Baybrook Mall

Baybrook Mall is a shopping mall located near the Clear Lake City area and in Houston, Texas; It has a Friendswood mailing address, but it is in the Houston city limits. The mall is located off Interstate 45. and it is also in proximity to Webster and the NASA Johnson Space Center. The mall's anchor stores are a Dick's Sporting Goods and Field & Stream combo store, Dillard's, JCPenney, Macy's, and a large-scale Forever 21 with one vacant anchor last occupied by Sears.
It is located 18 mi southeast of downtown Houston at Interstate 45 South and Bay Area Blvd. It has five major anchors and more than 170 stores and restaurants. It has 1,240,000 sq ft (115,000 m2) of retail space.
== History ==
=== Early years ===
Baybrook Mall was first conceived in 1973 as a regional mall serving the growing Clear Lake Area and became reality when construction of the mall completed in 1978. Though considerably large for its trade area at the time, the mall quickly became successful with the trade area's affluent customer base that previously went to Almeda Mall for retail services (even though that mall continued to prosper with anchors Foley's and JCPenney). The first anchor tenants were Montgomery Ward, Sears, and Joske's.
In 1984, the mall expanded with the opening of Mervyn's and then Macy's in 1985 as the two new anchors. In February 1989, Baybrook Mall was 96% occupied, making it the mall with the second highest percentage of occupied space in the Houston area.
In 1997, Macy's vacated the mall when it sold its three suburban Houston locations (other than its store at the Galleria) to Dillard's, which continued to maintain the store it had acquired from Joske's in 1987. After Montgomery Ward went bankrupt in 2001, the former Wards space was eventually filled by Foley's which filled the space temporarily until it acquired the Dillard's previously occupied by Joske's and built a new store in its place in late 2004. JCPenney would eventually fill the previous Montgomery Ward/Foley's space. In 2006, Macy's returned to Baybrook when its parent company acquired Foley's and converted its stores to the Macy's nameplate.
=== Expansion ===
In 2015, Sears Holdings spun off 235 of its properties, including the Sears at Baybrook Mall, into Seritage Growth Properties.
In November 2015, Baybrook Mall completed the first part of a two-phase expansion, part of a plan to help Baybrook compete with both the Pearland Town Center and the Tanger Outlet Mall in Texas City, which have direct competition with Baybrook (even though Baybrook is considered the dominant shopping center in the immediate trade area). The combined expansion will make it the second largest mall in the Houston area, after The Houston Galleria. The first phase consists of a lifestyle addition that adds several upscale stores and restaurants, as well as a Star Cinema Grill and the Greater Houston region's third Dave & Buster's. The second phase will consist of a new 270,000-sq. ft. power center that is slated to be constructed adjacent to the lifestyle expansion, with Dick's Sporting Goods (one of five being proposed throughout Greater Houston) as one of the anchor tenants.
On June 22, 2017, Sears announced that its store would be closing as part of a plan to close 20 stores nationwide. The store closed in September 2017.
== Gallery ==
=== Videos ===
File:Modernized Schindler 330A Hydraulic Elevator at Dillard's, Baybrook Mall in Friendswood, TX.|The Dillard's Elevator
File:Montgomery Hydraulic Elevator at Sears, Baybrook Mall in Friendswood, TX.|The Sears Elevator
Category:Malls in Texas
Category:Single-Level Malls
Category:Malls with Multi-Level Stores
Category:Shopping Malls
Category:Brookfield Properties Retail Group Malls
Category:Malls that opened in 1978
Category:Malls in the United States
Category:Seritage Locations