West Oaks Mall is a regional shopping mall located in the

Alief Alief is a working-class suburb in Southwest Harris County, Texas, United States. Most of Alief is within the city limits of Houston, while a portion of the community is in unincorporated Harris County. First settled in 1894 as a rural farm co ...

area of the west side 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, USA, that opened in 1984. With a trade area serving far western parts of Houston including a business clientele in the

Energy Corridor The Energy Corridor is a business district in Houston, Texas, located on the west side of the metropolitan area between Texas State Highway Beltway 8, Beltway 8 and the Texas State Highway 99, Grand Parkway. The district straddles a stretch of In ...

and suburban neighborhoods west of

George Bush Park George Bush Park is a county park in Houston, Texas, United States, located on the far west side of the city. Situated entirely within Barker Reservoir, a large flood control structure, the park covers , most of which is undeveloped forest used f ...

in the

Greater Katy Greater Katy Area is the term often used to refer to a suburban region on the west side of the Greater Houston metropolitan area roughly corresponding to the boundaries of the Katy Independent School District. Many people and businesses in this ar ...

and Fulshear areas, the mall is located at

Texas State Highway 6 State Highway 6 (SH 6) runs from the Red River, the Texas–Oklahoma state line, to northwest of Galveston, where it is known as the Old Galveston Highway. In Sugar Land and Missouri City, it is known as Alvin-Sugarland Road and runs per ...

and

Westheimer Road Westheimer Road () is an arterial east–west road in Houston, Texas, United States. It runs from Bagby Street in Downtown and terminates at the Westpark Tollway on the southern edge of George Bush Park, stretching about long. The street was n ...

and can easily be accessed south on Highway 6 via

Interstate 10 Interstate 10 (I-10) is the southernmost cross-country highway in the American Interstate Highway System. I-10 is the fourth-longest Interstate in the United States at , following I-90, I-80, and I-40. This freeway is part of the originally pl ...

. The anchors are Dillard's Clearance Center, Crazy Boss, The Outlet at West Oaks, and

Fortis College Fortis College (also Fortis Institute and Fortis College of Nursing in some locations) is a Private for-profit college with multiple campuses throughout the United States. It was established in 2008 and is operated by Education Affiliates and owne ...

. There are 2 vacant anchors, formerly housing

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 ...

and

Toby Keith's I Love This Bar & Grill Toby Keith's I Love This Bar & Grill is a Chain store, restaurant chain inspired by the country music singer Toby Keith and founded by Boomtown Entertainment. The bar is named after Keith's 2003 single "I Love This Bar", which was taken from his ...

. Pacific Retail Capital Partners owns the mall as a joint venture with Square Mile Capital Management,Oaks Mall gets Edwards Theatre
''Houston Business Journal''. March 2, 2011. Retrieved July 20, 2011. and is managed by PRCP Management.

History

Early years (1984-1996)

West Oaks Mall has its roots in the opening of a branch of Houston-based department store chain

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 ...

in 1982 – two years before the mall opened. In the foyer of the north entrance to the store, on both walls, there are handprints of children on terra-cotta tiles with a plaque dated May 22, 1982. The mall itself opened in 1984 with a single-level floorplan designed in a "Mission style", and replete with

earth tone Earth tone is a color scheme with multiple meanings. In its narrowest sense, it refers to "any color containing some brown" – the color of ground or soil (earth). It can also refer to "natural colors" (colors found in nature) such as brown soil, ...

interiors, numerous fountains and skylights. Originally, the mall targeted higher-end consumers on Houston's western fringes and surrounding suburban areas, with anchor tenants Foley's,

Saks Fifth Avenue Saks Fifth Avenue (originally Saks & Company; Colloquialism, colloquially Saks) is an American Luxury goods, luxury department store chain headquartered in New York City and founded by Andrew Saks. The original store opened in the F Street and ...

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 ...

, and

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, ...

, along with over 120 inline stores, a six-screen

Plitt Theatres Plitt Theatres was a major movie theater chain in the United States and went under a number of names, Publix Theaters Corporation, Paramount Publix Corporation, United Paramount Theatres, American Broadcasting-Paramount Theatres and ABC Theatres a ...

(later

Cineplex Odeon Cineplex Inc. (formerly Cineplex Galaxy) is a Canadian movie theatre and family entertainment centre chain headquartered in Toronto. The company was formed in 2003 via the acquisition of Loews Cineplex's Canadian operations (which included t ...

) cinema, and a food court dubbed the "Fiesta Food Court". West Oaks served as a direct competitor to nearby Town & Country Mall and

Memorial City Mall Memorial City Mall is a large shopping mall in Houston, Texas, United States. It is approximately west of downtown Houston at the intersection of Interstate 10 and Gessner Road. The mall is in the Memorial City Management District, whose off ...

in Houston's

Memorial A memorial is an object or place which serves as a focus for the memory or the commemoration of something, usually an influential, deceased person or a historical, tragic event. Popular forms of memorials include landmark objects or works of a ...

area – targeting shoppers in Houston's

and the

area, as well as a newer alternative for shoppers in rapidly growing

Fort Bend County Fort Bend County is a county located in the U.S. state of Texas. The county was founded in 1837 and organized the next year. It is named for a blockhouse at a bend of the Brazos River. The community developed around the fort in early days. The ...

who otherwise would have gone to

Sharpstown Mall PlazAmericas, formerly known as Sharpstown Mall and earlier Sharpstown Center, is a shopping mall located in the Sharpstown development in Greater Sharpstown, Houston, Texas. The mall is located on the northwest corner of Interstate 69/ U.S. Ro ...

or Westwood Mall. In 1985,

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 ...

announced that it was building a fifth Houston store at West Oaks Mall, which would have been located on the mall's last remaining anchor pad directly opposite Lord & Taylor and would have opened in late 1987, a year after the flagship

Houston Galleria The Galleria, stylized theGalleria and also known as the Houston Galleria, is an upscale mixed-use urban development and shopping mall located in the Uptown Houston, Uptown District of Houston, Texas, United States. The proposed Macy's ultimately never materialized. As Houston's economy suffered in the aftermath of the

1980s oil glut The 1980s oil glut was a serious surplus of crude oil caused by falling demand following the 1970s energy crisis. The world price of oil had peaked in 1980 at over US$35 per barrel (equivalent to $ per barrel in dollars, when adjusted for inf ...

, demand for upscale retail declined sharply and by the spring of 1990, Saks Fifth Avenue and Lord & Taylor closed their West Oaks locations, replaced respectively by

and

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 ...

(both stores of which would fill a large gap in

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 ...

) as part of a repositioning of the mall as a mainstream middle-class suburban regional mall. Macy's intended space at West Oaks would eventually be filled by

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 ...

in 1991, making it the first such store in Houston to be built as a Dillard's (the rest having been converted from the former

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 ...

in 1988). By the early 1990s, West Oaks emerged as one of Houston's top performing regional malls, in large part due to the decline of Town & Country and rapid suburban growth in the aforementioned areas.

1996-2003

The mall would receive its first serious challenge in 1996 when

First Colony Mall First Colony Mall is a regional shopping mall in Sugar Land, Texas, located about southwest of Houston. The mall — located south of the intersection of Interstate 69/ U.S. Route 59 and State Highway 6—opened on March 14, 1996 and was rec ...

opened in nearby

Sugar Land Sugar Land is the largest city in Fort Bend County, Texas, United States, located in the southwestern part of the metropolitan area. Located about southwest of downtown Houston, Sugar Land is a populous suburban municipality centered around th ...

. Though First Colony's opening had done more economic damage to the Sharpstown and Westwood malls in Southwest Houston (the latter of which would close over one year later), the new mall drew away many of West Oaks' customers from rapidly growing Fort Bend County, but still continued to draw some shoppers from this area due to the presence of stores that did not have locations at the new mall including Sears and some specialty stores which did not open locations at First Colony Mall. To compete with First Colony, West Oaks underwent a renovation that removed several features including a tall clock at the intersection of the Arcade and the Dillard's/JCPenney concourse, an elevated seating area in the food court used as a smoking area, all of the mall's fountains, and the original dark brown tile in the mall's inline corridor. In July 2003, Somera Investment Partners and Coastwood Capital Group purchased the mall from an affiliate of CB Richard Ellis Investors. That same year, the first

Alamo Drafthouse The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema is an American cinema chain founded in 1997 in Austin, Texas, which is famous for serving dinner and drinks during the movie, as well as its strict policy of requiring its audiences to maintain proper cinema-going etiq ...

in Houston opened in the mall after Alamo Drafthouse's Austin-based owners granted the franchise location in the former Cineplex Odeon cinema.

Since 2004

In 2004, the mall was renovated at a cost of ~$9.3 million in a "Texas ranch style" to compete with recent renovations at the Galleria and Memorial City Mall, as well as the impending expansion of First Colony Mall (which completed in 2006).The interior was extensively renovated, including the filling of the sunken part of the Park Court with concrete and the addition of a fireplace to the food court, and replacement of the tile from the 1996 renovation with marble, and the mall would be sold again in 2005 to Investment Properties of America, which bought the mall from the Somera/Coastwood partnership. By this time, West Oaks faced increasingly stiff competition from

Katy Mills Katy Mills is a shopping mall in Katy, Texas within the Houston metropolitan area, and it is one of the tourist destinations in Houston. It was developed by The Mills Corporation and is now managed by Simon Property Group, who owns 62.5% of it. ...

which opened in 1999 with a lineup of outlet retail and entertainment options, as well as from a resurgent Memorial City Mall that completed a multimillion-dollar renovation in 2002. Both malls effectively lured shoppers from the rapidly growing and prosperous Greater Katy area away, with Memorial City's resurgence also hastening the decline of Town & Country Mall which closed in 2004 and would be redeveloped as

CityCentre CityCentre is a mixed-use development in the Memorial City district of Houston, Texas, located at the southeastern corner of the intersection of Interstate 10 (Katy Freeway) and Beltway 8. Opened in 2009, CityCentre is a development with of gr ...

. The openings of the CityCentre and LaCenterra lifestyle centers in the Memorial area of Houston and Cinco Ranch, respectively, also further contributed to the mall's decline in prominence. In 2009, the property's value was in steep decline. Pacific Retail Capital Partners bought the mall from LNR Partners Inc. for $15 million – $87 million less than it did when it was sold four years earlier. In 2011,

Regal Entertainment Group Regal Cinemas (also Regal Entertainment Group) is an American movie theater chain headquartered in Knoxville, Tennessee. A division of Cineworld, Regal operates the second-largest theater circuit in the United States, with over 7,200 screens i ...

agreed to open a 14-screen Edwards Theatres multiplex as a new anchor for the mall, replacing the Alamo Drafthouse cinema which continued to operate until the completion of construction on the Edwards multiplex that resulted in the demolition of much of the former Mervyn's wing, which was briefly anchored by

Steve & Barry's Steve & Barry's was an American retail clothing chain, featuring casual clothing, footwear and accessories. By mid-2008, the chain operated 276 stores in 39 states. The company was headquartered in Port Washington, New York. The company liquidate ...

before the latter chain went bankrupt in 2009. Other anchor changes during this time included Fortis College filling the former JCPenney anchor space (which closed in 2005) and Dillard's converting its store to a clearance center only utilizing the first floor in 2010. Palais Royal opened one of the anchor slots in November of 2011 and closed it along with the rest of the chain on September 5, 2020. On January 4, 2017, Macy's announced it would close its West Oaks Mall store after 35 years. The store closed on March 27, 2017. On January 4, 2018, Sears announced it would close its West Oaks Mall store after 28 years. The off-site Auto Center closed in late-January 2018 and the store closed in early-April 2018. In May–June 2018, The Outlet moved in to fill the former Macy's location. The West Oaks

Bed Bath and Beyond Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. is an American chain of domestic merchandise retail stores. The chain operates many stores in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Puerto Rico. Bed Bath & Beyond was founded in 1971. It is counted among the Fortune ...

closed in 2020. In September of 2022, Regal closed at the mall due to

Cineworld Cineworld Group plc is a British cinema operator headquartered in London, England. It is the world's second-largest cinema chain (after AMC Theatres), with 9,518 screens across 790 sites in 10 countries: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Irela ...

's bankruptcy.

References

External links

*
Investment Properties of America
- official website {{Houston Shopping Shopping malls in Houston Shopping malls established in 1984 1984 establishments in Texas