Pasadena Town Square, Marcoplaza, or Plaza Paseo are three names that all say the same thing: a dead mall. However, unlike every other dead mall in Houston, this one seems to have outlived expectations anyone has had for it. When I first visited the mall, it was during the Marcoplaza days, and the entire building was still open. My return to the mall would not occur until after the pandemic began. Dwindling mall traffic called for the need to relocate stores into a more central corridor around the water fountain turned dance floor. Much money was spent renovating the mall, including the Sharpstown to PlazAmericas conversion. However, the lack of traffic meant that even this smaller mall had difficulty surviving. Still, as of 2024, it’s the last dead mall truly standing. Greenspoint finally closed its doors in the last weeks of August, although Je of the Southern Retail Blogspot mentioned that he had noticed activity in the former Palais Royal, and a recent news article confirms some inline tenants are moving there. West Oaks Mall is all but closed, except for anchors and a single interior tenant, leaving Marco Plaza and its two operating stores as the reigning dead mall champion of Houston. While only about half of the original mall space is open, it is the most mall-like. Housekeeping still cleans the entire facility and waters the plants, and you’re free to walk around the entire space, even though only a small portion houses active businesses. So what’s in the future of this mall? Well put simply, we don’t know for sure, but we have some good ideas.
Based on a report from a semi-insider at the mall, the first development to occur will likely be the demolition of the Macy’s/Foley’s building and potentially that entire wing of the mall. Supposedly, this has been in the books for quite a while. The interior conditions of the store have been severely degraded since it closed, and reuse is likely out of the question by this point. A relatively recent cut in the water lines for the Southern corridor indicates that this portion of the mall may potentially be sacrificed for whatever new plans await. The mall was constructed on the top of a former neighborhood and required the city of Pasadena to allow the developers to close Ellsworth Street to connect the mall to the existing Foley’s. It’s not likely, but also not impossible, that redevelopment requires the reopening of Ellsworth. So what will happen to the rest of the mall? Well, that’s unclear as well. However, some observations we can make are that the anchors there are much newer and in much better shape than the Macy’s. It’s possible that the North side of the mall may escape the wrecking ball, but the dwindling number of tenants makes this a shaky prospect at best. A grimmer but realistic outlook is that, at some point, we may see the entire mall demolished for redevelopment. This area of Pasadena is not the population hub it once was, and it seems unlikely that any redevelopment would be entirely commercial. In the meantime, though, the mall can keep its title as Houston’s dead mall.
Macro plaza
Wasn’t that mall built around the foleys years ago. I remember when they closed down Macy’s the doors still had the foleys f on the handles. I try to go at least once a year to that mall and just take pictures of the changes. It’s weird seeing half the mall closed. Last time I was there the only way to enter and exit the mall was where the food court was.
This was my high school hangout in the early ’80s. Very sad to see it in this condition. Just put the old girl out of her misery and move on.