Off in the parking lot next to JCPenney is a rather run-down Firestone auto center, which was almost definitely once a JCPenney auto center. For a time, this mall would have had three department store auto centers at once -- JCPenney, Sears, and the Bon Marche all had them!
Yep, that almost certainly is an old JCPenney Auto Center that Firestone picked up when JCPenney sold off their auto centers to Firestone way back in the day. We still have one mall here in Houston, Almeda Mall, where the old JCPenney closed years ago, but the Firestone is still going in their old auto center! Of course, you've probably heard about how JCPenney sold car batteries with lifetime warranties and Firestone picked up the warranty on those when JCPenney sold the auto centers. Supposedly, even to this day, there are people getting free batteries through that as long as they still have the car they had back in the 1970s when JCPenney was selling those batteries! I'm guessing the number of they claims they get on those these days can be counted on three or hour hands, lol. My parents had a 1973 Datsun that had a lifetime JCPenney warranty battery that was replaced with a Firestone battery somewhere along the way, but that car was sold off decades ago.
ReplyDeleteWe do have some local mall news to report! Maybe you've heard this if you read Je's Louisiana & Texas Retail Blog, but West Oaks Mall here in Houston has permanently closed somewhere between Saturday and this past Wednesday. Je was the one who broke the news. This was a Federated developed mall that was intended to be an upscale mall when it opened in 1984, but it opened right when the oil bust happened and the mall had to change strategies to become a mid-tier mall. It had a little bit of success with that in the 1990s, but then things slowly went downhill and it has been nearly dead for a couple of years now and everyone was expecting it to close for good. Well, it happened. The anchors will remain open, but that's not saying much because the remaining anchors are a Dillard's Clearance Store, some independent Ross type store operating out of the old Foley's/Macy's and which has massive maintenance problems given Macy's poor maintenance, another Ross type store called Crazy Boss, and a for-profit career college.
The funny thing about West Oaks is that because it was intended to be a high-end mall, the Sears there was formerly a Saks Fifth Avenue! When Saks closed and Sears took over, Sears kept Saks' building elements and opened, at least briefly, a softlines-only store! Yep, come see the softer side of Sears...because that's all that store had if you can believe that! Eventually, the store was expanded into a full-line Sears. By that point, it stopped looking like a Saks, but it was still nicer, albeit smaller, than the typical Sears. The JCPenney there used to be a Lord & Taylor!
I have heard of that -- I have to imagine the employees get very confused on the rare occasion someone comes in for a free battery! Considering the cars would have to be 40+ years old, I have to wonder if Firestone even stocks the right batteries for them anymore!
DeleteThat's too bad... it's always sad to see a mall close, especially a fairly interesting one like that one looks to have been. Sounds like that's another mall that, in retrospect, probably shouldn't have ever been built in the first place.
Interestingly, someone on Facebook just posted a photo of the Tacoma Mall JCP Auto Center from back in the day: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=773422121454973&set=a.482547823875739
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