A LONG GOODBYE FOR THE WOODLANDS MALL SEARS 
The Woodlands Mall location is among the 11 anchor stores around the country Sears announced it will sell to mall operator General Growth Properties. All of the stores will remain open until 2013; a closing date will be announced within the next several months. [Retail Traffic] Photo: City-Data
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Tag: Malls
H&M LANDING IN HOUSTON, BUT STAYING OUTSIDE THE LOOP Fashion retailer H&M this morning officially announced its first 2 stores in Houston, both in malls. A 19,400-sq.-ft. slot at the Baybrook Mall already mentioned on the company’s website is scheduled to open sometime this spring. Next: a 25,600-sq.-ft. store in the Willowbrook Mall. The company press release didn’t refer to any plans for inner-loop locations. [Shop Girl; previously on Swamplot]
What’s going on at the east side of the Northwest Mall parking lot? a reader wants to know. It sure looks all torn up over something or other. The parking surface outside Macy’s looks freshly cleared, though planting season is at least a few months away.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: FEEDING THE WEST OAKS MALL JCPENNEY ARTS BEHEMOTH 
“At 100,000 square feet, it is more than twice as big as all the alternative/artist-run spaces currently in existence in Houston combined. If it can actually be filled with stuff and events in a compelling, convincing way, it moves the center of gravity for Houston art to the west purely by virtue of its size. The more I think about it, the challenge will be figuring out ways to effectively use that space. Usually the issue for an art exhibit is a lack of space — a show at, say, Labotanica can feel uncomfortably cramped. For a curator or artist, this space presents the precise opposite problem. A good model in this regard might be Mass MOCA, the enormous museum in North Adams, MA. Filling the cavernous old factory buildings required big, bold artworks. Are there Houston artists who could step up to this challenge? I’d say yes — for example, Sharon Engelstein’s inflatables.” [Robert Boyd, commenting on New Arts Complex Planned for Abandoned JCPenney at West Oaks Mall] Photo: Sharsten Plenge
How did an artist out of L.A. convince the owners of Houston’s West Oaks Mall to turn the vacant building of former mall anchor JCPenney into a 100,000-sq.-ft. department-store-sized arts complex? Well, it helps that the building — at the northern crotch of the West Houston mall — has been sitting vacant for 8 years and has received no major retail anchor interest in the 2 years Pacific Retail Capital Partners has owned the property. It also helps that the artist, Sharsten Plenge, is a Pacific Retail employee — and that her father is the firm’s managing principal. But Plenge tells Swamplot the company is behind her novel rehab concept, which is currently her main focus at work.
Silicon Valley automotive startup Tesla Motors plans to open a Houston dealership for the company’s all-electric cars within the next 60 days — in the Nordstrom wing of the Galleria. The company-operated store, inspired by Apple Stores, Starbucks, and airport frequent-flier clubs, will include samples of the company’s Model S and Roadster models that visitors will be encouraged to climb into, as well as a Design Studio for assembling and pricing an EV to your own specifications.
- Tesla’s coming to town [Fuel Fix]
- Stop In. Go Electric. [Tesla Motors]
- The Perfect Tesla Store [Tesla Motors]
Photos: Tesla Motors (store in Lone Tree, Colorado); Purva Patel (Galleria)
ST. AGNES PICKS UP DROPPED SUIT 
The lawsuit the Academy of St. Agnes filed and then dropped last month against the city, the TABC, and the owners of a nightclub planning to open in the former Finger Furniture space at PlazAmericas is back on again, Purva Patel reports. The suit is an attempt to prevent the planned club, El Corral, from receiving a liquor license. A year ago, the private girls school bought the 18.7-acre former Gillman auto dealership at the corner of Bellaire Blvd. and Fondren, across the street from the former Sharpstown Mall, with plans to turn the property into an athletic campus. [Prime Property; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Candace Garcia
H&M IN HOUSTON: ALL IN THE MALLS Swedish clothing retailer H&M is in talks to lease space at the Galleria, in the Memorial City Mall, and The Woodlands Mall for its first 3 Houston-area locations, leasing-agent sources tell Heather Staible. According to the timetable given to her, the Galleria location would be the first to open — in early 2012. [Culturemap; previously on Swamplot]
ST. AGNES DROPS SUIT St. Agnes Academy has officially ended its lawsuit meant to prevent a nightclub called El Corral — planned for the former Finger Furniture store in PlazAmericas — from receiving a liquor license. The suit was filed last Friday against the nightclub’s owners, the city of Houston, and the TABC. A spokesperson for the all-girls private school, which is building an athletic facility across Bellaire Blvd. from the former Sharpstown Mall, tells Swamplot “any future plans regarding the suit are to be determined,” but offered no further comments. [Previously on Swamplot]
St. Agnes Academy has already begun constructing an athletic complex on the site of the former Gillman Auto dealership at the corner of Bellaire and Fondren in Sharpstown. The 18.7-acre property, which it bought last fall, will have 3 athletic fields, 2 softball diamonds, 8 tennis courts, plus weight rooms, conference rooms, and meeting rooms. But administrators of the all-girls private school aren’t too happy with a development planned across the street in PlazAmericas, the former Sharpstown Mall. Last Friday, the school filed suit to prevent a nightclub from opening in the mall’s former Finger Furniture store.
GULF FREEWAY OUTLET MALL SITE: UP FOR GRABS? 
A possible complication in those plans to put a new 95-store outlet mall between the Big League Dreams sports complex and the Bay Colony shopping center west of the Gulf Freeway in League City: The Galveston County Daily News‘s Laura Elder reports that the 35 acres of land Tanger Factory Outlet Centers was hoping to purchase out of bankruptcy for $8.7 million will be going up for auction instead in just 10 days. A bankruptcy court ordered the sale last week. Tanger announced the project in January, just days after the Simon Property Group announced its plans to build another outlet center, the 100-store Galveston Premium Outlets, just 4 miles to the south, in Texas City. [Laura Elder’s Buzz Blog; previously on Swamplot] Rendering: Tanger Outlets
GETTING CASH OUT OF THE HOUSTON PAVILIONS 
The Downtown Redevelopment Authority this week approved a loan of $3.3 million to the developers of the Houston Pavilions. But the mall’s developers likely won’t need to pay it back. According to a 2006 agreement that included a promised $14.3 million of TIRZ reimbursements and grants for the sleepy downtown redevelopment project, the developers would only receive the last $3.3 million payment once the retail portion of the project was 70 percent leased. At the moment — thanks in part to efforts by management earlier this year to prevent Books-A-Million from closing up shop there — the retail spaces are 62 percent full. Not a problem: The interest-only loan will tide the developers over until they can get their numbers up. Also coming to Houston Pavilions, as part of the deal: new outdoor eating areas and an HPD “special operations” storefront. [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Flickr user Scott DeW
COMMENT OF THE DAY: EXIT STRATEGY FOR EXXONMOBIL’S NEW NORTH HOUSTON CAMPUS 
“Exxon has sufficiently resurrected the 1980s suburban mall layout. Congratulations. Now, when they decide to move even farther from the educational core of their hometown (read: Willis HQ 2025), they can create “Spring Creek Mall†and populate the landscape with a sampling of deep-discounted soft goods clothing, closeout electronics, and heavily salted/large portion family dining. Everybody wins here.” [jg, commenting on A First Look at the Plans for ExxonMobil’s Humongous New Corporate Campus North of Houston]
How long will the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema be sticking around at the West Oaks Mall, now that Regal Entertainment Group has announced it’s going to open a new 14-screen Edwards Theatre multiplex there in the fall of 2012? A spokesperson for Triple Tap Ventures wouldn’t say directly, explaining that the beer-and-movie house will remain open “throughout the planned construction and into the foreseeable future.” But the Alamo Drafthouse owner doesn’t appear to be looking as far ahead as the mall’s owners, who’ve already announced that the 6-screen theater will close after the new theater is opened.
The Edwards multiplex will go into the mall’s west wing, where Mervyns used to be. Next door will be a new plaza with 3 restaurants and outdoor seating. Triple Tap reports it is still looking to open new Alamo Draft House locations both inside the Loop and around the Houston area.
- West Oaks Mall Owners Sign Deal with Regal Entertainment to Bring a 14-Screen Edwards Theatre to Center [BusinessWire]
- Multiplex coming to West Oaks Mall [Houston Chronicle]
- Previously on Swamplot: The West Oaks Mall $87 Million Backward Flip, Alamo Drafthouse to Weingarten: Why Gut the Alabama Theater When We Can Just Chop It in Half?
Photo: Joel Barhamand
Just days after Simon Property Group announced it would build a new 100-store Galveston Premium Outlets shopping center in Texas City, Tanger Factory Outlet Centers is ready to talk about the outlet mall it’s been planning for a 35-acre site just 4 miles to the north, in League City. Tanger’s 300,743-sq.-ft. mall, which the company says is in the “predevelopment phase,” would sit just north of the Bay Colony shopping center and just south of the Big League Dreams sports complex. And like the Simon Mall, it’ll be right near a Walmart too — the Supercenter across I-45 at FM 646.
If both malls sign up enough tenants to get built along the I-45 feeder road, it’ll help adjust the impression that huge swathes of undeveloped land remain between Houston and Galveston — at least for drivers headed south. The Chronicle‘s Purva Patel also reports on a third new mall being discussed for the area — from Taubman, but that company hasn’t announced its plans.
- 95-store outlet mall planned for League City [Galveston County Daily News]
- Developer may build outlet center in League City [Houston Chronicle]
- Previously on Swamplot: The Galveston Outlet Mall Coming to Texas City
Rendering: Tanger Outlets
