History
Greenspoint Mall opened in July 1976, anchored by Sears and Houston-based Foley's, the latter of which was owned at the time by Federated Department Stores who developed the mall. The mall eventually expanded by the late 1970s to include Joske's, JCPenney, Montgomery Ward and Lord & Taylor. Revolving around a "Central Park" theme, complete with a sculpture court, Greenspoint was at one point the largest mall in Greater Houston before the Galleria's later expansions in the 1980s and 2000s. Prudential Property Co. planned a $7 million renovation in 1988.
In February 1989 Greenspoint Mall was 94% occupied, making it the mall with the fourth highest percentage of occupied space in the Houston area.
Greenspoint Mall's fortunes began to wane at the end of the 1980s, when the Houston economy took a hit from the collapse of the energy industry and a subsequent bottoming out of the area real estate market. Also, the openings of Willowbrook Mall to the northwest and Deerbrook Mall to the northeast ate into Greenspoint's customer base. Making matters worse, after the kidnap and murder of a sheriff's deputy in the area that culminated from an uptick in criminal activity, the Greenspoint area became notorious for its high crime rate. Houstonians began to derisively refer to the once-booming area as "Gunspoint." In 1994, the mall lost even more business after the opening of The Woodlands Mall in the burgeoning suburb of The Woodlands.
Dallas-based Archon was near a deal to purchase the mall in 1998, though a Los Angeles developer would unravel the deal when it entered negotiations to purchase the mall instead. Los Angeles developer Bob Yari of Day Properties would eventually purchase the 1,700,000-square-foot (160,000 m2) mall from Prudential Real Estate Investments Separate Account, a pension fund investment group organized by Prudential Insurance Company of America. Yari sought to attract a mutliscreen movie theater.
The mall became a part of a redevelopment project in 1998. Office and convention center space, as well as a flea market were all being considered. As part of the redevelopment, the owners bought the closed Mervyn's and JCPenney locations in 2000.
In 2006, the management of Greenspoint Mall announced a $32 million project to refurbish the 30-year-old mall into an hybridized open-air/enclosed shopping center, entailing the demolition of the vacant anchor stores for new outdoor amenities. In November 2006, six months after the renovation was announced, Triyar Cos. LLC, owned by the Yari family, put the mall and several other Greater Houston malls for sale; the company allowed a buyer to either buy an individual property, or buy all of them at once.
After several years of not anything happening, GlennLock Sports Bar & Grill announced it would sign a lease for the first phase of the Renaissance at Greenspoint.
After the destruction of the abandoned JCPenney's in May 2010, a movie theater was planned to be built on the spot, most likely as a part of the mall.
In May 2010 Sears announced that its store at Greenspoint Mall will close.
Read more about this topic: Greenspoint Mall
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“What we call National-Socialism is the poisonous perversion of ideas which have a long history in German intellectual life.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.... It is not “history” which uses men as a means of achieving—as if it were an individual person—its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“Properly speaking, history is nothing but the crimes and misfortunes of the human race.”
—Pierre Bayle (1647–1706)