Greenspoint Mall was a

shopping mall A shopping mall (or simply mall) is a large indoor shopping center, usually Anchor tenant, anchored by department stores. The term ''mall'' originally meant pedestrian zone, a pedestrian promenade with shops along it, but in the late 1960s, i ...

located in the Greenspoint neighborhood of

Houston, Texas Houston ( ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas and in the Southern United States. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the county seat, seat of ...

, at the northeast corner of

Interstate 45 Interstate 45 (I-45) is a major Interstate Highway located entirely within the U.S. state of Texas. While most primary Interstate routes which have numbers ending in "5" are cross-country north–south routes, I-45 is comparatively short, ...

and Beltway 8 (also known as the Sam Houston Parkway/Tollway). The only remaining anchor is Fitness Connection, which occupies half of the former

Lord & Taylor Lord & Taylor was an American department store chain founded in 1826 by Samuel Lord. It had 86 full-line stores in the Northeastern United States at its peak in the 2000s, and 38 locations at the time of its liquidation in 2021. The Lord & Tay ...

Mervyn's Mervyn's was an American middle-scale department store chain based in Hayward, California, and founded by Mervin G. Morris (1920–2021). It carried national brands of clothing, footwear, bedding, bath products, furniture, jewelry, beauty product ...

store on the west side of the mall. There are 6 vacant anchor pads on the site that were once occupied by

Macy's Macy's is an American department store chain founded in 1858 by Rowland Hussey Macy. The first store was located in Manhattan on Sixth Avenue between 13th and 14th Streets, south of the present-day flagship store at Herald Square on West 34 ...

Foley's Foley's was a regional chain of department stores owned by Federated Department Stores (1947–1988, 2005–2006), later owned by May Department Stores (1988–2005) and headquartered in Downtown Houston, Texas. On August 30, 2005, the divisi ...

, Palais Royal,

Dillard's Dillard's, Inc. is an American department store chain with approximately 267 stores in 29 states and headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas. Currently, the largest number of stores are located in Texas with 57 and Florida with 42. The company a ...

Sears Sears, Roebuck and Co., commonly known as Sears ( ), is an American chain of department stores and online retailer founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosen ...

, Premiere Cinemas,

JCPenney Penney OpCo LLC , Trade name, doing business as JCPenney (colloquially Penney's and abbreviated JCP) is an American department store chain store, chain with 649 stores across 49 U.S. states and Puerto Rico. It is managed as part of the Catalys ...

, and

Montgomery Ward Montgomery Ward is the name of two successive U.S. retail corporations. The original Montgomery Ward & Co. was a mail-order business and later a department store chain that operated between 1872 and 2001; its common nickname was "Monkey Wards". ...

. In 2000, the mall was among the largest five Houston-area retail developments based on net rentable area.

History

Greenspoint Mall celebrated its grand opening on August 5, 1976, anchored by

, Houston-based

Palais-Royal The Palais-Royal () is a former French royal palace located on Rue Saint-Honoré in the 1st arrondissement of Paris. The screened entrance court faces the Place du Palais-Royal, opposite the Louvre Palace, Louvre. Originally called the Palais-Ca ...

, and

, the latter of which was owned at the time by

Federated Department Stores Macy's, Inc. (previously Federated Department Stores, Inc.) is an American holding company of department stores. Upon its establishment in 1929, Federated held ownership of the regional department store chains Abraham & Straus, Lazarus (departm ...

who developed the mall. The mall eventually expanded by the late 1970s to include Joske's,

and

. Revolving around a "Central Park" theme, complete with a sculpture court, Greenspoint was at one point the largest mall in Greater Houston before the Galleria's later expansions in the 1980s and 2000s. Prudential Property Co. planned a $7 million renovation in 1988. Lord & Taylor sold its Greenspoint and its Memorial Mall anchor locations to Mervyn's in February 1989. Counting that anchor, Greenspoint Mall was 94% occupied in February 1989, making it the mall with the fourth highest percentage of occupied space in the Houston area. But the opening of the Woodlands Mall in Fall of 1994 about 16 miles north of Greenspoint combined with rising vacancies caused by the expiry of non-renewed 20-year leases raised concerns about the Mall's long term financial future. Mervyn’s departed Greenspoint on January 16, 1998 as part of the company’s plan to close 10 under performing stores. General Cinema closed its Greenspoint Mall 5 theater a month later. Dallas-based Archon was near a deal to purchase the mall in 1998, though a Los Angeles developer would unravel the deal when it entered negotiations to purchase the mall instead. Los Angeles developer Bob Yari of Day Properties would eventually purchase the mall from Prudential Real Estate Investments Separate Account, a pension fund investment group organized by Prudential Insurance Company of America. Yari sought to attract a multiscreen movie theater. The mall became a part of a redevelopment project that same year. Office and convention center space, as well as a flea market were all being considered. Greenspoint would lose two more of its anchors when JCPenney closed in 1999 and Montgomery Ward closing a year later. As part of the redevelopment, the owners bought the closed

and JCPenney locations in 2000. Greenspoint Mall reached its 30th anniversary in 2006. Due to high crime rates in the area, the shopping center had been tagged with a nickname of "Gunspoint Mall." Facing 30-year lease expirations, the management of Greenspoint Mall announced a $32 million project to refurbish the 30-year-old mall into an hybridized open-air/enclosed shopping center called The Renaissance at Greenspoint, entailing the demolition of the vacant anchor stores for new outdoor amenities. That year, Macy's rebranded the Greenspoint Foley's anchor to a Macy's store as part of the chain's purchase of Federated Department Stores. In November 2006, six months after the renovation was announced, Triyar Cos. LLC, owned by the Yari family, put the mall and several other

Greater Houston Greater Houston, designated by the Office of Management and Budget, United States Office of Management and Budget as Houston–Pasadena–The Woodlands, is the List of metropolitan statistical areas, fifth-most populous metropolitan statistical ...

malls for sale. Much of the Renaissance at Greenspoint was dropped with the exception without agreements other than Premiere Cinema's decision to build a multiscreen movie theater and GlennLock Sports Bar & Grill signing a lease. After the destruction of the vacated JCPenney in May 2010, a movie theater was built opening on the anchor pad, with a connection into the mall. Lacking the promised, unified refresh of Greenspoint Mall combined with high crime rates resulted in escalating vacancies. In May 2010, Sears announced that its store at Greenspoint Mall would close. On January 4, 2017,

announced that it would close its Greenspoint Mall anchor with a liquidation sale that ended March 27, 2017. Later that year when

Hurricane Harvey Hurricane Harvey was a devastating tropical cyclone that made landfall in Texas and Louisiana in August 2017, causing catastrophic flooding and more than 100 deaths. It is tied with 2005's Hurricane Katrina as the costliest tropical cy ...

hit Houston, displaced flood victims exceeded the capacity for shelter at the

NRG Stadium NRG Stadium (previously known as Reliant Stadium) is a multi-purpose stadium in Houston, Texas, United States. Construction was completed in 2002, at a cost of $352 million and has a seating capacity of 72,220. It was the first NFL facility to h ...

; 259 people were relocated to the former Macy's anchor. Under contract for purchase in 2017 by potential new owner, Global Plaza Union, rumors suggested that a plan to demolish the interior of the Greenspoint Mall was imminent. The plans did not develop and the Greenspoint Mall continued operations reaching greyfield status with vacancies surpassing occupancy. In 2019, anchors Dillard's and Palais Royal - both of which had rebranded their Greenspoint operations as clearance outlets - closed permanently. Premiere Cinemas suspended operations along with theaters nationwide due to the

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. In January 2020, the disease spread worldwide, resulting in the COVID-19 pandemic. The symptoms of COVID‑19 can vary but often include fever ...

restrictions that were implemented in March 2020. Though restrictions later in 2020 reopened many Houston theaters, Premiere announced the closure in Greenspoint would be permanent leaving the theater frozen in time, complete with the marquee and associated posters with movie titles from spring 2020. The mall's interior closed temporarily for repairs in 2023 but reopened with a handful of stores operating with a seven day a week, 11am to 7pm schedule. The only open anchor was a Fitness Connection Gym housed in the former Mervyn's location. On May 23, 2024 it was announced that the mall would be closed on June 30, 2024. Tenants were given until July 31, 2024 to move everything out, after which the mall would permanently shutter to tenants. There are plans for apartments and retail stores to take its place in the future.

References

{{Houston Shopping 1976 establishments in Texas 2024 disestablishments in Texas Defunct shopping malls in the United States Shopping malls in Houston Shopping malls established in 1976 Shopping malls disestablished in 2024