The Woodlands Mall is a two-story, enclosed

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 at the intersection 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 Lake Woodlands Drive in the community of The Woodlands in

unincorporated Unincorporated may refer to: * Unincorporated area, land not governed by a local municipality * Unincorporated entity, a type of organization * Unincorporated territories of the United States, territories under U.S. jurisdiction, to which Congress ...

Montgomery County,

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 ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

, north 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 ...

. The Woodlands Mall features six

anchor store In retail, an "anchor tenant", sometimes called an "anchor store", "draw tenant", or "key tenant", is a considerably larger tenant in a shopping mall, often a department store or retail chain. They are typically located at the ends of malls. Wit ...

Dick's Sporting Goods Dick's Sporting Goods, Inc. (stylized as "DICK'S Sporting Goods") is an American sporting goods retail company, based in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania. The company was established by Richard "Dick" Stack in 1948, and has approximately 854 stores an ...

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 ...

Forever 21 Forever 21 is a multinational fast fashion retailer headquartered in Los Angeles, California, United States. Originally founded as the store Fashion 21 in Highland Park, Los Angeles in 1984,Forever 21History & Facts, n.d. Retrieved 27 April 2014 ...

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 ...

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 ...

, and

Nordstrom Nordstrom, Inc. () is an American luxury department store chain headquartered in Seattle, Washington, and founded by John W. Nordstrom and Carl F. Wallin in 1901. The original Wallin & Nordstrom store operated exclusively as a shoe store, and ...

. With a

gross leasable area In architecture, construction, and real estate, floor area, floor space, or floorspace is the area (measured as square feet or square metres) taken up by a building or part of it. The ways of defining "floor area" depend on what factors of the buil ...

of , The Woodlands Mall is considered a super-regional mall by industry definitions. The Woodlands Mall is managed by

Brookfield Properties Brookfield Properties is a North American subsidiary of commercial real estate company Brookfield Property Partners, which itself is a subsidiary of alternative asset management company Brookfield Asset Management. It is responsible for the pro ...

History

Having grown from its initial roots as a resort-oriented master-planned community first begun in 1974, developer

George P. Mitchell George Phydias Mitchell (May 21, 1919 – July 26, 2013) was an American businessman, real estate developer and philanthropist from Texas credited with pioneering the economic extraction of shale gas. According to ''The Economist,'' "few busine ...

'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 The Cadence Bank Houston Open is a professional golf tournament in Texas on the PGA Tour, played in November. As a part of a restructuring of the schedule, the event moved to the fall in 2019. Because the tour year starts the previous fall, the ...

and home to the

Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, sometimes called The Woodlands Pavilion or simply The Pavilion, is a concert amphitheatre located in The Woodlands, Texas, an outer suburb of Houston, Texas. It caters to both the performing arts and contempor ...

, 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

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 ...

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

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 ...

, whose

Homart Development Company Homart Development Company, a Chicago-based subsidiary of Sears, was one of the largest builders of shopping centers and malls in the United States from 1959 to 1995. Company history As retail development in the United States shifted away from d ...

jointly built the mall with The Woodlands Corporation.("This year alone, Homart will open the 1 million-square-foot Woodlands Mall in Woodland, Texas...") 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 A food court (in Asia-Pacific also called food hall or hawker centre) is generally an indoor plaza or common area within a facility that is contiguous with the counters of multiple food vendors and provides a common area for self-serve dinner. I ...

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 Huntsville is a city in Madison County, Limestone County, and Morgan County, Alabama, United States. It is the county seat of Madison County. Located in the Appalachian region of northern Alabama, Huntsville is the most populous city in th ...

further north) traveled to another mall known as The Wharf currently located in

Grogan's Mill Grogan's Mill (officially the Village of Grogan's Mill) is a village of The Woodlands, a planned community in Texas. Established in 1972, it is the first of ten villages developed in The Woodlands. Its namesake is the Grogan-Cochran Lumber Com ...

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,

opened in an empty anchor space situated between Sears and Dillard's in the mall's northeast corner. In 2004, a outdoor section was added featuring a

Barnes & Noble Barnes & Noble Booksellers is an American bookseller. It is a Fortune 1000 company and the bookseller with the largest number of retail outlets in the United States. As of July 7, 2020, the company operates 614 retail stores across all 50 U. ...

bookstore, several upscale shops, and Class A office space, as well as a waterway, which features a

water taxi A water taxi or a water bus is a watercraft used to provide public or private transport, usually, but not always, in an urban environment. Service may be scheduled with multiple stops, operating in a similar manner to a bus, or o ...

. In April 2007, the mall partnered with NearbyNow, a digital applications company based in

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

, to offer shoppers a service that allows them to search for items at the mall through their

cell phone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whil ...

s or home computers. 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. 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 The Houston Museum of Natural Science (abbreviated as HMNS) is a natural history museum located on the northern border of Hermann Park in Houston, Texas, United States. The museum was established in 1909 by the Houston Museum and Scientific Societ ...

); both were later replaced in August 2010 with the largest

location in Greater Houston. * In September 2006, another original anchor, Houston-based Foley's was converted to Macy's as a result of

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 ...

acquiring Foley's parent company

May Department Stores The May Department Stores Company was an American department store holding company, formerly headquartered in downtown St. Louis, Missouri. It was founded in Leadville, Colorado, by David May in 1877, moving to St. Louis in 1905. After many ch ...

. * 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.

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.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Woodlands Mall, The Brookfield Properties Shopping malls in Greater Houston Shopping malls established in 1994 1994 establishments in Texas