Tag: Mall

This entrance is just to the left of the food court entrance shown earlier. The eyebrow-shaped awning predates McDonald's recent fascination with the aesthetic by decades.

Happy Birthday First Colony Mall, sorry we sorta forgot!

Editor’s Note: Today’s guest post, written by my favorite scincidae, billytheskink, is part two in our Month of Malls! Be sure to check out Part One! -Mike March 2021 came and went, and we failed to wish First Colony Mall well on its 25th birthday!  Sincere apologies for this egregious oversight.  Hopefully this belated happy birthday post full of photos and reminiscence (and also more photos!) from a Fort Bend County kid can in some …

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Here's a mall entrance in between the Sears anchor and the old Montgomery Ward. The Forever 21 is where the old Luby's Cafeteria once was. In fact, the greenhouse you can faintly see off to the right by the tree was once part of the dining room. (Photo courtesy of Mike/HHR)

Happy 40th Anniversary, Willowbrook Mall!

Editor’s Note: Today we begin Houston Historic Retail’s Month of Malls! Our 3 Wednesday posts will feature all new Mall content! Lets start off Part One with Northwestern Houston Resident Expert Anonymous in Houston! -Mike Those who have visited the Willowbrook Mall area in Northwest Houston know that several words can be used to describe the territory, but ‘sleepy’ is probably not one of them in current times.  However, prior to the official opening of …

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The doors to the mall were non-functional which leads me to believe it's mostly closed.

There’s a dead mall in Stafford you probably didn’t know about

Howdy folks and welcome back, we seem to be getting to a great diehard core of readers here, and I’m really happy about that! I want to take a moment to thank the folks who keep coming back to read and share my content. Please keep reading, sharing, and commenting, that’s what keeps me going! Moving on to today’s topic, I’ll warn you up front, this is NO HIDDEN GEM, this is not a mall …

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Checking in on Meyerland Plaza

Meyerland Plaza is one of Houston’s oldest continually operating shopping centers. Opening in 1957 as part of the Meyerland Housing Development it underwent an extensive renovation in the early 90s turning it from a more traditional outdoor mall to a department store anchored shopping center. Only a few original tenants managed to survive to the transition. The renovation added new features such as a second story and a new Venture Department Store. The mall has …

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What’s left of West Oaks Mall

Update 1/2022: Obviously this article gained traction somewhere on Facebook, but I can’t figure out where. I was actually already in the middle of preparing a more recent update to the mall, including some photos from the last month. If one of you kind souls could share with me which group/page this post was shared on, I’d appreciate it! -Mike Welcome back, today we’re taking a look at West Oaks Mall. A place which is …

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Entrance A is the main gate for both malls, and was where Piccadilly once had a separate door.

Visiting Almeda Mall for the first time

In light of the recent publicity of my website thanks to a Chron.com Article I decided to visit the literal twin of Northwest Mall, Almeda Mall. The following may come as a surprise to my readers, prior to yesterday I had never set foot in Almeda Mall. I had of course driven by it many times, knew where it was, and knew its shared lineage with Northwest. Both malls opened in October of 1968, they …

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Katy Mills Renovation

Katy Mills which has been previously covered in this blog, is undergoing a renovation. Simon who purchased the malls original developer (The Mills Corporation) had not invested much in Katy Mills in terms of upgrades. Individual stores had updated their store fronts, but nothing in common areas. One of the first things to go was the “Star Family” a common mascot among the Mills malls. My understanding is that the idea was that you and …

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Katy Mills Opening Day

All images in this post were taken by Darel Rex Finley. With his permission, I have used them to write this post. When Katy Mills Mall opened in 1999, it wasn’t surrounded by much. To the South, two recently developed and unfinished neighborhoods, Pin Oak Village and Falcon Point. To the North, downtown “Old Katy”. With no development to the East or West. Even the outparcels of the mall were underdeveloped, with a Walmart and …

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Northwest Mall June 2017 Update

Northwest Mall closed the interior of the mall on March 31st, 2017. It was a sad and unexpected occasion. I made a final visit to the mall to try to talk to some of the shop owners. I found that everyone was unaware of the closure, until Mid-March, and for the most part, lacked concrete plans of where to go or what to do next. Once the mall closed, the interior sat untouched for a …

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