On a recent Uber ride, a New Orleans transplant revealed he lived in the Greenspoint area. I told him that’s where I grew up. “Gunspoint?” was his response. It’s a common question when I tell people my formative memories as a kid were in a tiny blue collar neighborhood just blocks north of the mall that is about to be torn down.
When I was just a kid and the mall was under construction in what used to be a sheep pasture, I learned how to ride my bike in the parking lot. Greens Road, which had not existed prior to the mall’s opening, became a bustling shopping area, something the quite rural area along Greens Bayou, north of the Beltway had not seen before.
Over the years, it grew into a pretty remarkable mixed use community with businesses that catered to the nearby rapidly growing Bush IAH airport. It may not seem like it now, but my neighborhood growing up was more like country than city. We played along the untamed banks of the bayou and roamed the streets of our hood day and night.
When Greenspoint Mall, a massive sprawling complex of shops moved in, it was welcomed by our neighbors. Kids loved the movie theater and arcade. Some adults in our modest neighborhood even took second jobs at the department stores. It spawned new grocery stores, restaurants and business for days.
It wasn’t until the late 1980s, post Hurricane Alicia, when things began to deteriorate. Slum lords occupying some of the many apartment complexes along and east of the bayou fostered a presence of crime and drugs that turned Greenspoint into Gunspoint despite the protestations of thriving commercial industry in the area.
For me, it represented the end of an era.
As a youngster in the ’70s with an overprotective mother, the mall was a respite, a place she considered me safe. I spent many afternoons and weekends there with friends playing Galaga and seeing movies. I paid once and watched Empire Strikes Back three times in the same day. It was the hub of activity that also included more outdoor pursuits like fishing, biking and playing sports in the streets.
After I graduated high school and my parents separated, the whole area began to change. I still lived in the house where I grew up, spanning the divorce of my parents. I heard gunfire regularly, once watched a gun fight/car chase on my street, and had my house burglarized losing numerous musical instruments, a huge bummer for a young musician.
When I heard this summer that that mall had officially closed its doors and would be torn down, I decided to drive by and get a look at the hallowed halls of crass commercialism. In that mall I bought cool shoes at Journeys and ate slices of pizza at Three Brothers (direct from Brooklyn). There were the water-driven chimes in front of Foley’s and the myriad number of shops my mom dragged me into on weekends when I was forced to join her on a shopping excursion.
Now, it’s just a shell, boarded up and ready for demolition. For those who didn’t know it in its heyday, it is just a remnant of an area that fell into crime and disrepair. But, for me, and those who grew up in the area, it represented modernity and the big city I yearned for when I lived, at the time, way out in the sticks. Back then FM 1960 was still literally a farm-to-market road.
I had not been inside Greenspoint Mall in many years, but it still felt like home even though I hadn’t lived there in 30 years. It is part of that landscape of Houston that is ever changing. Hopefully, something better takes its place and it survives as long as the mall did.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
