To the right is a short hallway that leads to the second-story Sears entrance. Unlike most department stores at two-story malls, the entrances are nowhere near one another, being on different sides of the building -- this entrance must have been cut into the existing building when the mall addition was built.
What an unusual mall entrance. This looks like quite the quiet spot...and not just quiet because it is a Sears! It is strange for me to imagine a Sears with two mall entrances since two-story malls are less common in Houston and the malls in my area are/were all one-story. It is strange to see a mall entrance that walks right into a dishwasher department as seemingly this one does! That said, I probably have seen such a thing at some malls since we do have some two-story malls here and I've seen some elsewhere as well.
ReplyDeleteI unearthed some interesting state regulatory documents today! One involves my local mall's former Sears. It appears Sears has reached an agreement to lease most of that space to Round One bowling & arcade from Japan. I know from the photos yesterday that this mall has a Round One and the first Round One I ever saw in-person was in the former Sears at Vancouver Mall which I saw last year. In addition to the Round One coming at Willowbrook Mall, there is also one coming (which was already announced) at Deerbrook Mall which is over at IAH. I don't know if it is at that mall's ex-Sears, but I'm assuming that it is.
Also, in the regulatory documents, is news that Kroger is remodeling the Wirt & Westview Kroger here in Houston. You may remember me ranting about this location because it was just renovated a few years ago to Remix, maybe even just a couple of years ago, and it is the worst, cheapest Kroger remodel I've ever seen. The tile scar is terrible and they just slapped Remix signs on top of some areas which still have Bountiful paint! They really ruined this Signature store which looked nice before the remodel: https://maps.app.goo.gl/35DoQGGKywuoy6P69
Well, maybe Kroger heard the criticisms of this remodel, perhaps even my own criticisms, and is scheduled to give the store a full remodel again this September! Hopefully they'll put down actual floor cover and will put a complete decor package in this time, but we'll see if they actually fix the problems they created at this store. If they do fix those problems, at least we can say that Kroger is continuing to fix some of the disasters they created in the early 2020s!
Surprisingly enough, I have actually visited another 2-story mall with a Sears, though the Sears was closed by that time, so I can say that a typical 2-story Sears entrance would look something like this!
DeleteRound 1 is pretty much everywhere these days! The one in this mall is in the top floor of the old Mervyn's.
I sure hope Kroger starts doing real remodels to their Remix stores, which are pretty much universally terrible. I wonder what decor that store will get -- Artisan would look pretty bad there too, but I'm out of touch on what other decor packages Kroger is actively using these days.
Speaking of Sears, if you haven't heard, this store will soon go back to being the only one in Washington: https://ca.news.yahoo.com/closed-open-now-closing-again-201046511.html?guccounter=1
ReplyDeleteYep, no surprise -- the Union Gap reopening was such a weird thing.
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