![]() ![]() Anyone who shopped at Willowbrook Mall in the 1980s or 1990s, as I did, surely remembers how horrifically bad traffic was near the mall before the modern roads were upgraded around the mall!Īs mentioned earlier, the Northwest Houston suburbs, the Willowbrook area in particular, were isolated from the economic malaise that plagued the Houston area in the 1980s. FM 1960 W surely would not be the wide mega-road that it is with the underpass under SH 249 without the traffic caused by the mall and surrounding retail centers. The fact that FM 149 even became a freeway as quickly as it did was surely boosted by the presence of the mall and related developments. When Willowbrook Mall opened, however, the Beltway 8 freeway did not yet exist, SH 249 was a fairly quiet non-freeway road named FM 149, and FM 1960 W was hardly the major artery that it is now. Not far from the mall is the Beltway 8 freeway loop. Still, their expectations were surely exceeded almost immediately when the fortunes of the area boomed shortly after the mall opened due in part to technology industry activity that isolated the area from the economic malaise related to the oil bust that plagued the rest of the Houston area in the 1980s.Ī quick glance at the Willowbrook area on a modern map shows that it sits at the corner of a freeway, SH 249, and a major road, FM 1960 West. in 1976 (you can read about North Oaks Mall here, here, and here), probably gave Sears hope that a larger mall in Northwest Houston could be successful. ![]() T he development of neighborhoods in wooded Northwest Houston/Harris County in the 1970s, which led to the opening of the small North Oaks Mall at the corner of FM 1960 W & Veterans Memorial Dr./Stuebner Airline Rd. When the Homart Development Company division of Sears decided to place a mall at the southeast corner of the intersection of FM 149 & FM 1960 in the late 1970s as their second Houston-area mall after Baybrook Mall, even they probably could not imagine how much of an overnight success the mall would be and how much the area would grow and prosper in the subsequent 40 years. This distinctive Macy’s Women’s Store building was originally a Foley’s. ![]()
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