Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a guest submission from HHR’s good friend Anonymous in Houston Every so often, someone in the retail enthusiast community will stumble upon great sources of retail history in unlikely or hidden corners of the Internet. Loyal Houston Historic Retail readers will know that in just the last few months, we’ve managed to find a large repository of retail news videos clips at The Portal to Texas History website and we …
Read moreCategory: Department Stores
Retail News: Ollie’s holds grand opening, despite hurricane
Howdy folks, welcome to another edition of Retail News, and this week we have some good news! Ollie’s Bargain Outlet was able to hold their scheduled grand opening on Wednesday, September 15th, despite Hurricane Nicholas making landfall just a day before. It seems that so far Ollie’s is a hit! Fellow retail watcher, Anonymous in Houston, noted that nearly 50 photos has been posted on Google Reviews within hours of the grand opening. I had …
Read more
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 …
Read more
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 …
Read more
Permit Roundup: Sugar Factory Express is coming to Houston, and Memorial City Target remodels
Howdy Folks, I hope Monday is treating you well so far! As far as new permits go this week, we’re not seeing too much but what we do have is yummy, so we’ll start with the new end with the old. Sugar Factory Express has filed a demolition permit for the space they’re moving into in Galleria I. If you’re like me, then you’ve probably never heard of Sugar Factory, much less their Express variant. …
Read more
Permit Roundup: A new Raising Canes, a converted Dunkin’ Donuts, and a few others
Howdy, folks, and welcome back to another permit roundup! Last week, we unfortunately had to skip our permit roundup due to lack of content! So let’s start off with the only permit I really did skip over last week. 7-Eleven had filed building plans at 10670 W Little York Rd, Houston, TX 77041, which would put it opposite Beltway 8 from a Valero/Circle K. Moving onto this week, let’s start off with another new built …
Read more
Permit Roundup: P.F. Chang’s on the move from Highland Village
P.F. Changs on the move from Highland Village, and other new restaurants In 1996 P.F. Chang’s was a four restaurant chain, with 3 restaurants in Southern California, and one in Scottsdale, AZ. The same year executives, including some former Brinker folks, set their eyes on Houston for their first restaurant in Texas, and while I can’t confirm it, I believe this may have been the 5th location ever. The restaurant was built into new space …
Read more
Eye on “The Ion” an inside look at the former Midtown Sears
Editor’s Note: Today’s post comes to us from friend of the blog, and frequent commenter, billytheskink. While he self describes as a lizard, I find his writing to be vibrant as a Macaw. As a reader of a blog about historic Houston retail, you no doubt know that Rice University’s planned renovation of the former Midtown Sears at 4201 Main St. into a hub for innovation, technology, and entrepreneurship has been well underway. The centerpiece …
Read more
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 …
Read more
Random Retail: Two out of place Big Box Retailers, and Two former Burger Joints
Welcome folks, today we’ve got another edition of Random Retail! This week we have a heavy emphasis on a former Wal-Mart, but not enough that it warrants its own post. If you’ve never experienced Random Retail before, well it’s basically a dump of photos I’ve taken that don’t really fit in with anything else I’m doing at the moment. A good portion of these Random Retail photos come from former Wal-Mart #597 at 7075 FM …
Read more
Recent Comments