West Oaks Mall is a regional shopping mall located in the Alief area of the west side of

Houston 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 ...

, 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 ...

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 of the South, Red River, the Texas–Oklahoma state line, to northwest of Galveston, Texas, Galveston, where it is known as the Old Galveston Highway. In Sugar Land and Missouri City, it is k ...

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 transcontinental highway in the Interstate Highway System of the United States. It is the fourth-longest Interstate in the country at , following I-90, I-80, and I-40. It was part of the origina ...

. The anchors are Dillard's Clearance Center, Crazy Boss, The Outlet at West Oaks, and Fortis College. There are 2 vacant anchors, formerly housing

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 ...

and Toby Keith's I Love This Bar & Grill. Pacific Retail Capital Partners owned 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 was managed by PRCP Management. In 2017, it was sold to Mehta Investments, Ltd.

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 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 ...

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 term used to describe a palette of colors that are similar to natural materials and landscapes. These colors are inspired by the earth's natural hues, including browns, greens, grays, and other warm and muted shades. The term earth ...

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 (Colloquialism, colloquially Saks) is an American Luxury goods, luxury department store chain founded in 1867 by Andrew Saks. The first store opened in the F Street and 7th Street shopping districts, F Street shopping distric ...

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 ...

, 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, bath products, furniture, jewelry, beauty product ...

, 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 Odeon is a theatre brand owned by Cineplex Entertainment in Canada, after acquiring the Cineplex Odeon Corporation in 1998. As of 2023, there are 61 Cineplex Odeon locations in Canada. The former corporation was one of North America's ...

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

Town & Country Mall A town is a type of a human settlement, generally larger than a village but smaller than a city. The criteria for distinguishing a town vary globally, often depending on factors such as population size, economic character, administrative stat ...

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 such as home ...

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 on December 29, 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 ...

who otherwise would have gone to Sharpstown Mall or Westwood Mall. In 1985,

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 ...

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 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 significant 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 f ...

, 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 , 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 ...

(both stores of which would fill a large gap in

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 ...

) 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 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 ...

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, San Antonio, Texas. In December 1928, Hahn Department Stores acquired the company along with the Titche-Goettinger dep ...

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 opened in nearby

Sugar Land Sugar Land (sometimes incorrectly spelled as Sugarland) 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 po ...

. 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 film, 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 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 ...

. 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 that operates the second-largest theater circuit in the United States, with 5,720 screens in 420 theaters as of December 31, 2024. Founded on August 10, 1989, it ...

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. Headquartered in Port Washington, New York, the chain operated 276 stores in 39 states before liquidating throughout 2008 and 2009. The ...

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 Palais Royale location closed in 2019. The West Oaks Bed Bath and Beyond closed in 2020. In September of 2022, Regal closed at the mall due to

Cineworld Regal Cineworld Group (trading as Cineworld) is a British cinema operator headquartered in London, England. It is the world's second-largest cinema chain (after AMC Theatres), with 9,139 screens across 747 sites in 10 countries: Bulgaria, Czec ...

's bankruptcy. By June of 2023, only Dillards, The Outlet, Fortis College, Crazy Boss and two inline tenants remained open with the majority of interior corridors closed to the public. On September 25, 2022, Edwards Stadium closed due to 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