Here is a compilation of images from the long-gone San Jacinto Mall from our archives. The mall was permanently closed in January 2020 and the final anchor Macy's closed in February 2022. The remainder of the site was demolished in late 2022 and currently sits vacant. Parts of the foundation of the mall was well as two brick dumpster area walls are all that remains of this once huge mall. Since the mall's demolition, news about the future of the property has been quiet. Redevelopment was promised, but two years after the final demolition, nothing has happened at the site. Anyway, here is a look back at the mall as it faded away.
November 2015 Images
A rare look from the second floor of the food court.
The carousel after closing time. In addition to the carousel, there was a creepy clown playground up here as well.
Neon was all over the place in the food court. I really wish that camera technology was better back in those days. My latest camera can capture neon so much better.
A lot of the stores listed on the pilon were no longer here.
Maintenance had long been neglected in the former Mervyn's wing.
Mervyn's entrance.
January 2016
As you can see some of the ceilings had been painted over. A surprising development for an area that had been in really bad shape.
Not every area had been fixed, but at least something was attempted.
The fountain still worked but was leaking. I wonder how many malls still have drinking fountains post-2020.
The ceiling painting stopped at this area. I don't think it was ever completed.
Water leaks did a number on the wood floor near the old Service Merchandise.
Patched up
The old Service Merchandise entrance. Gotta love the wood panels.
Looking to the other side of the mall now. The walled off corridor to the old Wards wing. Water stains and roof damage had not been properly addressed for many years. Hurricane Ike damaged the mall in 2008.
Sears court.
A close-up look at the former Montgomery Wards.
One more look in the mall before we go.
February 2016
Fencing has been placed around the former Montgomery Ward and Bealls.
Inside of the old Mervyn's.
Sears court.
A random Sears lawn and garden photo.
Affordable furniture.
Marshalls just before the store moved out to a nearby shopping center.
Relatively quiet inside of the mall. You can see the patchwork repairs to the floor here. A lot of spots were just like that one throughout the mall.
More views of the Montgomery Ward just before demolition.
May 2016 Demolition of Montgomery Ward and Bealls.
June 2016 Continued demolition of Montgomery Ward and Bealls.
The Montgomery Ward and Bealls buildings were demolished for an outdoor lifestyle wing that never materialized.
February 2017
Marshalls after it moved out.
Sears with the new logo looks out of place in this old mall.
Former Marshalls entrance. Surprisingly this junior anchor would not remain vacant for long.
More views from around the mall
The water stains continue to get worse as time passes.
A peek into the former Montgomery Ward and Bealls wing through a hole in the wall.
The floor repairs had been too much in this area of the mall. Stained carpet replaced the wood panels here.
The Macy's court.
October 2017
Sears hardware department. Post-Harvey Sears was here to help.
The last TV for sale at Sears after they eliminated their electronics department.
Former Waldenbooks.
Former Kay Bee Toys.
Former Coach House Gifts.
Wall separating the old Wards wing from the rest of the mall.
Paint, materials, and equipment had been placed on the other side of the wall. During the day you can see some heavy water damage on the ceiling in this closed off wing. I tried to find my way into this wing but was never successful. I could only take these photos through a hole in the wall near the floor.
Former Sam Goody.
The Macy's furniture clearance center had relocated here from West Oaks Mall. Prior to the addition of the furniture clearance center, roughly half of the second floor of the store was closed off to the public.
The now empty field where Montgomery Ward and Bealls were demolished.
June 2018 Just another simple update.
The plants were real, just in case anyone was wondering.
The numerous old storefronts here were really a great 1980's-time piece.
This sign was recently updated and looked out of place at the old mall.
The Sears court.
With the new addition of Ashley Furniture. Ashley opened a short-lived store here after the remnants of Hurricane Harvey severely flooded the Houston area. Baytown and nearby communities saw some of the worst flooding in the area with some storm totals of 50 inches!
Why bother fixing the locks, just chain them up permanently.
Here are a few exterior shots of the mall.
September and October 2018
Former Mervyn's
Final visit in the Mervyn's corridor.
Ashley Furniture.
Sears store closing banner going up. 2018 was the beginning of the end of the mall.
With the promise of a new redevelopment.
Macy's and a new JCPenney are shown in this early photo of the redevelopment. Unfortunately, both anchors have left the site with no plans to return. The most recent plan from 2022 shows a basic big box center that looks completely different from this rendering.
We featured the Sears at San Jacinto Mall in more detail click here. We really hated to see this store go, it was a pretty good Sears store for the time.
A little bit of paint made this area look a little better, but the ceilings were starting to fall.
November 2018
The sale progresses at Sears.
Former Electronics Boutique.
December 2018
Little did I know, this would be the last time that we would see about half of the mall. Once Sears closed, the redevelopment of the property was supposed to begin. The first phase of the redevelopment would shut down all businesses from Sears to the food court entrance. Sears, Mervyn's, Service Merchandise and all connected mall corridors were to be demolished. The remaining mall corridors were walled off just outside of the food court entrance leaving only about 25% of the mall open for shoppers.
Ashley Furniture closed just after the holidays.
The former Mervyn's.
The former Service Merchandise.
The awesome neon Premier Cinemas.
Inside of the former Sears.
Sams Alteration, a long running business at the mall was gone.
The last Christmas season for this section of the mall.
Affordable Furniture was closing.
Former Kay Bee Toys.
With the former Waldenbooks next door.
Zales jewelry had recently closed.
Payless was closing too.
I didn't put two and two together on this visit. Just about every store was either moving or closing in this section of the mall. By early 2019, all of the above areas of the mall were walled off and were soon demolished. I would have gotten a lot more photos if I had known.
Now to the last normal side of the mall. The neon food court.
That is all from this these archives when the mall was still operating normally. I have a ton of photos from 2019 to 2022 of the mall to share in the future. It is really a shame that the owners of the property let the mall die without having a viable redevelopment plan in place. Just about every nearby shopping center is booming while this empty property sits there. I will save my rant for the next post.
Wow, I know you have mentioned having this photo collection from San Jacinto Mall and you have previewed some of these photos, but it is a real treat to see these photos of San Jacinto's last gasp. There are certainly many spots of eyesores where the mall became physically damaged, but some of the neon shots are spectacular. The one with the neon glowing and the polished earthtone tiles reflecting the neon, all with Rubik’s Cube like tiles above, really illustrates an early 1980s mall like this one. It is a great memory of this place!
ReplyDeleteWhile looking at these photos, I can’t help but to think of those old videos on YouTube, most of which are deleted now I think, where someone posted old VHS camcorder video shots of this mall in the very early 1990s and then played some videos of scenes from the mall in the 2000s set to appropriately sad music. I can certainly feel that sad music while looking at so many of these photos, unfortunately. That said, it is nice seeing some of those retro storefronts like the Champs Sports, the old Service Merchandise, the alterations place, and so forth.
Someone better call Marvin Zindler, there’s slime in the ice machine! Well, slime on the water fountain at the very least. Eww. Malls used to have plenty of water fountains back in an era before places could rip their customers off on bottled water. That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if modern malls still have water fountains, but they probably try to hide them near the restrooms, mall offices, or something like that.
That photo with the paint buckets in the closed-off corridor is interesting because I see some vintage Hi-Fi equipment just sitting there in the corridor. I wonder where that came from or what happened to it. Someone probably got some nice stuff if it worked! Also, I like how the mall painted over the functions the mall no longer had in that one sign. It certainly didn’t give much hope about the future of the mall.
As for the Sears, I had heard, perhaps from one of your readers, that the San Jacinto Sears was one of the highest performing Sears in the Houston area. I wouldn’t have been surprised about that because I think the demographics of the area fit well with what Sears was doing, much like Pasadena. Maybe that explains why it got the new signage. Even with that, and the yoga sign in the garden power equipment department, it wasn’t enough to save this store. Given what happened to the mall, I guess there was no saving it anyway.
The redevelopment plans for this mall about a decade ago seemed overly optimistic to me at the time, as I’m sure we discussed in the comments here years ago, but it is a shame that no kind of redevelopment has happened as of yet. There is plenty of retail near where this mall once stood. It is still a retail hub even if the mall failed, but perhaps there isn’t much demand for new retail space. We’ll see, I’m sure that isn’t the last we’ve heard about redevelopment plans even if we may have to wait some more years to hear more.
The San Jacinto Mall videos are back on Youtube. Yesterdays92 is the channel that has them along with the Tears for a Mall video of San Jacinto Mall. I just added the 2019-2020 photos with the final days of the interior mall. I didn't realize how many trips we took to the mall in those final months in 2019 and very early 2020.
DeleteI have even more mucky images from 2019 that are on my latest post. Thankfully they were mostly exterior shots, but a lot of the stores in what was left of the old Montgomery Ward wing had water damage and smelled really bad.
I always wanted to know how Yoga Gardening worked, maybe I will never know. You will see a few more sides of Sears in my latest post, just as the store was in the beginning stages of demolition. It was odd how the new store signage had already started to fade just before the demolition began.
From what I have been reading lately, work has started on the redevelopment at the site. I haven't ridden by to confirm that work has started. I wonder if Macy's will return with one of their smaller market locations in the new development.
As we have heard, The Almeda Mall Macy's has been heavily rumored to be on the late 2024/early 2025 store closing list. We recently visited Almeda Mall and it is deteriorating. Ownership seems to have given up on the mall and the Burlington side of the mall is really looking bad. The corridor from the food court to Macy's is still doing really well, but if Macy's pulls out that will quicky change. There are a couple of newer large arcades/game rooms in the mall but not much else new to see.