I'm a Spring Woods alum as well, class of '96. I spent my senior year writing for The Regit. I would say "good times," but it was actually pretty annoying working with the sophomore and junior editors.
NO ****??!?!?!?!? Dang! Shows how long it's been since I've been to that mall (or any mall in Houston). Target and Kohls killed my need for malls a few years ago.
hmmm. I think our editors were almost always Seniors at the Regit. It would have been frustrating working with editors that weren't good whether they were jr's , or sr's. I think our editor at the time of the T&C elevator piece was pretty laid back, at least with me. The year before that was a different story. In fact a story I wrote for the yearbook was published with someone else's name attached to it. I was a little angry at first about that, and then just used to give people a hard time. Anyway enough of my old high school journalism memory lane trips. Back to discussing malls.
I was about to say that too. I will be taking a few trips to the mall, since I will be staying in Memorial Plaza for a few weeks this summer. Memorial Mall is getting much better. It's much nicer than it used to be.
What a waste. I always had visions of Exxon, Shell, BMC and Compaq/HP turning the old mall into a first class technical school, like a Cal Tech or MIT for energy and computing. The parking, restrooms and HVAC are all there, you'd just need to break up the store space into offices and classrooms. What a boon to our local economy it could have been. The facilities there would cost a hundred million dollars to recreate and the best anyone could come up withis to tear it down.
I'm actually surprised that this didn't come about sooner. I haven't been to that mall in years. It was empty then, and I can only imagine the kind of graveyard it's become. The Neiman Marcus is probably the only good thing it had going. When it comes down to it, there are too many shopping malls in Houston. With the kind of summers they have down there, and the lack of outdoors activities, there's not much left to do but shop, I guess. Westwood Mall closed down like 8-10 years ago after a major renovation as well.
Harris County wants to make Highway 249 leading to Willowbrook Mall into a tollway too. Greedy bastards. There is a little park at the corner of the freeway intersection of 10 and BW8 next to T&C mall. It's the strangest location for a public park and I've never seen anyone using it ever.
I remember in the early, mid 90s, Memorial City mall was this ghetto ass mall place. And then like in 1999, they started remodeling expanding, and now it is pretty damn ice. I like it better than Willowbrook Mall. Infact, I hate the people at Willowbrook Mall. Different story though. Memorial City now has more stores, it does have the Target there. You can see it on I-10. It even has an olympic size ice skating rink. Atleast I think it is olympic size. The food court is damn nice. It has sushi in there, next to taco bell.
outaw.. really? hadn't heard that.. I suppose it is good that I don't get on 249 to go to willowbrook mall.. but that is how I go to tomball etc..
Actually, there aren't that many malls in Houston for its size. Edmonton, Alberta, where I lived many years ago has a lot of malls. When they built West Edmonton Mall, which was the biggest mall in the world at the time, Edmonton had the highest ratio of mall space to population of any city in the world. Of course, that's because it's too freaking cold in the winter to do anything else.
I know...Austinites act like 100 with 70% humidity is like freakin' heaven compared to 94 and 100% here. Newsflash, I sweat my balls off in the summer if I'm in Austin or Houston.
hottest summer in my experience was spent in 1996 in Waco, Texas. it NEVER cooled down. never. was in the high 80's at 10 p.m. never a breeze. just still and hot. seemed far hotter to me than houston.
Yeah, I remember one summer at Gene Iba's basketball camp, right after they built the new bookstore/parking garage, they had a marquee with the time, temp, etc. on it. Every day, at 8:00pm, the temp was still over 100. Made the short trip from Penland to Marrs nearly unbearable.
i appreciate the way you worked the word, "Penland" into the conversation. i lived there my first year.
Penland ruled. I harken back to the days of blaring "Poison" through the halls during breaks, having counselors throwing buckets of water on me because I wouldn't get up, and the very underrated cafeteria food.
