Westwood Mall is a shopping center located in Westwood business development in Houston, Texas. This mall is located at the intersection of Interstate 69/US. Route 59 and Bissonnet Street, in Westwood section of Alief area in southwest Houston.
Video Westwood Mall (Houston)
History
Westwood Mall took root at the opening of the Sears branch in 1972 - three years before the mall opened. The mall itself opened in 1975 with a two-storey floor plan, anchored by Joske on the western end and Sears on the eastern end, with the front of the freeway, and featuring 60 stores and food courts, with the most notorious architectural features being unconventional. the main entrance on the side of Bissonnet Street in the mall; The entrance is housed in an elevator and an escalator bank and a staircase that leads from the first floor foyer to the second floor of the mall. Instead, the rear exit of the mall leads to the first floor food court, which is blocked by the main entrance.
By the time it was built, it was located in an unrelated Alief County Harris area; the area was annexed by Houston shortly thereafter. From the beginning, it was always difficult to compete with the nearby Sharpstown Mall and more established, but managed to survive for a number of factors:
- The mall anchor shops (Joske and Sears) filled the void on the southwest side of Houston at the time, complementing Foley's and Montgomery Ward (and later, JCPenney) at Sharpstown Mall.
- The area around Westwood Mall is considered the ultimate real estate; Nearby businesses include Westwood Country Club, a number of strip malls, restaurants and office buildings, and several apartment complexes targeted to professionals in the Houston energy industry, as well as many car dealerships serving customers from new residential development in the surrounding area (many of whom are still dealers there and stay successful today).
- This mall also benefits from being the closest mall to the booming Fort Bend County, which has no mall for most of Westwood's existence, and whose prosperous population is crucial to the survival of the mall.
The mall receives the exposure when the scene in the 1983 Adam Adam film, pictured at the Hollywood Mall in Hollywood, Florida, was filmed inside Westwood Mall, mainly in and around the Sears store. In 1987, Joske's was converted into Dillard's, as a by-product of the acquisition of the Company's parent company Campeau Corporation, Allied Stores who sold Joske's to the latter. The following year, in 1988, the mall completed a renovation that added skylights and improved the overall image of the mall, culminating in an advertising campaign during this time. At one point in the early 1990s, Westwood considered recruiting Foley as the third anchor, a move that would result in Foley closing his Sharpstown Mall location.
However, this move did not materialize when Westwood began to face a series of setbacks. The economic downturn coming to the "oil bust" in Houston combined with changes in the law governing multi-family housing resulted in many nearby apartment complexes being a sanctuary for low-income tenants and shelter for criminal activity, culminating in two mall incidents itself only in the span of two months. Around the same time, Sharpstown Mall underwent a self-renovation in 1993 that added eight screen cinemas and other new features, effectively blocking Foley's from leaving under a new name Sharpstown Center .
The most fatal blow mall occurred in 1996 when the First Colony Mall opened in Sugar Land. Located in Fort Bend County, First Colony Mall significantly weakens Sharpstown Center while simultaneously robbing Westwood Mall from its most critical customer base. Faced with declining store choices and (in Dillard's case) more desirable locations in adjacent malls, Westwood owners decided to turn the mall into a high-tech office center in 1998.
Except for the Sears store, the mall now consists of office space and today operates as Southwest Corporate Center (SWCC). In June 2017, Sears announced that it would close the Westwood location after the sale of liquidation after 42 years in the mall - 23 years as anchor mall and live longer than the mall as a stand-alone store for 19 years.
Maps Westwood Mall (Houston)
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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