The Sears at Willowbrook Mall closed sometime in April of 2020 at the height of the Covid pandemic. This is a store we have covered several times on the blog, but this was beginning of the end of the Sears era in the Houston area. Within less than a year, the final 4 department stores were closed. 3 of those department stores were replaced by smaller short-lived Sears Hometown store locations.
Here is my video of the Hometown location as it stood not too long before closing.
Anonymous in Houston shared a comprehensive history of the store with us back in 2020 when the store was closing. There is a ton of great information to go along with this set of photos. Thank you so much for this and I appreciate your patience as this article has been in the oven for way too long.
Willowbrook Mall Sears, Houston, TX – 1981-2020
The Willowbrook Mall Sears has been my local Sears since it opened in 1981. Department stores like Sears and the former Montgomery Ward have long been some of my favorite stores to shop at due to their variety, fair prices, and since the products sold at these stores are generally of decent quality even if they aren’t the most fashionable products around. Thus, it was sad to hear the rumors and eventual news in February 2020 that the Willowbrook Sears would close in April 2020.
Prior to the opening of the Willowbrook Mall Sears, most people in the northwest suburbs of Houston would head to Memorial City Mall or Greenspoint Mall when they wanted to shop at Sears. These malls were quite far for the residents of the NW suburbs given that Beltway 8 and 290 did not exist as we know them today. The booming growth of the NW suburbs meant that a location in NW Houston made a lot of sense.
Willowbrook Mall itself was developed by Sears through their former Homart Development Company. Sears also developed the successful Baybrook, Deerbrook, and The Woodlands Malls in the Houston area. All of these malls will be without Sears stores after April 2020. Sears chose great locations to build their Houston area malls and Willowbrook was no exception. The corner of FM 1960 and Highway 149 (later 249) was a quiet place in 1981, but the immediate area boomed significantly with solidly middle-class and upper middle-class homes when Compaq Computers decided to place their global headquarters not far from the mall.
Willowbrook Mall around Sears
Let’s begin our memorial to the Willowbrook Sears by looking at some of the stores around the Sears store in the mall. For decades, Sears’ next door neighbor at Willowbrook Mall was RadioShack. RadioShack opened with the mall and was there until around 2008-2010. GNC and Spencer’s Gifts have been near the Sears store for decades as well. As far as I can remember, GNC has been in the same location since the mall opened. Spencer’s has been around since around the early 1990s. I believe the Zale’s Jewelers has been near Sears for decades as well, but I can’t say for sure as it’s easy for me to ignore those types of stores!
Old Navy has been neighboring Sears for a number of years now. In the 1990s, that area was occupied by Suncoast Movies, Kay-Bee Toys, and even a Woolworth Express that was open around 1989-1991. The Kay-Bee Toys eventually moved across the corridor to be near the RadioShack in what is now Shoe Palace (at least a couple of storefronts were combined to make the current Shoe Palace).
The Sears Mall Entrance
From about 1981 to about 1995 or so, the mall entrance to Sears had a dark tile/brick façade with the Sears logo off to the side. Around the mid-1990s, during the ‘Come See the Softer Side of Sears’ era, the Willowbrook Sears got a typical white tile façade like many other Sears.
The First Floor
The first floor at the Willowbrook Mall Sears has not changed a lot since the mall opened. When one walks into the Willowbrook Mall Sears from the mall entrance, one will see many familiar sights that would see at other Sears locations. Right up front is the jewelry counter and women’s fashion accessories. This is a common sight around mall entrances at other Sears stores. The men’s department is to the right and the women’s department is to the left. We’ll begin our virtual tour of the first floor by taking a left.
The women’s clothing department takes over the front left-hand corner of the first floor. This area has not changed significantly at all since the store opened. The cash registers in the corner of the ‘L’ have been there for years and often acted as the only soft-line register that was open in the later years of this store. As one makes the 90 degree turn in the women’s department, one will see the escalators and shoe department over to the right.
At one time, men’s shoes used to be in the last part of the women’s department near the elevator before the appliance department starts. I remember men’s shoes being there in the 1980s and at least through the mid-1990s. My last memory of men’s shoes in their old spot was seeing a pair of Xavier McDaniel ‘X-Man’ shoes on a clearance rack there. I had to laugh when I saw those shoes. McDaniel was a good NBA basketball player, but he was more of a journeyman than a star player. At that time in the early-to-mid 1990s, mostly only top basketball players had their own shoes. It was quite a humorous sight to see Xavier McDaniel shoes there and it wasn’t a surprise to see them on clearance!
Moving on, we begin to enter the area with major appliances and the main exterior entryway to the store, the west entryway. The little strip by the door, which leads to the optical department, used to have vacuum cleaners, sewing machines, and tabletop microwave ovens in it for many years. However, at some point in the last 7-8 years, that area was repurposed to house major appliances.
The area which starts near the optical department and ends with the next 90 degree turn has had an interesting history over the years. For the most part, this area has served as the electronics department, but the electronics department has grown and shrunk over the years. For a number of years, the part immediately by the optical department had appliances in it (I remember buying a washing machine from that part of the store in around the year 2001), but eventually the electronics department took over that whole space. From the mid-2000s to around 2017 or so, the electronics department was walled-in with a glass wall. This walled-in electronics department was rather odd for a Sears store. I can’t remember seeing it anywhere else. I reckon it was done to reduce theft as the department entrance did have an RFID security gate on it.
The electronics department at the Willowbrook Sears was never as impressive as Electric Avenue at Montgomery Ward, but the electronics department was still an impressive place to be with TVs, VCRs, Hi-Fi components, camcorders, and so forth. During the mid-2010s, the electronics department gradually got smaller and smaller. The mattress department eventually moved from upstairs to the old electronics department and the handful of remaining electronics were shoved into the corner. Then, around 2018 or so, electronics were almost completely eliminated save for a few electronics odds and ends.
At one time in the early 1990s, the area across the main corridor from the electronics department housed a full computer department. Sears was a major contender in the computer retail game at that point, but they rather oddly eliminated the computer department right before the Internet went big in the mid-1990s. Sears still sold desktop computers for a number of years, but they did so through the regular electronics department. When the computer department closed, the area was turned back into extra space for major appliances.
As we make another 90 degree turn, we now enter the side of the store with the north entrance. The area immediately past the electronics department used to the lawn & garden/seasonal section for a number of years. At some point in the 2000s, this area was turned into yet more space for major appliances. The Sears Portrait Studio was housed by the north entrance doors. This, along with all Sears Portrait Sudios, were closed around 2014 or so and the space was turned into storage. Around 2017 or so, the Portrait Studio was re-opened. I believe it was open for Christmas 2018 as well, but I cannot remember if it was open for Christmas 2019.
As we get closer to the next 90 degree turn, we see power tools and the Sears Auto Center on the left hand side near the Portrait Studio. The Willowbrook Sears has an attached Auto Center which remained busy even during the years in which Sears started to struggle as a whole. The Auto Center, which had a large garage with several service bays, did not change much through the years, but an Avis and Budget Car Rental booth did open up in the Auto Center in the 2000s and was there until almost the end.
As we make the 90 degree turn on the main corridor, the area to the right is dominated by hand tools and garage organization products. At one time, this area also had things like ceiling fans, lights, and other household fixtures, but these were eliminated around the early 2000s or so when Sears was promoting their standalone Sears Hardware and The Great Indoors stores which both had locations not far from Willowbrook Mall before eventually closing. The left-hand side of the corridor next to the Auto Center housed the restrooms and lawn & garden department. This area also housed the seasonal department/Christmas store setup in the later years of the store. Prior to the mid-2000s or so, this area used to house tools and the store’s once-large paint department. As we keep walking, the sporting goods department is on the right-hand side of the corridor just past the tools. Around 2018 or so, Sears added toys to the sporting goods department. The toy aisle at the Willowbrook Sears was never as impressive looking as some other Sears toy departments I saw.
As we continue walking, we reach the exit of the hardlines and rejoin the softlines near the front of the store. Immediately around us is the shoe department, women’s shoes and men’s athletic shoes on the right, men’s dress and work shoes on the left. Let’s follow the main corridor to the left. We now enter the east side of the store, the men’s department. Like the women’s clothing department, the men’s clothing department at the Willowbrook Sears changed very little over the years. I personally purchased many items from the men’s department over the years and one of my last purchases from the Willowbrook Sears before the announcement of the store closure was from the men’s department in January 2020.
When we look at the exterior exit of the men’s department, the east-side exit, we see a very vintage “Thank you for shopping at Sears” sign which dates from the store’s 1981 opening and is written in the font and colors of the Sears logo at the time. This is perhaps the greatest retro element of the Willowbrook Sears which lasted throughout the life of the store. The opposite side of the sign says “Package Pickup” and the package pickup area of the store was indeed by this entrance. Sears also maintained a Parts and Service department right outside the package pickup.
The Second Floor
The Second Floor of the Willowbrook Sears saw more changes over the years than the first floor. If we take the escalator or elevator up, we each more or less the same point. This corner of the store housed housewares during the latter years of the store, but this was not always the case. In the early years of the store, the children’s clothing department took up this area of the store. In fact, I remember the video games were sold in this corner of the store in the boy’s department in the 1980s through mid-1990s at least. At some point, this corner of the store was turned into housewares. I remember this being the case in the early-to-mid 2000s. Then, around the 2010s or so, Sears put mattresses in this corner of the store before moving them to the back corner of the second floor some years later. When that happened, housewares moved back to this corner.
If we continue walking forward, we’ll see more housewares. The back corner of the second floor was roped off in the last year or so of the store, but when it was open, it used to house window treatments and other housewares. As we make a 90 degree turn, mattresses were housed in this part of the store for a brief time as mentioned earlier. Next to that was the women’s lingerie and sleepwear department. This was in this back corner for many years until it moved to the front part of the second floor in the last couple of years of the store.
As we make another 90 degree turn, we see some offices in the corner. This was the Sears Authorized Driving School for many decades. The Sears Driving School was the ‘Harvard of driving schools’ in the area. I can remember all the high school kids wanting to attend driving school at the Sears in the mall since it was at the mall and since they had nicer cars than most driving schools (usually Chevrolet Camaros and Honda Civics). The driving school may have closed around 2019 or so when the back part of the second floor was roped off.
As we continue our tour, we enter the children’s clothing department. In the 1980s, this area of the store housed the furniture and carpet departments that Sears used to have in their stores before furniture got moved off to separate Sears Homelife furniture stores (the nearest Sears Homelife was near Greenspoint Mall unfortunately). Eventually, this area was turned into a children’s department that grew and shrunk over the years. Towards the end, the part of the children’s department around the front corner of the department was turned into the aforementioned women’s lingerie and sleepwear department. The main second floor checkout area was located in the front corner of the second floor. For many years, this was the only checkout on the second floor, but it often was not manned during the later years of the store.
Like many other Sears locations, the sales floor on the second floor of the Willowbrook Sears was quite a bit smaller than the first floor. It should be noted that in the last few years of the store, the escalators would often be out of order and would be turned into regular stairs. This was the case during my last two visits to the Willowbrook Sears before the closing announcement.
With that, we’ve concluded our tour of the interior of the Willowbrook Sears. The general feel of the interior of the Willowbrook Sears was that it was a rather open place. Unlike some other department stores and some 1990s-built Sears which have each department in a fairly walled-in environment, the Willowbrook Sears had each department flow into the next with only little separation. I feel that this made the Willowbrook Sears feel a bit less upscale than some other department stores, including the former Willowbrook Montgomery Ward, but it did make the store feel rather large, bright, and airy.
My general impression is that Sears did a better job maintaining the interior of the Willowbrook Sears than they did at some other Sears locations. Some of the carpets, fitting rooms, and such looked a bit tired during the last decade or so, but the store was maintained such that it did not look like it was in disrepair. For example, when the mattress department was moved downstairs into the old electronics department, efforts were made to at least make sure it looked like a mattress department and not like an old electronics department. This wasn’t the case at every Sears I’ve seen in recent years.
The Exterior
For many decades, each individual Sears store had a fairly unique exterior and interior design. The exterior design of the Willowbrook Mall Sears was no exception. It is certainly quite different from other Sears in the Houston area. While the store has a similar color scheme and fairly plain look like the former San Jacinto Mall Sears which also opened in 1981, the three exterior entrances to the store at the Willowbrook store had a unique arched designed. The sandy color of the exterior brick was contrasted with dark brown bricks by the doors in the entryways. These arched entryways give the Willowbrook Sears a nice look, in my opinion, to go along with an otherwise fairly plain design.
The exterior of the of the Willowbrook Mall Sears changed very little over the years. The only change of significant note was when the original Sears signs on the outside of the store were replaced with new ones in around the mid-1990s. Unlike some other Sears stores which kept their 1990s era outdoor signs into the 2010s-2020s, the blue color of the signs did not fade in the later years.
The west facing entry to the store had a couple of additional doors in addition to the ones which entered into the main store sales floor. One was for the optical center, and one was for the hearing aid store which used to exist at Sears. I’m not exactly sure when the hearing aid store, which I believe was operated by Miracle Ear, closed, but I would guess it was in the early 2010s. The hearing aid door on the outside of the store had a green awning which was eventually removed.
The north entryway had the remnants of an outdoor garden center which was not open to the public for the majority of the lifespan of the store. I believe Sears would store riding lawnmowers and other things in this area. Sears would often park riding lawnmowers and BBQ pits in front of the actual north entrance doors in order to entice people to make purchases of these pieces of equipment.
The east entryway housed the aforementioned Package Pickup and Sears Parts and Service department. The loading docks for the store were also located along this side of the store. For at least the last decade of the Willowbrook Sears’ existence, an old Sears trailer was parked in one of the loading docks. I can only assume this was used for storage.
Final thoughts
When the Willowbrook Mall Sears first opened in 1981, Sears was still on top of the retail world. Discount stores like Kmart and Target were already established at that time, but Sears was still the destination for higher quality goods than what one would typically find at a discount store. By the 1990s, big box category killers and the discount stores gained more momentum. Sears wasn’t necessarily in trouble, but they weren’t the king of the retail mountain anymore. Shopping at Sears was still a good experience though. By 2010 or so, it seemed that Sears was already doomed. Product selection slowly decreased, and departments were eliminated over time.
In 2020, Sears offers their customers just a fraction of what they offered just a decade or two ago, but Sears offered Willowbrook Mall shoppers some much needed variety. Sure, Sears had many softline goods which are available elsewhere in the mall, but no other store in the mall offered the mix of blue collar and white-collar work clothing. Although the Sears appliance and tool departments are not what they once were, they at least offered goods which are not available anywhere else in the mall. Perhaps I’m in the minority with this opinion, but Sears will be a big loss for Willowbrook Mall. I know I’m less likely to shop at Willowbrook Mall now that Montgomery Ward and Sears will both be gone.
We’ll have to see what Willowbrook Mall’s management does with the vacated Sears space. Perhaps it’ll be torn down and turned into a mix of smaller retailers, restaurants, and other entertainment. This seems to be the trend at other malls. Hopefully the vacated store won’t sit vacant for a significant amount of time as has been the case at malls like Baybrook Mall. Since Sears developed Willowbrook Mall, they gave the Sears store the prime anchor pad at the mall. Having a vacant building on the prime anchor pad at the mall will not be a good look for Willowbrook Mall.
As for Sears shoppers in Northwest Houston, I suppose most will stop shopping at Sears once the Willowbrook store closes for good. Those who wish to continue shopping at Sears will probably shop at the N. Shepherd Sears. The only other Sears left in the Houston area is the Pasadena Sears at Macroplaza Mall. Of course, it wouldn’t surprise me if these Sears stores close soon as well.
2025 Update from JE. As we all know by now the final 2 department store Sears locations in the Houston area closed in August of 2020 and January of 2021. After a short-lived run as a Sears Hometown store, this location closed yet again in September of 2022. As for now the site is poised to become a Round-1 and Primark store.
Now for the store closing sale photos. This is day one of the sale, so things are still looking close to normal. Also, just take a moment to appreciate the exterior of this store.
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Wow, it is great to relive all the memories I have of this store through these photographs. I'm glad you were able to get some photos of the store before the liquidation sale really took over and the store lost some of the organization they had prior to the liquidation. Of course, we never got to see the entire liquidation sale at Willowbrook and Deerbrook due to the Covid lockdowns. I did visit this store once or twice during the liquidation, but my last visit wasn't supposed to be the last. Of course, when Sears Hometown opened, I did get to visit the store again anyway, but the Hometown chapter is so strange. It really had to be seen to be believed what Sears was trying and why they were even trying it. I suppose we still don't have an answer as to why.
ReplyDeleteThe closure of the Sears Optical Department happened right before the store went into liquidation. I think all Sears Opticals closed at that time, so it was just a coincidence, but it was kind of a preview of things to come. At the time, I was visiting this store a lot because I had taken advantage of one of those 'Spend $100, get $200 back' type points promotions that Sears had at the time and I did spend $100 during Christmas season so I was coming back to the store often to redeem my points.
It is kind of funny because if you compare these photos to a modern Sears store which is still hanging on, this store looks full of merchandise. However, at the time, it seemed like the inventory had thinned out quite a bit compared to a couple years prior when Sears went into bankruptcy. In reality, the inventory had thinned by quite a bit, especially electronics which barely even existed at this point, but a lot of departments still had a lot to offer even in very early 2020.
There's no other way to put it, I miss this store a lot even with it being gone for five years now. I miss Montgomery Ward a lot too even with it now being, what, 25 years since they closed. I suppose my comments from 2020 showed how much I liked this store and how many memories I had of it over the years even when it was still around. I'm glad that the building has found new tenants rather than being demolished like the old Joske's was years ago, but I'm not sure if I have any reason to go to either Round 1 or Primark. The exterior renovations being done by Round 1 aren't promising so far, from what I've seen, so hopefully that won't be the end result.
Certainly Willowbrook Mall is far less interesting now than when Sears was still around. I still shop at the anchors on occasion, but none as often as I did when Sears was still around. I consider the Xfinity store to be the most exciting store at the mall these days. No offense to the Comcast/Xfinity people since they do have a pretty nice retail storefront at the mall, but that is kind of sad.
Anyway, thanks for putting all this together. I'm glad I was able to contribute to the effort to memorialize this Sears location.
I really appreciate your contributions to this article, and I am sure our readers are thankful as well. Covid really messed things up for a lot of retailers and we are still feeling the aftereffects in 2025. I was also expecting to visit this store at least one more time before it closed. The few remaining Sears stores seem to be downsizing even more drastically than we saw in 2020. I know the El Paso store is consolidating down to one floor, making way for a new Pathmark store.
DeleteThe Hometown store experiment was so weird. I wonder how the economics of these short-lived stores fared. I know the Pasadena store was burglarized after talking to the manager one day. Just the cost of powering up the HVAC units and the store had to have been tremendous. By my estimate they only used about 10% of the available store space for these stores. The crazy part of the Hometown experiment is that even the franchisees had to go out of business not too long after the department store Hometown stores closed.
It is good that this anchor will not be torn down. Willowbrook is finally going to have all anchor spaces filled again once the new tenants open up. Baybrook Mall OTH now has the Forever 21 anchor vacancy after finally getting a long-term tenant for the old Sears.
Speaking of Sears conversions, the Deerbrook Mall Score Entertainment is on track for a November 2025 opening. A few articles came out finally with news we have known for a while. With the completion of the Sears conversion, the mall will only have the downsized Forever 21 anchor vacancy. Maybe Super Nova Furniture will expand into that space and reopen the closed off escalator. When Forever 21 first started having problems, the Deerbrook Mall store was downsized to one floor. Super Nova took over the second floor of the former Mervyn's space.
Willowbrook has a retro video game and card store between Dillard's and the food court that is worth a visit. At the moment Deerbrook doesn't have any retro video game stores. I know these places are not huge draws, but for me they make for a fun trip to the mall. Besides shoes and the occasional Gamestop visit, there is not much for me in most malls. The mall in College Station has a really cool store called Murdochs that is like Atwoods, but I doubt we will see any of those in Houston area malls any time soon.