The Woodlands Mall

The Woodlands Mall is a two-story, enclosed shopping mall located at the intersection of Interstate 45 and Lake Woodlands Drive in the community of The Woodlands in unincorporated Montgomery County, Texas, United States, north of Houston. The Woodlands Mall features six anchor stores: Dick's Sporting Goods, Dillard's, Forever 21, JCPenney, Macy's, and Nordstrom.[1] With a gross leasable area of 1,350,000 square feet (125,000 m2),[1] The Woodlands Mall is considered a super-regional mall by industry definitions.[2] The Woodlands Mall is managed by Brookfield Properties Retail Group.

The Woodlands Mall
LocationThe Woodlands, Texas, United States
Coordinates30.164°N 95.45543°W / 30.164; -95.45543
Address1201 Lake Woodlands Drive
Opening dateOctober 5, 1994 (1994-10-05)
DeveloperHomart Development Company
and
The Woodlands Corporation
ManagementBrookfield Properties Retail Group
OwnerBrookfield Properties Retail Group
No. of stores and services160[1]
No. of anchor tenants6
Total retail floor area1,355,000 sq ft (125,900 m2)[1]
No. of floors2
Websitewww.thewoodlandsmall.com
Inside The Woodlands Mall
Information Desk
Inside The Woodlands Mall

History

Having grown from its initial roots as a resort-oriented master-planned community first begun in 1974, developer George P. Mitchell's The Woodlands began to rapidly grow with an influx of new families from Houston and other areas, and had also gained national prominence from the community being both host to the Shell Houston Open and home to the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, which opened in 1990. By the 1990s, the community (and Montgomery County) had grown enough to the point where a new super-regional mall became a key priority of the community's developer, The Woodlands Corporation, who sought to develop the mall as part of its Town Center development.

The Woodlands Mall opened on October 5, 1994 with over 120 stores, including anchor tenants Dillard's, Foley's, Mervyn's and Sears, whose Homart Development Company jointly built the mall with The Woodlands Corporation.[3][4] This was the final development by Homart, which was acquired by General Growth Properties the following year. In addition, the mall also contained a carousel and adjacent food court on its upper level, and several restaurants and smaller retailers on the periphery.

Before The Woodlands Mall opened, many residents of The Woodlands and Montgomery County (as well as the nearby community of Huntsville further north) traveled to another mall known as The Wharf currently located in Grogan's Mill for retail services. Greenspoint was the mall most directly impacted by The Woodlands Mall's opening, as Greenspoint consequently lost virtually all of its most critical (and most upscale) customer base, though Greenspoint already had been in decline due to competition from the more upscale Willowbrook and Deerbrook malls (which sustained themselves due to sizable suburban populations in their respective trade areas), as well as increased criminal activity within the Greenspoint area that further contributed to Greenspoint Mall's decline.

In 1998, JCPenney opened in an empty anchor space situated between Sears and Dillard's in the mall's northeast corner. In 2004, a 150,000-square-foot (14,000 m2) outdoor section was added featuring a Barnes & Noble bookstore, several upscale shops, and Class A office space, as well as a 1.4-mile (2.3 km) waterway, which features a water taxi.[1][5] In April 2007, the mall partnered with NearbyNow, a digital applications company based in California, to offer shoppers a service that allows them to search for items at the mall through their cell phones or home computers.[6]

Since The Woodlands Mall's opening, there were 3 anchor changes:

  • In 2005, Mervyn's closed all its locations in Greater Houston; the chain eventually went out of business in 2008.[7] Mervyn's space was filled by both the Woodlands Children's Museum, and the Woodlands Xploration Station (the latter a satellite facility of the Houston Museum of Natural Science);[8] both were later replaced in August 2010 with the largest Forever 21 location in Greater Houston.[9]
  • In September 2006, another original anchor, Houston-based Foley's was converted to Macy's as a result of Federated Department Stores acquiring Foley's parent company May Department Stores.
  • At the beginning of 2013, Sears (the mall's original joint developer) closed its location at The Woodlands Mall after selling its lease back to the owner of the mall. Nordstrom replaced Sears, opening its second full-service location in the Houston area in September 2014 along with several new specialty stores, some of them in new specialty space carved out of the former Sears store.[10]

References
  1. "The Woodlands Mall". Brookfield Properties Retail Group.
  2. USDefinitions.pdf Archived 2009-03-25 at the Wayback Machine
  3. John Schmeltzer (August 8, 1994). "Mall Developer Quietly Keeps Building". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved March 11, 2010.("This year alone, Homart will open the 1 million-square-foot Woodlands Mall in Woodland, Texas...")
  4. Kutchin, Joseph W. How Mitchell Energy & Development Corp. Got Its Start and How It Grew: An Oral History and Narrative Overview (2001) p.542-47 (ISBN 978-1581126631)
  5. HoustonChronicle.10.8.2005.pdf
  6. Shoppers can browse The Woodlands Mall on phone, computer
  7. Zaragoza, Sandra (September 7, 2005). "Mervyn's to close 62 stores, exit Houston market". American City Business Journals.
  8. Woodlands
  9. http://www.centredaily.com/107/story/1479876.html
  10. Radley, Whitney (July 25, 2012). "The Woodlands gets cooler: Sears to be replaced by Nordstrom in mall shakeup?". Culture Map.
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