everything but the polo shirt came from one of the Sears store closing sales that I personally visited. These items are not for sale or trade, sorry folks.
I am not gonna lie, this article took a lot out of me. I am not sure what is up next, but please stay tuned.
Congrats on the 500th post and 15 years on the blog! The 1,500,000 view milestone was recently surpassed as well so this has been a real period for milestones at the blog and looking back at some of the great posts from the past. There just isn't as much interesting stuff to cover these days, but the blog still gets a lot of views so clearly there are people still enjoying the new articles and archived materials.
ReplyDeleteMike and I are going to have a special post at Houston Historic Retail which will go up on Friday, April 26th to celebrate the 15th anniversary of this blog. I hope everyone will be able to check it out, I think it'll be worth it!
I think the Deerbrook Mall Sears is a worthy subject for this anniversary post. With both stores being on FM 1960, both stores originally being in Sears/Homart malls, and with both stores opening within a few years of one another, the Deerbrook and Willowbrook Mall Sears are closely linked. Obviously, they both closed together, unfortunately, though the Willowbrook Sears did have a brief second life as Sears Hometown. It is a mystery to me when both Willowbrook and Deerbrook closed due to the unexpectedly short liquidation sales caused by everything that was happening in early 2020. Although I did visit the Willowbrook Sears during the liquidation, what ended up being my final visit wasn't supposed to be my final visit to the store. That said, I did end up back in the store when it was a Hometown store or at least there was that.
I went to the Deerbrook Sears a few times over the years and I always enjoyed my visits. Deerbrook had a few touches inside that were a bit nicer looking than Willowbrook, but the exterior was not holding up as well as Willowbrook as we can see in the photos. I actually didn't remember that Deerbrook had a Key Shop until I saw the photos here. I guess I only remember the ones which were in outdoor huts.
I remember when the N. Shepherd Sears became flooded with those Kmart tarps. What I didn't remember is that those tarps said 'Kmart Corporation' on them when the Kmart Corporation hadn't existed for 15-20 years before those tarps were made and Kmart Corp. was never based in Hoffman Estates. That is strange. It is also interesting that Kmart could get exclusive toys like that in the late 2010s.
I wonder what the story was with the fire truck. Maybe Sears was literally having a 'fire sale'. That charred outlet shows that they almost had a fire sale sometime earlier!
I still have most of my Sears appliances and I do miss shopping there. At this point, I'll likely never shop at another Sears or Kmart barring some kind of strange Eddie Lampert attempt at a reboot. All we have are memories, but at least these posts do rekindle a lot of positive memories. It also rekindles those sad final few years where it was obvious Sears wasn't going to make it, but like you said, at least we got a lot of unbelievable SYWR deals. In many ways, those were the real liquidation deals at Sears even if they weren't officially called that.
That brown Sears basket with the 1983 secondary Sears logo is a great find! I can only imagine how that managed to survive almost 40 years in the back of a Sears.
Speaking of 1984, here is a video from Town East Mall in 1984 on the Portal to Texas History website showing Sears and JCPenney's 'stores of the future'. That Kmart renovation program they discussed at the end didn't really happen until the 1990s and we know that wasn't nearly enough. The Sears and JCP look great though and I suspect the Deerbrook store looked just like that when it opened in 1984: https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1308958/m1/
It is hard to imagine what retail has in-store for us over the next 15 years. I'm not optimistic, but still, I'm sure this blog will do a great job capturing what is still worth capturing in the future!
I really enjoyed the HHR article looking back on the blog. It makes me think of doing a top-10 or more post of my personal favorites. I hope everyone gets a chance to check out that article and hopefully Mike gets a lot more traffic to HHR.
DeleteAlthough I have been M.I.A. here, a few updates have been photographed. I visited the new Atwoods store in Lufkin that took over the former Kmart and did a 2024 Greenspoint Mall update. Greenspoint has gotten even worse since my late 2023 visit. Yet another entrance has been sealed off from the public, and according to an employee of the mall, a few stores were broken into, causing the Finish Line to close. The Finish Line inside of the mall was boarded up so I asked about what had happened. There was also a significant underground water leak at the former Dillard's, and more water and humidity damage throughout the mall.
The in-store totes were really cool to buy, and I wouldn't have had them if it wasn't for an employee at the Pasadena store closing sale. When I went to buy the blue 90's era basket, he said he had more baskets in the back if I was interested. When he came out with the 2 older totes, it was a no-brainer. I gifted one of the totes to a local who grew up going to both Pasadena Sears stores. The totes were from around 1982 or 1983 when Sears used that logo.
The Sears video was great. Town East was also one of the few Sears to receive a renovation in the modern era. I am pretty sure that the flooring is still in the same configuration throughout the store as it was in the 1984 video.
One of the things we continue to see is the loss of older chains. Even healthy shopping centers have not been immune to the closures as we have recently seen. One of the few bright spots is that Ollie's is coming to Atascocita in the near future so we will get one in NE Houston finally. I think it is safe to say that Humble will continue to decline as the business corridor continues to grow a few miles North at SH99.
Sadly, the news out of Greenspoint Mall just becomes more grim. I can't say I'm surprised, but those Macy's and Dillard's anchor buildings were in such poor shape already and now things are worse. We'll have to see how long Greenspoint and Macroplaza Mall are able to hang on because it's really surprising they both, especially Macroplaza, are still open.
DeleteThe Lufkin Kmart won't be the same without the Walkman woman, but I'm glad that place has found a new retailer. It'll be interesting to see it, I think Atwoods is a good fit for that space.
There has been a bit of retail news since we last spoke. I'm not sure if we discussed the closure of 99 Cents Only. I'm not surprised about it, I hadn't shopped there in a number of years. They tried to pull out of Texas a few years ago, but then stayed for whatever reason. There have been rumors that the whole chain was in trouble for a while now so the bankruptcy news was not a surprise. Mike was able to discover that Ollie's is looking to take over some 99 Cents Only locations. Shoppers will probably like Ollie's better anyway even if they have less food stuff. On the topic of Ollie's, and 99 Cents Only I suppose, there is a rumor that QuikTrip is going to open a location at the Ollie's shopping center at FM 1960 W and Jones.
I suppose this is niche retail, but the Sam Ash Music Stores chain, which is a competitor to Guitar Center, recently announced they were closing the entire chain after 100 years in business. They have one location in Houston over on I-45 near West. That may not be a big loss for most people since musical instruments and recording electronics are a niche thing, but I recently bought wired headphones from Guitar Center and those types of stores are nice if you need to buy those types of things. Guitar Center still has a listening center for wired headphones so you can try them before you buy them which is pretty nice given they sell some inexpensive headphones, but some expensive professional ones as well. Hopefully Guitar Center will be able to survive. There used to be another music store like that, Mars Music I think it was, which was located on the backside of the old Memorial City Mall Montgomery Ward after Phar-Mor closed. That was almost 30 years ago though, obviously.
The big storm really did a number on my side of town. I don't think the long-term affect on retail will be much, but certainly a lot of signs were blown out along 290. The Northwest Mall area was also hit hard, but I don't know if the building took on any more damage. I wouldn't be surprised if it did, but I guess it doesn't matter at this point.
Perhaps I wouldn't write off Humble retail quite yet. There's been some talk about the New Caney Target and how it has not attracted a lot of reviews on Google Maps yet and the ones it does have are quite negative with a lot of reports of the store being messy and there being low inventory levels. People even call it a small Target which is strange given it is one of their new large format stores. A lot of new Targets across the country, especially the ones in old Kmarts up north, are getting terrible reviews...even worse reviews than the Kmarts in those buildings were getting before. Maybe the New Caney Target is doing better than the reports are indicating, but if not, I wonder if there is any chance it might get the same fate as the neighboring Sam's Club got when it closed not long after it opened. Then again, Canada aside, Target is usually more patient with new locations than Wal-Mart is.
Mike's readers really enjoyed the post about your blog and I think a top 10 type post would be a lot of fun! I know which posts are my favorite, but it would be interesting to see it from the author's perspective. Going through those old posts was a lot of fun. It reminded me of a lot of things which I hadn't thought of in a while. It is also sad to be reminded of long-gone malls and stores, but at least they were chronicled and your blog is a great record of that.
Part I:
DeleteThere really has been a lot of local retail news and weather events this summer. Beryl was, like the storm in May, quite hard on this area. I lost my power for three days during the May storm and then for four days during Beryl. As bad as that was, I guess you had it even worse, but at least you were able to keep some things going. I was able to stay with a relative with a generator during both storms so I guess it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. I didn’t get any property damage during the May storm and only very minor damage during Beryl which has already been repaired. I’m quite fortunate in that regard, but a lot of my neighbors are still cleaning up from both storms.
The funny thing about the New Caney Target is that it is actually quite a large building, around 133k sq. feet. That said, I don’t know how much of that Target is actually using as a salesfloor since I know they are keeping a lot of space reserved for online pickup storage in their new stores. It really looks like Target has lost their way in many ways. It is quite sad to see the wasted opportunity they had with some of those Kmart conversion stores. Unlike what they did at Meyerland way back in the day when they made that ex-Venture/Kmart space look nice, a lot of these Targets look worse than the Kmarts that were there before. Walmart isn’t any better, really. I was shopping with a family member and we made the mistake of going in the FM 1960 & N. Eldridge Walmart to buy a comb recently and found the comb the person I was with wanted, which cost all of 75 cents, was on a locked peg and there was nobody in sight to unlock it. Obviously, we didn’t buy it there and we just went across the street to Kroger and bought one which, of course, wasn’t locked. The shopping experience at Target and especially Walmart in modern times are worse than dollar stores. I rarely shop at those stores anymore.
I’m hoping the ease at which people can experiment with music these days will motivate people to want to learn how to play the ‘real deal’ and people will still buy instruments, but I’m sure that is probably a bit of optimistic thinking. Guitar Center has had their own financial difficulties in recent years, but hopefully they are on more solid footing now especially with one of their competitors going under. They did have good customer service when I shopped there recently.
I made a recent trip to New England and the Adirondacks in New York state. It was a wonderful trip, a lot of the retail up there is maintained to a much higher standard than the retail here. I was in Boston, but due to a time crunch (a crunch made worse by my original United flight getting cancelled due to the recent IT problems you probably heard about), I didn’t get an opportunity to go to the still-operating Braintree Sears, but I did get to go to some of the downtown retail they have there (and, surprisingly, they still have a ton of retail downtown with multiple downtown malls). It was a surreal experience shopping in and around buildings which predate the formation of our country!
I did go to the flagship LL Bean store across from their headquarters in Freeport, Maine, which is quite nice. It continues to be open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and they were holding a concert series next to the store while I was there. I’m not sure how much demand there is for outerwear and boots at 3am, but I will say the parking lot was packed during the day when we went. There is also a McDonald’s in an old 1800s house in Freeport which is a pretty strange. I also went to Crossgates Mall and Colonie Center Mall in Albany, NY, the two successful malls which are only a few miles apart. I didn’t get a chance to go to the Boscov’s at Colonie Center, which I think is still full of neon, but it is an upscale mall. Crossgates is the bigger mall, and I think it attracts bigger crowds, but I will say their air conditioning was a bit underwhelming on a warm, humid New York day.
Part II:
DeleteOddly enough, Crossgates has a Popeyes in their food court. I can’t say I’ve seen too many mall Popeyes. The food court has a Cajun eatery (aside from Popeyes), but it seemed to be a duplication of the China Max also at the food court. They had the same menus, display boards, and colors. You might be amused to see General Tso’s chicken being sold as a Cajun dish!
The supermarkets in that area are very nice. Market Basket is the famous one. They are not to be confused for the Market Basket which exists in East Texas/Louisiana even though they both have very similar logos. The New England Market Basket still build new stores (the store I went to in North Conway, New Hampshire was built new in 2023) as if they are from 1993 with drop ceilings, vinyl floors, traditional store layouts, large hot delis, and no self-checkouts (they do keep about 20 manned lanes open at all times though and each lane has a separate clerk and bagger with all employees wearing ties and aprons). Market Basket is very competitive on pricing, cheaper than what some of our prices are here even. As you can guess, their stores are very busy. I also went to Hannaford, Shaw’s (Albertsons, though slightly nicer than the Louisiana ones), and Market 32 by Price Chopper. They were all quite nice.
The Market 32 I went to by Crossgates Mall is quite unique in that it has a dark grey vinyl floor, dark grey walls, and a dark grey drop ceiling all meant to look very modern. It looked very modern in a classy way though, compared to some of the warehouse stores we have, and while I was afraid the store would look like a tomb, they had enough lighting to make their color scheme work. I can’t say it is my favorite store design I’ve ever seen, but I didn’t dislike it either. In some ways, I think the dark grey looks better than the light grey a lot of other retailers use. Link: https://maps.app.goo.gl/JmpL4fLHfRfRZjSN9
A lot of the malls in that region, like the Aviation Mall and such, are heavily documented on YouTube, but I didn’t get a chance to visit everything. Still, I was pretty impressed with the retail in that area. A lot of the urban/retail decay we’ve seen in Texas, and elsewhere in the country, has somehow not made it to that area….certainly not to the degree we’ve seen it elsewhere at least. Oh, North Conway, NH used to have a Kmart in a small mall. The property has successfully been redeveloped into modern retail (Lowe’s, Hannaford, a theater which I think was originally in the mall, etc.), but the center still has vintage Kmart In/Out signs (albeit they are glass/translucent plastic and probably lighted rather than the metal ones I’m used to). I certainly wasn’t expecting to see that!
Our Beryl pile was finally picked up this past week, revealing a huge patch of dead grass. But we are thankful that our generator held up under heavy usage for over a week. On the last day we blew one of the plugs out, which has since been fixed.
DeleteI guess the back side of the Target is where the bulk of the store sits. The store is definitely not nearly as wide as the Humble and Atascocita locations which were once Super Target locations. As you mentioned, the back of the store is probably for their online business. I go to the Academy next door frequently so I was hoping that the Target next door would be a good option for purchases.
It sounds like traditional old-school retail is still doing well in the Northeast. So many of the deadmall Youtube channels have focused on the Northeast, so it is good to hear that not all is bad up there. It sounds like you certainly got your money's worth out of the vacation.
Deerbrook Mall has a newer Popeyes in their food court. It has been there for about a year now. At least 3 malls in the New Orleans area have Popeyes in their food courts as well, but since that is where they started that can be expected. Market Basket sounds a lot like Randalls stores in the past. The Market 32 reminds me a bit of the nicer Rouses stores in Southeast Louisiana. Kmart stores are disappearing left and right, finding a relic from their stores is rare.
Speaking about deadmall Youtube channels, since a lot of the famous deadmalls are disappearing rapidly, you have an overwhelming amount of coverage of the few remaining dying malls. I guess my blog is guilty of this as well, but I can only see a deadmall so many times before I get tired of it. When multiple people post the same mall being covered at about the same time, it gets old quickly.
Sunrise Mall in Corpus Christi is another mall that has started to be demolished in the past couple of weeks. The Bel Furniture, gym, and Church will not be demolished and will remain open as the rest of the property is redeveloped. Recent videos show that the mall was getting trashed, and scrappers had been busy taking what they could out of the mall. It looked like Rolling Acres before things got really bad there. Smashed windows, graffiti, missing handrails, broken gates and sheetrock, water damage, dying trees, and layers of dust. Rumors of homeless and drug users living in the mall as well.
While there are parts of New England which are doing worse than other parts, Western Massachusetts comes to mind as an example of an area which is not doing as well as others, it seems that retail in New England as a whole, and certainly in the areas I went, is doing better than it is in most of the rest of the country. If you saw the crowds shopping and eating in central Boston, you'd probably think that work from home just isn't a thing there (and maybe it isn't, I'm not really sure). That was during the summer when a lot of the many university students in the Boston area likely weren't even in town so I'm sure that wasn't even the peak. Boston has their share of traditional malls, but they also have some smaller indoor malls with non-traditional anchors like Target, Ross, and Best Buy. These malls anchored by strong big boxes probably have some big advantages over traditional malls with department store anchors.
DeleteThe Northeast out of New England is not doing as well and I'd guess that's where most of the dying retail videos are coming from. Places like Upstate New York (though Albany, where I was, is a bit of an exception as the malls there are still happening places), many parts of PA, and Ohio have a bad combination of retail that was severely over-built back in the day and sluggish economies. With places like Maine and Vermont being quite rural, and with those areas having tighter controls on development, I don't think retail was over-built back in the day and I don't think they allow just about anything to be built the way that happens here and in a lot of other parts of the country. New Hampshire has more retail, but I think that's because the southern part of the state is a bit of bedroom community for wealthier people from Massachusetts and they don't have a sales tax so that certainly attracts people from other states and even Canada. If you get some time, you should read about Pheasant Lane Mall in NH and why the JCPenney there is oddly shaped! It is quite a story.
I'm with you on the repetitive dead mall stories on YouTube. While you do cover dead malls on this blog, they generally aren't the ones that have been covered many times over by others and you mix in a lot of other retail which isn't documented elsewhere. These days, I'm more interested in malls and retailers which are able to sustain success while also not becoming so cost-cut and cookie-cutter in their operations. Fortunately, I was able to see some of that on my vacation like with Market Basket and Market 32, and the unique mall situation in Albany, but a lot of this isn't really covered all that well on YouTube and the blogs. There is a lot of me-too videos on YouTube and that's a bit of a shame given all the interesting stuff out there worth sharing which isn't covered nearly as well.
You mentioned Rolling Acres, which certainly is one of the most famous dead malls, but I happened to go to Summit Mall in Akron back in 2011 and found it to be an interesting and successful mall. How many malls have Goodyear and Firestone as in-line tenants (I don't think the Firestone is still there now though)? Of course, there was almost no coverage of Summit Mall online at least back then.
Anyway, between your blog and Mike's, we're really lucky to have the coverage we have here in this region. There are some other great regional blogs like the Albertsons Florida Blog and Retail Retell's blog as well. What's great about your blog and some of these others is that you cover what you're passionate about and don't worry about how many views the posts will get like what happens on YouTube sometimes. You're not just sharing photos of these places, but you're also sharing memories of what it was like to be in these places during their varying stages of successful and less-than-successful years.
Sounds like the NE US has better planning for retail spaces than we see here and other places in the South. As we talked about in Pearland, the outdoor malls are just not a good option in our climate for the window shopping that mall retailers hope to attract. With our lax regulation, we have a lot of examples of retailers moving from one area to the next, especially Walmart. With our fast-growing population, we have so many areas in town left behind hoping for some kind of redevelopment. For example, the Kmart on Homestead was once again in the news for being a blighted property. With all of the promises of demolition, nothing has happened there. Houston also has pockets of wealth all over the city, so it is harder to pool all of the high-end retailers together. I guess you can say The Galleria is our high-end area, but I would say that it is probably less than 50% of the retailers operating there now. It says a lot that Bloomingdales does not have a store in Houston. Even the Macy's at The Galleria is not much different than every other Macy's store in the area.
DeleteThe Pheasant Lane Mall JCPenney story is a pretty funny one. The site plans were definitely a huge mistake and would have messed up the tax situation for the States and the customers. You can easily see the adjustment they made to the store on the mall map.
As far as the difference between Youtube and the older blog format is that a lot of people seem to come and go on Youtube much faster. A lot of people are in it for the clicks and hope to make money off of the channels. I have seen a couple of mall channels evolve into something entirely different just to get clicks. Things can also get messy as we have seen with some Youtube groups feuding with others. It seems rare that Youtubers can collaborate without getting into spats down the line, which is unfortunate. I think our group of Blogs and fans have a great rapport and we are here to help each other out.
I have heard a lot about Summit Mall over the years with all of the coverage of Rolling Acres and Chapel Hill Malls. I am not sure if I have seen a video from that mall.
Congrats on 15 years and 500 posts! What an accomplishment. Seems like this was the perfect subject matter to celebrate, too, given your connection to the store over the years. It was cool to see all the images over multiple visits compiled into one post like this. I definitely empathize with all that writing a long post like this takes out of you, haha. I struggle with that myself, but like you, I've got plenty more to share on my blog in the future. Very fun seeing your collection also! That "in-store tote" is perhaps the coolest to me. I still have the items you sent me a few years back, that was much appreciated. And I agree, one of those 125 Years signs would have been amazing, lol.
ReplyDeleteI certainly appreciate the comment! I have been M.I.A since that post, but I have a bit of free time today to reply to comments. A lot of my remaining posts are from multiple visits such as San Jacinto Mall.
DeleteEven though Kmart and Sears have disappeared from our area, I have still been poking around Ebay for items. Only one of our local malls that is barely surviving still has Sears signage, so I guess you could say they are still around in some fashion.
The in-store totes were really cool to buy, and I wouldn't have had them if it wasn't for an employee at the Pasadena store closing sale. When I went to buy the blue 90's era basket, he said he had more baskets in the back if I was interested. When he came out with the 2 older totes, it was a no-brainer. I gifted one of the totes to a local who grew up going to both Pasadena Sears stores. The totes were from around 1982 or 1983 when Sears used that logo.
Thanks for all your dedication in documenting the malls of Texas and particularly the Houston area, JE. I’ve enjoyed following the blog for many years. It’s my go-to encyclopedia for malls in Texas with highly detailed pictures that make you feel you’re inside the mall. This blog is not just a hobby but a selfless act of community service on your part for those of us who enjoy in-person commerce across the region. I tip my hat your way. - MP
ReplyDeleteI appreciate the comment MP, I have been M.I.A since the last post, but I have a bit of free time today to reply to comments. It has been a fun hobby over the past several years with a lot of unexpected finds and experiences. Glad you have followed us through the years. There will still be a bit more to see.
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