Here is a new mall to the blog. At long last, we made it to the Northeast tip of the state.
Central Mall is a decent shopping mall located in Texarkana Texas just a few miles West of the state border with Arkansas. The mall is listed as having 678,480 square feet of retail space and opened in 1978. The current anchors are Dillard's and JCPenney. Lilly Page and a soon to open Planet Fitness are junior anchors at the mall. A vacant Sears rounds off the anchor spaces at the mall. The Dillard's here which was expanded in 2016 is the second oldest store in the whole chain. 4th dimension owns this mall along with Almeda in Houston and Central Mall in Port Arthur. Kohan previously owned these malls, so 4th dimension has their work cut out for them to bring these properties back to 100% occupancy. Anyway, back to Central Mall.
Burlington, Five Below, Ulta, Michael's, and Books A Million are in locations surrounding the mall property. Here is the road sign facing I-30.
Here is one view of the mall directory. As you can see, the mall is pretty much one long hallway from JCPenney to the former Sears.
The exterior of the mall property. The mall entry signage looks really old school.
Dillard's
JCPenney
The South side of the mall.
The vacant Sears.
A quick look into the vacant Sears.
More views of the vacant Sears from the South side of the mall.
More of the South side of the mall.
Now into the mall we go.
A retro mirrored JCPenney entrance.
Looking down into the mall towards the center court.
A rare neon GNC sign.
I really like the high ceilings here; it breaks up the monotony of a straight-line mall.
A little bit of ceiling damage.
The Dillard's center court.
As we head past Dillard's to the former Sears and food court area, there are a lot of empty spaces.
The former Sears anchor spot. This store never received the bland tile 90's mall entrance update that most stores had.
The Sears mall entrance doors were cracked open to see inside. I wonder if I could have rolled them open to have a good look around. Security was visible around the mall, so I definitely wasn't going to take my chances.
Chik Fil A is still going with a few other eateries inside.
One of the two arcades in the mall, Silverball a very tiny one.
Now this is what I would consider to be a food hall instead of a food court. Not just a fancy name for a food court, a hallway with one row of tables and restaurants on both sides.
Back into the mall main corridor.
A nice tribute to first responders and military personnel.
Candy Craze is one of the few places left in this section of the mall. Another store in this area is the Lilly Page which is a lady's apparel superstore is inside of the old Bealls just across from the food court near Sears. This area matches the other court near JCPenney with high ceilings and wider hallways.
Now a look at the Dillard's corridor.
More mall signage and another mall map view with less reflections.
Center court of the mall facing the South entrance from Dillard's.
An interesting store near the South entrance.
One of the strange rules here is that unaccompanied minors under 18 are not allowed to be in the mall on Friday and Saturday nights after 5pm.
Back to the center court of the mall. A new Miniso store is down here as well. One of the few retailers expanding to malls as others close locations.
Looking down towards JCPenney from the center court.
This former junior anchor space was at one time a Dillard's Men's store. Not sure what was here originally.
More views of the mall in the JCPenney side of the mall.
And for the second arcade at the mall, Starlite Golf.
Starlite Golf has a nice mural outside of the business.
One last look at the mural as we leave the mall.
So here is my opinion of the mall. This is a decent shopping experience. Central Mall is doing much better than any of the Shreveport area malls located roughly an hour Southeast of Texarkana. Ownership needs to fill the vacant Sears anchor that is dragging down one side of the mall. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of options for a city of this size in 2025. Target, TJ Maxx, Ross, Cinemark, and Academy already have locations in the city. Dicks Sporting Goods could be an option since they are not in the area yet, but the city may not be large enough for their target population size.
That is all for this post. More to come. More malls, a new Toys R Us store, and more retail to come.
When 4th Dimension bought Almeda Mall, I remember researching them and seeing that they owned two malls in Texas named Central Mall, this one and the Port Arthur one as you mentioned in your post. It must be a confusing thing for their management. Hopefully their management skills are better than Kohan's as those skills will certainly be challenged at Almeda if nothing else!
ReplyDeleteThe strangest thing to me about the exterior of this mall is that the JCPeneny and Sears both have similar styles with that greenhouse look. I know JCPenney used that greenhouse look at a lot of their locations at the time this store was built, but Sears tended to give each store they built in that era a unique look and so I'm surprised they'd choose something that looked like JCPenney's standard look at the time. Perhaps the mall wanted the two anchors to have a common theme, though that seems like it would have been a rare thing at the time so I don't know.
It is probably a good idea that you didn't wander into the Sears because I'm sure security wouldn't have had a sense of humor about that if you got caught! The inside still has a classic Sears look, at least what's left of it. Those fixtures confused me at first because they didn't look like Sears fixtures, but I'm guessing those are from other closed businesses at the mall and the mall just moved them into the Sears. I wonder if the mall owns that anchor pad as opposed to Sears/TransformCo. It is also strange that this mall didn't get the classic white tile 1990s Sears mall entrance look, though certainly a few malls didn't get that like Abilene Mall.
This mall certainly has a classic vintage design to it on the inside. Some elements look like Almeda/NW Malls, but that skylight looks a bit like the Mall of the Mainland's food court one. Some empty storefronts and water damage aside, the mall looks to be in pretty good shape, all things considered. That mural on empty storefronts seems a lot more credible than the Mall of the Mainland's attempt to do something similar. At least the arcade theme works at this mall given that it has a couple of arcades, one of which, the Silverball, looks very retro.
I know you said that you've been to Springdale Mall in Alabama and that store selling dirt bikes, ATVs, and toys reminds me of that infamous dirt bike mall chase scene in that movie 'Raw Justice'. As strange as that store is, at least this mall isn't as crummy as that movie and chase scene, lol.
Speaking of Northeast Texas, did you ever visit the Sears in Paris, TX which closed around the time of the bankruptcy? It seems that it was located in a former early Wal-Mart that moved next door in the 1980s. Given the history of that building, the Sears very much looked like a prime Kmart-era discount store on the outside, and probably on the inside as well. There aren't too many photos of the interior, though what is available has an early Kmart/Wal-Mart type of feel to it. This is the Sears in question: https://maps.app.goo.gl/89d1EwFHQ977yiU27
I mentioned Abilene earlier, it seems the former 1990s Kmart there on the old Westgate Mall property has become a courthouse and police office. That is certainly a strange fate for an old Kmart, and maybe there are Blue Light Specials of a different kind going on there, lol. Next to that old Kmart is a State of Texas office complex, including a drivers license center, in an old ~1959 Montgomery Ward where some of the doors on the side of the building still have classic MW door handles. I think it is pretty neat that the state has been keeping a little bit of Montgomery Ward history alive where the public can see it! I doubt there's much of Wards left inside, but who knows.
Both Central Malls have the same issue with a dead Sears anchor dragging down one side of the mall. Looking at the online directory of the Port Arthur Mall, both Central Malls look to be doing about the same. The Target store has really helped the fortunes of the Port Arthur Central Mall IMO.
DeleteI wonder how many Transformco Sears stores have been sold off at this point. Since the store count of Sears/Kmart has dropped, they rarely make the news these days. The mall was fairly busy during my visit, so I definitely wouldn't have attempted to open up the doors to the old Sears. I really enjoyed seeing the wooden panel Sears entrance, those are extremely rare these days.
You can see the older elements of the mall throughout. Most of these small city malls seem to keep a lot of the older design elements even after renovations. One of the food court restaurants even had an orange cursive neon sign, but I couldn't get a good photo. The Silverball photo across the hall was easier since the sign was off. Normally I can get a good photo, but with all of the people packed in that area eating, I didn't want to get any weird looks.
Driving one of the ATV's around the mall on a weekday would be pretty fun without all of the people that were walking around on that Saturday at lunchtime. Even better, open up the old Sears store and let people ride around like they are going to do at Deerbrook Mall.
I never made it down to Paris Texas, but that Sears store would have been worth the drive. I bet the interior of that building had a mix of all of the former retailers. Kmart, Walmart, and Sears using the same building had to be awesome.
Abeline and the Central North along with the Northwestern side of Texas is an area of the state that I have never been to. Maybe I will change that someday and make it down there finally. The Music City Mall may still have neon throughout the mall, so I really want to see that before it is gone. It is just a really far drive, but maybe one day we will make it.