Reefmonkey

Actually it does. It must for it to go unchallenged for over a month on an architecture forum full of some of Houston's most aware when it comes to urban-planning & development, issues of sprawl, and pedestrian friendly environments.

So you base the reliability of your statement on the fact that it wasn't challenged on an internet forum for a whole 30 days. You must be the kind of person who thinks Wikipedia is an infallible primary source.

Why are you in such a rush in your above example that you have to hoof [sic] it across the mall from one end to the next? You prove that you are not the typical customer and that you are not the target customer of a mall. Perhaps you would be better suited to strip malls where you can park in front of the store you desire, run in, grab your item, then run out and drive across the parking lot so that you can do the same thing only 500 feet away. There's no wonder our nation is getting fatter. Are you so busy that you can't make the time to walk across the mall, get your cardio and burn off the calories from that Mickey D's combo you had for lunch?

Spare me. I have finished the Molokai World Surfski Championship, and am a two-time finisher (2005 and 2006) of Texas Water Safari. Maybe for your flaccid *** walking in an air conditioned mall qualifies as exercise, but for me, malls are a place to buy things. Maybe you like to waste your time strolling a mall sightseeing, that's your business, but I have better things to do. As I mentioned, because both malls are close to my work, I would use my lunch hour to go to them, so I didn't have the time to take a leisurely stoll through the mall. Just thought I would say it once more since your reading comprehension skills are apparently on par with your understanding of urban sprawl.

The only people that shopped T&C, that will admit to me that they did anyway, were just like you. They liked it for the conviencence of getting in and out. Well, that's why it failed.

Nice revisionist history there, but everyone knows it failed because it was practically impossible to get to during the construction of the Sam Houston Tollway/I-10 interchange.

Oh, and nice spelling of "conviencence" [sic]. Word to the wise, there is nothing wrong with using an informal phase like "hoof it" for "walk hurriedly" in an informal medium like an internet chat board, but if you are going to use "sic" to try to ridicule someone for it like you did in the quote before this one, you'd better make sure your own spelling, etc. is flawless or you will get called on your hypocrisy.

For that mall to work it would have had to been no more than two stories. Then it would have to do like the Galleria, and segregate the stores by demographic and general price range so that a large stream of customers would cycle through.

And how many stories is the Galleria again? Here's a hint: http://www.simon.com/mall/images/floorplan...alleriaMall.gif

MOST IMPORTANT STATEMENT OF MY POST: As for sprawl, its a lost cause in this town.

Wow, great attitude. Reminds me of the attitude of most of Lee Brown's appointees on the Land Redevelopment Committee when I was working on it. That is when they actually showed up for meetings. I'm sure with enough people with attitudes like yours, it probably is now a true statement, so you can go...congratulate....yourself on that.

I can't say this enough. Sprawl isn't how far out the city is spread via low density development. It's how far you have to drive, should you have to drive in the first place (which in an ideal city you wouldn't), to reach your destination.

Actually, I would call this the MOST IMPORTANT STATEMENT OF [YOUR] POST, because it lays bare your complete lack of understanding of urban sprawl. Here I am talking about one cause of urban sprawl (low density development), ans you refute that with an effect of urban sprawl (long drive time). You tell me it has nothing to do with the cause I state, is all about the effect you state. It is as if I said "colds are caused by rhinoviruses," and you retort "colds aren't about rhinoviruses, they are when your nose is stuffy and runny." That pretty much sums up your credibility on urban sprawl discussions.

And why would you have to drive far to reach your destination? Because the distance from your starting point and your destination is far, as in spread out. Now that could be just because you happen to be in a really big, but densly packed city. Do you think that is the case in Houston? Here is a hint. Houston: 2000 census population, 1,953,631, incorporated area 601 sq miles. New York: 2000 census population: 8,008,278, incorporated area 322 sq miles. So thats Houston, about 3,200 people per sq mile, NYC, about 25,000 people per sq mile. Houston is a low-density large city, and that is one of it's urban sprawl problems.Now is poor land use the sole culprit? No, according to Census Bureau data, it accounts for about half of urban sprawl. Population growth plays an equally strong role. But contributing to 50% of sprawl, that still seems like a big role for poor land use to play.

As for "something better coming....pedestrian friendly residential over commercial", I am all for it, but that is not going to make a significant impact. Having a starbucks downstairs from your condo is great, but when you still have to drive an hour and a half to work, it isn't going to do a lot of good. Pedestrian friendly is great, but in Houston you still have to drive there before you get out and walk. For one thing, residential over commercial is great when you are a young single, like I was when I was living in midtown, but most people who raise families here in Houston want to do so in a house with a yard in a good school district, NOT a condo on Bagby over a nightclub zoned for HISD. Even if we could convince everyone to live in residential over commerical, where would be the right place to put them? Our Central Business District downtown accounts for only a fraction of Houston employers. If the husband works in Pasadena and the wife in the medical center, Downtown doesn't make much sense, does it? Anywhere they live, someone is going to have to have a fairly long commute, which is going to contribute to some of the ills of urban sprawl - traffic congestion and air pollution. Having people live within walking distance or a short drive from where they work is the REAL lost cause in this town, but we can keep the problem from getting worse by slowing urban sprawl by demanding stopping poor and inefficent land use. Commercial retail developers are some of the worst offenders. Bone up a little more on the causes and effects of urban sprawl before the next time you talk about it.

The only thing you got right is, yeah, I am probably not the target consumer for malls. I do not see malls as a tourist destination. In my free time on a Saturday I am going to be on the water, paddling, not windowshopping. I only go shopping when I intend to buy something specific, and I do it quickly and efficiently (you've made it clear that is comical to you for some reason, so go ahead and sneer). I do like that malls concentrate the places I am likely to shop for that item into one trip. That's efficient for me, and I wil concede it may not be the best marketing strategy for a mall. But that shouldn't give a mall a pass to have a large environmentally unfriendly footprint. "We can't make money if we do it the socially responsible way" - the Yuppie Nuremburg Defense - doesn't cut any ice with me.

As for Sharpstown, fine, whatever, let it be like a colorful souk for southwest Houston. But it wouldn't kill them to send someone in with a dustpan and broom between movies to pick up popcorn so it doesn't attract rats. A visit from the Orkin Man might be nice, too. The "thugs" as you call them have a right to be protected from typhus, too.

I didn't like T&C because it was actually inconviently laid out. There was no reason to stack a mall 3 stories high in west Houston. No worries though, because something far better is coming in its place. Ultimately Memorial City & T&C will both have commercial developments that "fit".

"No reason to stack a mall 3 stories high in west Houston"?!?!?!?!?!? Your comment makes no sense whatsoever.

Jeebus, have you ever heard the term "Urban Sprawl"? What do you think causes urban sprawl? The central areas of a metropolis get overcrowded, no more room to grow, so they move out to neighboring areas. When those areas get overcrowed, they move even further out. "Stacking" a mall 3 stories high as T&C was built is a much more efficient design, a much less wasteful footprint than building a great sprawling mall. Houston is continuing to grow, and as it does, the area inside BW8 is getting pricier and more crowded. The metropolis continues to spread out into Waller and Fort Bend Counties. More efficient design in commercial construction could abate this somewhat, but since all the greedy developers in Houston have your mindset ("there is plenty of land here now, so why not build big and sprawling") urban sprawl will continue in the Houston area.

It also does not follow that a three-story design is less convenient than a sprawling design. Look at Memorial City - sure, it's beautiful inside, but it is so long and winding that it takes forever to walk through. If you park in the Dillard's wing and shop there, and then want to go to another store located in the Target wing, you have to hoof it through the entire mall, past stores you don't need to shop in. Talk about inefficient and inconvenient. Even though I work close to Memorial City, I can't just pop in there on my lunch break and hit a few stores like I could with T&C, it's just too much ground to cover. Give me a three story mall like T&C, where you can take an elevator or escalator up to another level and be right at the other store you need.

As for Sharpstown, as I indicated in my first post, I have good reason to believe the mall is infested with rats, and therefore a health hazard. Are you saying we should keep an unsafe mall open just to ghettoize low-rent merchants?

Who want's to light the match?

Put these faded or fading shopping malls out of their misery. Have been magnets for trouble for some time now. HPD can support. No media over-hype.

1. Sharpstown

2. Northline

3. Almeda

Endangered List:

1. Deerbrook

2. Willowbrook

3. Guns-point

I agree with Sharpstone, though some have tried to defend it here. I remember as a little kid in the 1980s, watching commercials for Sharpstown mall, with the Sharpstown Drill team chanting in unison "Come to - Sharpstown - the shopping center in town." At that time it was a pretty nice mall. Now it is a pit. The "local merchants" all sell junky crap, the mall and area around it are downright dangerous from a crime standpoint, and here is a great recent Sharpstown story - a coupl of years ago I wanted to see a movie that I hadn't had a chance to see in the theatres yet, and was being pulled out. Sharpstown's second-run theater was the only one in the city showing the movie, so I went to a matinee. As I sat watching the movie, I noticed movement on the floor of the aisle. I watched about half a dozen rats running around picking up spilled popcorn. I don't understand why they tear down nice malls like Town and Country and let that one stay open. Although, the area around sharpstown does remind me of L.A. for some reason. Maybe the palm trees.

Northline I think is already torn down.

Almeda, I don't think it is as bad as its sister mall, Northwest.

As far as the endangered list, I think you are dead wrong on Deerbrook and Willowbrook. Both those still have relatively nice, affluent clientele, and mid-market to upscale anchors and boutiques catering to them.

Greenspoint - I remember this mall fondly, it is the mall I went to as a little kid in the late 70s, early 80s, before we moved to Champions Forest and started going to Willowbrook. I saw "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi" at its theatre. As a kid I loved the children's shoe section in Foley's - it had this space-themed play area, very Star Wars-y. I also loved all the fountains and tunnels and archways throughout the mall, which I guess were torn down because they became great places for muggers to lurk when the mall started to go downhill in the late 80s. As Chris Rock said "There are two kinds of malls - the malls the white people go to, and the malls the white people used to go to."

sabasushi, I totally disagree with you on Memorial City Mall. As a kid and a teenager, I always thought it was a pit. We rarely went there, always went to Town and Country. T&C was a great mall, and it is criminal that Harris County's awful project management of the BW-8/I-10 interchange construction killed this mall. I was sad to see it torn down. But now I go to Memorial City all the time, I can't believe what a great job they did of revitalizing it. It is a very pleasant mall to go to, and versatile, with low-market stores like Target all the way up to upper-mid-market stores like Dillards.

I'm not familiar with Las Brasas, but I'm very familiar with Casa Elena. That and La Hacienda (Popolo Village) were our family favorites for years.

BTW, the very same guitar player that played at that original La Hacienda location over in Popolo Village off 1960 and Stuebner is STILL PLAYING his guitar at the big La Hacienda in Cypress! To think how much has changed in the world since the late 1970s...it's nice to see that some things remain the same.

I know that La Hacienda. My family originally lived in Cypresswood, but we still went to Las Brasas after we moved to Champions Forest in summer 1986, until it closed a little later, and La Hacienda was one of the places we ate at for a while in our relentless search for a restaurant as good as Las Brasas. Some rivaled in food and margaritas, but none could come close in atmosphere.

It's kind of a shame what happened to Popolo village. It was such a unique little shopping center, architecturally. Made to look like a european village. I guess it was getting pretty dated, but the new facade makes it look like any other strip center.

It looks like a cartoon reinterpretation of a Beaux-Arts government building.

Anyone else here remember Las Brasas Mexican Restaurant on Kuykendahl Rd, kind of far south of 1960? It was open during the early-mid 1980s. It was pretty much a Friday night ritual for my parents to take us there through much of my elementary school years.

Much of the land adjacent to it and across the street from it was the Bammel Oil and Gas Field, so it was undeveloped - trees and pasture, which contributed to the feeling that you weren't just going to another restaurant in a strip mall (indeed, it wasn't in a strip mall, but in a free-standing building sort of by itself), but to a place out in the country.

The restaurant building itself, was really well decorated, in spanish colonial style, red tile roof, stucco walls, lots of archways, some wrought-iron works, saltillo tile floors. When you walked into the building, you entered a little foyer area with the host stand. To your left was a separate room that was a little carpeted lounge. Directly to your right was a hall leading to the bathrooms, if I remember correctly. You walked straight through the foyer into the main eating area, which had a large bar in the wall which was now to your back and left a little. The main eating area was large and open, made to look a little like a patio (though you were inside) and even had a small fountain. Walking through that room, you entered a large back room, with raised floors, slightly differently decorated, with hunting trophy mounts (taxidermied animal heads) though not too many to make it gross. It gave it the feeling of being a hacienda in interior Mexico.

As kids we loved going there (we were already in a good mood because it was Friday, and we knew if my parents didn't linger over their margaritas too long we'd get home in time to watch Knight Rider) because the food was good, the staff was friendly and knew my family by name as regulars, and all the little nooks and crannies of the restaurant were great places for three little boys to explore and pretend we were private detectives somewhere exotic. Also, my parents always let us order Roy Rogers to drink.

My memory of the food isn't very expansive, because as a kid I used to get onl a few things. First I was ordering plain ol beef enchiladas, then I remember a couple of times ordering shrimp enchiladas because I loved shrimp and it sounded like a good idea, but was disappointed. Most of the time I would order beef tacos al carbon. I remember this was the first restaurant where anyone in my family had ordered beef fajitas, and they served them with grilled or sauteed sliced mushrooms, the only place I have seen that. Before discovering Las Brasas we ate at Casa Elena on 1960 just east of Kuykendahl, and not as often as we did Las Brasas. I don't remember my parents ordering fajitas or margaritas, so it seems like the Friday night fajitas and margaritas tradition that continues to this day started at Las Brasas.

Our favorite waiter there was Angel, a young, short, friendly hispanic guy, who left for a while but came back. The owner also knew us well and would come visit our table whenever we were there. He opened a second Las Brasas downtown, I think at The Shops at Houston Center. Something happened, his brother disappeared mysteriously in Mexco, and he went down to look for him, leaving the management of the restaurants to his head waiter. Because of his search for his brother, he couldn't devote the attention to the restaurant it needed, and it closed sometime in the late 80s.

I have had a lot of "favorite" mexican restaurants since then, mostly in Houston, but a few in Dallas when I was in college, but none of them can compete with my memories of Las Brasas. Just wondering if anyone else had the fond memories of this place.

Las Brasas on Kukendall south of FM 1960. In the early-mid 80s they were my family's Friday night ritual. Awesome fajitas, always came with sauteed mushrooms, my parents say they had the best margaritas ever, and the atmosphere of the place was the best of any mexican restaurant. The building was a stand-alone structure, with mostly open field all around it on both sides of the street. Inside it had many different rooms all themed on an interior mexican hacienda. My brothers and I would "go to the bathroom" and actually walk around exploring it.

Magic Pan Creperie in the Galleria

Harry's Kenya, near the theatres downtown.

I loved the Greenspoint Scooby Doo's

I've been to Randall's in Austin. Of Course, Randall's bought Tom Thumb, so all Tom Thumbs in Dallas are like Randall's. Randalls sucks now anyway, now that Safeway has gottent their claws into it. Safeway, we chased you out when you were Safeway, we chased you out when you tried to come back as Apple Tree, and now that you have ruined Randall's we just want to see it put out of its misery - get a clue, Safeway, we don't like you.

There is at least 1 Fiesta in Dallas.

There is a new drivein in the NW suburbs, on FM2920 - I know it is east of US 290, may be east of 249, definitely no farther east than Stuebner Airline. Looks pretty nice, I'm going to have to try it.

Las Alamedas on I-10 between Voss and Wirt.

Lankford Grocery in Midtown

Vargo's off Westheimer & Fondren

Biba's One's A Meal

Pino's on Westheimer and Hillcroft

Several Hotel restaurants, including Warwick, La Colomb D'or

Damian's?

Drexler's

These are just the first few that come to mind. There are thousands of restaurants from the mid-70s, many hundreds even older, and probably even more stores that have been around since the 50s and earlier.

Sakowitz was definitely a local competitor to Neimans. I'm a native houstonian, born in 1976, and I remember my mom taking me to the old downtown store and the Post Oak store to buy clothes (mostly the stuff we wore to the theatre, church, our "Sunday" clothes), and we would eat lunch at the restaurants in the stores. They had great luncheon restaurants. I remember they would bring baskets full of orange bread and cheese straws (homemade) to the table when we sat down, and for kids they had pb&j and other sandwiches cookie-cut into the shape of animals.

I also remember a smaller Sakowitz closer to our house in the NW suburbs, on 1960 and Champions Forest - It's now a Sun and Ski Sports - the only former sakowitz building I know of to be still standing.

I remember going to the Post Oak Store when it was selling everything, even to racks, to close. We bought some furniture that is still in my parents' house.

I miss Sakowitz, it was a great store - along with Specialty Foods store Jamail's on SW corner of Kirby and Alabama.

There is an interesting book on the history of Sakowitz and the family feud that brought it down, called "Blood Rich: When Oil Billions, High Fashion, and Royal Intimacies are Not Enough" by Jane Wolf. It's out of print, but I picked it up used on Amazon for 40 cents.

Another old-school Houston clothing store, but still in business: Harold's in the Heights.