Editor’s Note: The photos for today’s post were kindly supplied by Mike Richardson.
The Deauville Fashion Malls have long been a point of curiosity for anyone interested in retail in Houston. While many have fleeting memories of the mall’s brief existence, usually tied to Federated Electronics, even more Houstonians have memories of these giant off-price centers sitting at least partially vacant. Starting with a bit of history, the Deauville Company did not start with retail but rather apartments. Their first commercial properties were strip centers, usually anchored by Randall’s, meant to attract residents to nearby apartments they owned. The first attempt at a Deauville Mall would not be the concept we ended up with. Instead, it would be a full-sized mall meant to compete with Greenspoint. It had enough backing that Melvin Simon was brought in to help develop the plan, and with commitments from retailers, including Montgomery Ward, it looked like the mall would soon be off the ground. However, the might of Greenspoint and litigation would quickly kill these plans, with Wards being given a spot in Greenspoint Mall instead. This would not, however, spell the end for Deauville’s plan to build a mall. Instead, they would pivot to hopping aboard a new concept at the time, the discount mall. There’s not much of a modern comparison for what these malls tried to be, but it was fair to compare that they were about halfway between an outlet mall and a flea market. They weren’t tacky or low class but weren’t prestigious true malls. However, this concept was meant to work in their favor as their retailers would be exempt from most blue laws, allowing the mall to operate seven days per week when mainline malls could not. With a new concept, news retailers, and money to push the idea, Deauville would construct four malls in the Houston area; however, this would be a touch too much.
When the first Deauville Mall opened in North Houston, it was incomplete and never would be. The malls would peak at about 75% occupancy, with many potential inline tenants not wanting to associate themselves with anything they felt was lower than a proper mall. Of those stores that did open, at least a handful were owned and operated by the Deauville Corporation directly. While this was not a healthy way to run a mall, it wasn’t impossible especially with anchors like Federated, and Kmart owned Designer Depot, the malls did have some appeal. However, shortly after the first one opened, blue laws were mainly repealed, making the malls a bit pointless. Deauville, who had straddled themselves with debt trying to operate the existing malls, would end up stopping work on the fourth before it opened. While two of the four would be repurposed as power centers and one as a hospital, the original mall would be essentially left to rot for about 20 years with only tiny bits of reuse found. During this time, the mall represented Houston’s only true dead mall. It became a popular spot for urban exploration, and to this day, a portion of the original mall corridor remains in public view. Other malls have died since these have, but the Deauville Fashion Malls still hold a special place in many people’s hearts.
This is such an awesome photo collection of the mall. I was hoping someone out there had better photos of the last corridor before it was cut up for other businesses. A big thanks to Mike Richardson for sharing these with the blog!
The Deauville Mall was a real time capsule that was rarely talked about outside of the locals. It is crazy that something like this exists in the Houston area with all of the growth the city had over the years. Even though most of what is shown here no longer exists, a the food court and hallway to the center court is still visible from the entrance next to Ace Mart.
These are great photos, I’m glad Mike Richardson shared them with us like he did with the photos of Randall’s #35 (Jones & West).
I wouldn’t say that these malls had stores which were exempt from the Blue Laws. Rather, Deauville and the Buyer’s Market Malls openly violated the Blue Laws with the assumption that the authorities would not go after them because the Blue Laws themselves were unpopular with the public. Some other big retailers were also openly violating the Blue Laws, but traditional malls generally did not. Anyway, as you say, once most of the Blue Laws were repelled, these malls lost what little interest they had.
Some of the types of stores these malls had ended up having massive success. While Kmart’s Designer Depot was a failure, similar concepts like TJMaxx and Marshalls were a big success as we know. On the other hand, Federated and most of those other high-pressure electronics stores failed or were failing by the end of the 1980s.
While the Spring Deauville Mall didn’t do well, the associated power center anchored by the Loews Theater and Builders Square did do better. Visibility was a bit of an issue for that center as it was behind one of Houston’s lost landmarks, the Goodyear Blimp station (which now, in part, has a Firestone shop on the property!). There were also early 1980s outlet ‘malls’ in power center form as well such as the Willowchase one where Fiesta Mart is now over by Willowbrook Mall. In outlet form, that center did quite poorly, but it rebounded when it became more of a regular shopping center and when Fiesta Mart moved in towards the end of the decade.