River Hills Mall Kerrville Texas October 2024

It has been a while since the blog has been active. Here is a second post for the day to make up for the long delay in activity. To see the first post of the day, click here https://southernretail.blogspot.com/2025/12/almeda-mall-with-macys-closing-sale-feb.html

Here is a revisit to one of the few remaining small-town malls in Texas. As of this blog post, the mall is still operating and does not appear to have been affected by the heartbreaking flooding that occurred in this area earlier this year. Unfortunately, the mall is changing as there is a 48,862 square foot Academy under construction within the mall. 

If any locals see this post, can you comment below and provide any updates on the mall?

This old mall walker sign shows the route through the mall. The main corridor goes from JCPenney to Belk with mall entrances at each anchor and the main entrance in the middle. It is a simple layout that was repeated in many Texas small-town malls.

The mall still retains the old school look of the past. Besides tenant changes, little has changed over the years besides some new paint and cleaning. And this mall is really clean.

Retro Hibbett Sports store with the JCPenney annex on the left. Hibbett Sports is still open as of this post.

Burke's Outlet changed to Bealls.

As you can see from the photos, this mall corridor only has spaces for stores on one side. One half of the corridor is taken up by the JCPenney annex and Bealls. 

Retro Bath and Body Works. Sadly, this store left the mall a few months ago.

The amazing center court with a clean and running water fountain. Hopefully this will remain intact when the Academy is added onto the mall.

RAC dressing company was in the former Bealls space. EntertainMART is now located here as of February 2025. To see the old location in a former Hastings store click here. The old EntertainMART building is set to be demolished for new businesses.

The Belk half of the mall is the quietest. Just a handful of businesses left down here. If I had to guess, this is where the Academy will go. As I researched this article, this appears to be the case as the businesses in this side of the mall have all closed.

This Belk store like the Nacogdoches Texas location is located in a former Kmart space.

The retro Arcade was at the mall entrance next to Belk. We will see the inside of the arcade in a bit.

Maurice's was one of the few stores left near Belk. It has since closed.

The retro arcade was still going. This picture looks more like the 1980's than 2024. Sadly, the arcade left the mall in October as what appears to be a clearing out of the Belk corridor. It looks like they will reopen at some point in a new location, but they auctioned off a lot of what was here. 

More photos of the mall as we wrap up the tour.

Elevate Pure Foods was a small healthy snack and drink shop. It looks like they have since left the mall and are looking for a new location. On their Instagram they mention an upcoming demolition of their mall location. Seems like the Academy will go up on this side of the mall 

A very retro Claire's storefront that has since closed.

The next three photos are on the side of the mall where the Academy will presumably be built. If they cut off this half of the mall form Academy, hopefully they will still keep the JCPenney corridor open.

Real trees planted in the mall! A rare sight in 2024.

More shots of the exterior to finish up this post.

Nighttime shots.

I hope you enjoyed this mall revisit. While it is sad to hear about the demise of yet another small-town mall in Texas, at least we got to see it and document it before it changed forever. While new businesses are always good for a city, this redevelopment has displaced some local businesses. Hopefully everyone affected will come back stronger than before.

 

Almeda Mall with the Macy's Closing sale Feb 2025

A 58-year run has come to an end. This anchor store opened up as a Foley's on October 3rd, 1966, before the mall opened. In 2006, this store along with the entire Foley's/May company brand was converted to Macy's. This store closed on March 23, 2025, leaving Almeda Mall without a major anchor store. Almeda Mall has struggled as of late losing Burlington in late 2023 and now Macy's. There are still 2 junior anchors at the mall, 365 by Image and DD's Fashions, but the mall is going to really struggle in the short term with the loss of Macy's. If all goes as planned, this anchor space may not stay vacant for long. Credit Houston Historic Retail for this news. It is also possible this redevelopment doesn't connect to the mall corridor from what I can tell from the site plan, depending on what businesses lease the spaces next to the mall. Either way you look at it, the mall is obsolete.

Link to the HHR story 👉Retail News: Grocery store planned for Macy’s space at Almeda Mall – Houston Historic Retail

Here is a peek inside of the Macy's. We will have more photos of Macy's to close out the post. 

The mall entrance.

Now for some views around the mall. The food court and Macy's corridor was mostly unchanged since my last visit, so I didn't get any photos from down there. Here are some photos from the Burlington half of the mall. While there are still some businesses down here, there were few people walking in this section of the mall. This is one of the mall entrances near Burlington.

The empty stores down here are looking rough.

The former Burlington mall entrance. Burlington used a little more than half of the first floor of the former JCPenney.  

A large gaming store took over the former Old Navy/Steve and Barry's location.

The directory hasn't been updated in quite some time. 

It is so weird to see these Amazon lockers in a dying mall. This is the same mall entrance as earlier.

Old school Journey's handprint.

An advertisement of Macy's that will probably remain long after the store is gone.

Back to the Burlington store. Burlington did the minimum to refresh this store while they were tenants here. 

A large portion of the flooring in front of the former Burlington is barricaded off due to water leaks. At this point, they might as well block off this side of the mall. 

Now back to the Macy's. This store was renovated back in 2008 after Hurricane Ike caused damage to the building. The first floor reopened, but the second floor was closed off permanently. 

Along with the renovations, the store also quickly became overwhelmed with clearance merchandise. 

In the final years of business, it was obvious that Macy's management was not going to keep this store going for too much longer.

The Toys R Us department had been moved to the other side of the store as things were being consolidated in the sale. 

Who buys these POP things? I see them overwhelming stores from Toys R Us, Walmart, Hot Topic, Gamestop, etc. These were Target exclusives at one time, lol.

If the clearance selection wasn't overwhelming at this store, the addition of the Backstage store really pushed things into junk territory. The store entrance here was permanently closed off as well. Macy's stores seem to have extra security measures for the Backstage departments with separate checkouts and the closed off store entrance here. 

Looking into the mall from the main aisle of the store.

Children's clothing had been pushed over into this small chunk of the store to make room for the Backstage department. Housewares and the smallest Toys R Us department I have seen were back here as well.

Here is the empty Toys R Us department.

Another issue in the store was the new floor from the 2008 renovation. Cracks, broken tiles, and loose tiles began popping up all over the store. If you pay attention to the next round of photos, you will see a lot of these issues with the floor. Tape seems to be the fix. 

A look at some of the random junk that was brought in for the store closing sale. A lot of this stuff was Dollar Tree quality merchandise at marked up prices. Buyer beware at these store closing sales!

A really messed up section of the floor tile problems at the store.

Now for the fixture sale. I am sure that more stuff was brought down from the second floor as the sales floor cleared up more. There was about a month left for the store closing sale at this point. 

All in all, this store had been in a decline for many years before closing. It was surprising that the store lasted until 2025 TBH. Macy's was able to squeeze out a few more years out of this store when it seemed like it was going to close after Hurricane Ike damaged the building. We will do an update post of the mall in 2026 to see how things are going.