Sadly, her report doesn’t include renderings of this little detail, but Real Estate Bisnow’s Catie Dixon notes that the Schreer Partnership’s planned redo (depicted at left) of the 152,000-sq.-ft. Kingwood Shopping Center at the northeast corner of Kingwood Dr. and Chestnut Ridge Rd. it just bought will add gates — “to give the center an exclusive feeling and to mirror the gated community of Kingwood.” Also coming, behind those wrought instigators of shopping security: a kiddie playground and outdoor dining area. The new owners tell Dixon they’re envisioning a “town center” concept (perhaps inspired by the 600,000 “first of its kind” Kingwood Parc town center complex announced last summer and planned for a couple blocks west, directly adjacent to the Eastex Fwy.). The new owners will add only one “e” with their gates, however: the shopping center shall henceforth be known as the Shoppes at Kingsgate.
- Goodbye, Kingwood Shopping Center [Real Estate Bisnow]
Rendering: Schreer Partnership Interests
Back in my 20s, I lived in Kingwood in King’s Manor. This shopping center was kind of dead then although it is busier nowadays. I don’t really understand how the gates make a shopping center more “exclusive.” Please. This is the stupidest idea I have ever heard. Their lofty expectations aren’t going to recreate something you find in the Woodlands there.
Realistically, I don’t see how shopping centers manage to thrive in an area like Kingwood. Most of them are dead or are opened by businesses that shut within a couple of years (RIP Ninfas). There are enough businesses and retail off of 59 near North Park (Walmart, chain restaurants, movie theatre), Kingwood Dr. and W Lake Houston Parkway (Randalls, HEB, restaurants), and then you have Target /Bed Bath Beyond/Petsmart/Best Buy/Marshalls/restaurants off of 59 and Townsend. And then you have Deerbrook Mall.
Why would you gate a strip mall? Who gets to enter?
Why stop there? Put some velvet ropes in front of the nail salon with bouncers to keep out the riff-raff. Why should someone like me have to aspirate plebeian nail dust? Have valet parking for the dry cleaners! Nothing says VIP like conspicuously waiting for services. This is great news for Kingwood! Maybe this new gated shopping center will FINALLY attract that flagship Clothestime that Houston so dearly needs, with personal shoppers for their most exclusive customers!
Maybe I’ve just spent too much time in sketchy neighborhoods, but when I see a strip mall with gates around it, I immediately assume it’s for additional security when the center is closed at night. Is that really a message that would attract business in Kingwood?
That’s probably the worst thing they could have done with that property. Their best bet would be to turn it back into “the livable forest.”
It’s things like this that I hope my European friends never see, either in renderings or actual visit, because I would die of embarrassment. “Look, we’ve taken one of our suburban shopping centers, put a silly gate around it and added some archaic letters to the name so that we can be more… like you.”
How do you pronounce “Shoppes”?
Sho pez? long o
Cho pes? s with a z sound
Just stupid.
Kingwood is not gated.
April 2017
The above article has a Jan 2014 date. Is this, or any other, shopping center still planned for the area where the old Exxon station/strip mall behind that lot stood?
“and to mirror the gated community of Kingwood”
btw…Kingwood is NOT a gated community.