Northwest Mall falls to stagnating retail

Margo Warren Patterson and her husband walked out of Northwest Mall for the last time Tuesday and turned to take a final look.

She worked her first job at the J.C. Penney store there and spent her time browsing the racks at Foley’s, Sam Goody and Waldenbooks before those chains disappeared forever. She last visited nearly twenty years ago to buy her first cellphone, a T-Mobile

device with a retractable antenna.

“Those were the good old days,” she said.

Now, the J.C. Penney is long gone, as are many other retailers that once made the mall a shopping destination at Loop 610 and U.S. 290. Cavernous spaces line its mostly empty corridors, and nearly all of its remaining stores will go dark at the end of the month when

it closes for good.

The mall’s owner, Houston-based Levcor, has informed tenants that the building will close March 31. Only stores and venues with outside entrances will remain open, at least for now. Those include the College of Healthcare Professions, Thompson Antique Center, Palais Royal, Post Oak Club and Chapa.

The company did not respond to requests for comment.

The mall and its surrounding area have changed substantially since it opened in 1968, when enclosed shopping malls were still growing in popularity. The 800,000-square-foot structure, once anchored by J.C. Penney and a Foley’s, sits on 52 acres of land developed to park thousands of cars.

It’s now one of many malls across the country that has stagnated in a rapidly changing retail environment. E-commerce giants such as Amazon have for years stolen foot traffic from department stores and other brick-and-mortar retailers, many of which have struggled to differentiate their in-store experiences for customers.

J.C. Penney left first

On Tuesday, most of the stores at Northwest Mall had posted makeshift signs in their windows informing customers that they planned either to move or go out of business. Many advertised the sort of bargains offered only when everything must go.

One called All Shoes $9.99 was offering regular pairs for $4.97 and boots for only a few dollars more. Image!, an apparel store, slashed its prices in half and notified shoppers that it would relocate to Memorial City Mall.

Some tenants appeared to have closed already, their darkened stores still full of inventory. Other gated spaces had long been emptied.

Northwest Mall suffered its first major setback in 2000, when J.C. Penney pulled out amid declining sales. And Hurricane Ike, which swept through the area in 2008, forced the closure of a Macy’s store that had replaced Foley’s.

The mall also had to relinquish some of its parking to the Texas Department of Transportation when it began rebuilding U.S. 290 at Loop 610. The property now sits in the shadow of the massive highway project, which isn’t yet complete.

Eddie Fields, who recently retired from the energy industry, makes regular visits to browse the collectibles and oddities at the Thompson Antique Center, which occupies the former J.C. Penney space. The sprawling store attracts a fairly steady flow of customers, but he noticed the mall has continued to lose shoppers since he started going there nine years ago.

“It’s amazing how much it has changed during that time,” he said.

Ben Gutierrez, an 81-year-old veteran, has been walking the mall for exercise for more than 20 years. It used to be much busier before J.C. Penney moved out, he said, and these days, he has the corridors mostly to himself.

When the mall closes, he said he’ll confine his walks to the antique center aisles, which are stacked ceilinghigh with items he remembers from childhood.

“It’s a memory trip for me,” he said.

Future projects slated

The future of the mall hasn’t yet been determined, but the property is likely to serve as the terminal location for Texas Central Partners, the private company planning a high-speed rail connection from Houston to Dallas. The rail project faces a legislative battle in Austin, but already students from various Texas colleges have drafted redesign plans for the mall site that include potential retail, entertainment and parking uses, as well as a train station.

Several other malls in the area have been similarly challenged to retain tenants and customers in a highly competitive retail environment. Greenspoint Mall, Pasadena Town Square and West Oaks Mall, for example, will each lose a Macy’s location this spring as part of the company’s decision to cut 65 stores nationwide.

Drew Mehlhaff, a retiree who lives in the Heights, remembers many regional malls in the area at their height of popularity. He saw the premiere showing of Urban Cowboy, in 1977, at PlazAmericas, then called Sharpstown Mall.

“It was the place to go,” he said.

For Patterson, Northwest Mall was that place. She particularly loved walking through it during the holidays, when a large model train circled a corridor strung with decorations.

“The best memories are from Christmas time,” she said.

She stepped back as her husband, Danny, raised his cellphone to take a photo of the entrance, knowing its doors would soon lock for good.