Greenspoint Mall is a

shopping mall A shopping mall (or simply mall) is a North American term for a large indoor shopping center, usually anchored by department stores. The term "mall" originally meant a pedestrian promenade with shops along it (that is, the term was used to refe ...

located in the

Greenspoint Greater Greenspoint, also referred to as the North Houston District, is a business district and a suburban neighborhood in northern Harris County, Texas, United States, located mostly within the city limits of Houston. Centered around the juncti ...

neighborhood of

Houston Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in ...

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

, at the northeast corner of

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

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 the oldest brick and mortar department store in the United States, in business from 1826 to 2020. The brand was purchased during former owner Le Tote's 2020 liquidation bankruptcy and relaunched by new owner, Saadia Group, as ...

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 (originally R. H. Macy & Co.) is an American chain of high-end department stores founded in 1858 by Rowland Hussey Macy. It became a division of the Cincinnati-based Federated Department Stores in 1994, through which it is affiliated wi ...

Foley's Foley's was a chain of department stores owned by May Department Stores and headquartered in Downtown Houston, Texas. On August 30, 2005, the division was dissolved and operation of the stores was assumed by Federated's Macy's West and Macy's Sout ...

Palais Royal The Palais-Royal () is a former royal palace located in the 1st arrondissement of Paris, France. The screened entrance court faces the Place du Palais-Royal, opposite the Louvre. Originally called the Palais-Cardinal, it was built for Cardinal R ...

Dillard's Dillard's, Inc. is an upscale American department store chain with approximately 282 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 ...

Sears Sears, Roebuck and Co. ( ), commonly known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald, with what began a ...

Premiere Cinemas Premiere Cinemas, officially known as Premiere Cinema Corporation., headquartered in Big Spring, Texas, is a privately held motion picture exhibitor. It is among the largest independently owned motion picture exhibitors in the U.S. and is ranked by ...

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, furniture, jewelry, beauty products, electronics, ...

, and

Montgomery Ward Montgomery Ward is the name of two successive U.S. retail corporations. The original Montgomery Ward & Co. was a world-pioneering mail-order business and later also a leading department store chain that operated between 1872 and 2001. The curren ...

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

History

Greenspoint Mall opened in July 1976, anchored by

and Houston-based

, the latter of which was owned at the time by

Federated Department Stores Macy's, Inc. (originally Federated Department Stores, Inc.) is an American conglomerate holding company. Upon its establishment, Federated held ownership of the regional department store chains Abraham & Straus, Lazarus, Filene's, and Shillito ...

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

Joske's Joske's, founded by German immigrant Julius Joske in 1867, was a department store chain originally based in San Antonio, Texas. In December 1928, Hahn Department Stores acquired the company along with the Titche-Goettinger department store of Dall ...

JCPenney Penney OpCo LLC, doing business as JCPenney and often abbreviated JCP, is a midscale American department store chain operating 667 stores across 49 U.S. states and Puerto Rico. Departments inside JCPenney stores include Mens, Womens, Boys, Gir ...

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. In February 1989 Greenspoint Mall was 94% occupied, making it the mall with the fourth highest percentage of occupied space in the Houston area. 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 mutliscreen movie theater. The mall became a part of a redevelopment project in 1998. Office and convention center space, as well as a flea market were all being considered. As part of the redevelopment, the owners bought the closed

and JCPenney locations in 2000. In 2006, 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, entailing the demolition of the vacant anchor stores for new outdoor amenities. 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 United States Office of Management and Budget as Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land, is the fifth-most populous metropolitan statistical area in the United States, encompassing nine counties along the Gulf Co ...

malls for sale; the company allowed a buyer to either buy an individual property, or buy all of them at once. After several years of nothing happening, GlennLock Sports Bar & Grill announced it would sign a lease for the first phase of the Renaissance at Greenspoint. After the destruction of the abandoned J.C. Penney's in May 2010, a movie theater was built on the anchor pad, with a connection into the mall, through one of the former Penney's wings. In May 2010, Sears announced that its store at Greenspoint Mall would close.Sarnoff, Nancy.
Greenspoint Sears going dark
" ''

Houston Chronicle The ''Houston Chronicle'' is the largest daily newspaper in Houston, Texas, United States. , it is the third-largest newspaper by Sunday circulation in the United States, behind only ''The New York Times'' and the ''Los Angeles Times''. With it ...

''. February 22, 2010. Retrieved on May 30, 2010. On January 4, 2017,

announced that it would close their Greenspoint Mall store by the end of the second quarter of 2017. Liquidation sales were completed and the store closed on March 27, 2017. In 2017, when

Hurricane Harvey Hurricane Harvey was a devastating Category 4 hurricane that made landfall on 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 t ...

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

NRG Stadium NRG Stadium, formerly 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 have a retrac ...

, around 800 people were relocated to the former Macy's at the mall.

ceased operations in the mall due to the

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...

restrictions that were implemented in March 2020. It has never reopened for business, once restrictions were lifted, leaving the theater frozen in time, complete with the marquee and associated posters with movie titles from spring 2020.

References

External links

* {{Houston Shopping Shopping malls in Houston Shopping malls established in 1976