Memorial City is a commercial district in the Memorial area of Houston, Texas, United States. Located along Interstate 10 (Katy Freeway) between Beltway 8 and Bunker Hill Road, the district is anchored by Memorial City Mall, the nation's 38th-largest shopping mall; Memorial Hermann Memorial City Medical Center; CityCentre, a high-density mixed-use development; and Town & Country Village, a shopping center. Large portions of Memorial City are owned by development firm MetroNational, which has developed in the area, including the entirety of the mall.
Memorial City is a significant regional employment center with over of retail and of office space. The district's businesses employ over 47,000 people. Memorial City Mall attracts approximately 20 million visitors per year. The district's growing residential population houses over 4,400 people, largely concentrated in a series of high-density apartment complexes.
A portion of Memorial City is serviced by the Memorial City Management District, a special governmental district which provides branding and infrastructure funding. The management district was created by the Texas Legislature in 1999.
History Memorial City Mall—then known as Memorial City Shopping Center—was opened in August 1966 with 42 stores, including the 1,400-seat Memorial Theatre. The mall's opening catalyzed development in its immediate vicinity, with the construction of new apartments and the first portions of the neighboring hospital complex through the late 1960s. By the early 1970s, the Memorial area was one of the fastest-growing regions in Houston, with the Spring Branch Independent School District adding roughly 4,000 new students per year.
Accompanying the rapid growth of the area, Memorial City Mall underwent dramatic changes in the 1970s. In August 1973, a third major anchor store, Montgomery Ward, joined the original two (Sears and Weingarten's). The following year, the mall nearly doubled in size with the addition of a new eastern wing, adding 40 stores including a Foley's, its third major department store. By the mid-1970s, Memorial City Mall boasted over of retail space hosting 126 merchants and 6,500 parking spaces. A fourth expansion was completed in 1977.
The area's rapid growth generated enough demand for a second major shopping center, and in February 1983, Town & Country Mall opened at the southeastern corner of Interstate 10 and Beltway 8 with 90 stores. Town & Country quickly grew to 150 stores by 1985, with four lead tenants: Neiman Marcus, Marshall Field's, Joske's, and J. C. Penney. Shortly after its successful debut, a reconstruction project along Interstate 10 commenced, followed by the construction of the Sam Houston Tollway adjacent to the property. By 1986, long-term closures on Interstate 10 depressed visitor numbers so severely that 39 tenants shuttered and retail sales reached an all-time low. Town & Country's developers threatened to sue state and local highway officials, but in 1988, an agreement was reached to adjust the construction schedule. Compounding the mall's struggle to attract shoppers was the onset of the 1980s oil glut, which resulted in a severe local recession in Houston.
Memorial City Plaza, a , three-building office complex immediately south of Memorial City Mall, was developed in the early 1980s at a cost of $66 million ($ million in 2017 dollars). In 1988, Loews Cineplex Entertainment announced it would open a new eight-screen theater at Memorial City Mall after the closure of Memorial Theatre earlier in the decade. The addition of the new movie theater and other entertainment options, such as a roller-skating rink and an arcade, helped Memorial City weather the early 1990s recession. The Memorial City Loews would shutter in 2001, following the company's bankruptcy filing in February; Loews claimed the theater was "underperforming".
Town & Country Mall continued to decline through the 1990s, despite the completion of the Beltway 8 project. The new stack interchange at the intersection of Beltway 8 and Interstate 10 obscured the development, which did not have direct access to the Katy Freeway frontage roads. The tollway was described by the Houston Chronicle as a "big concrete moat" blocking access to the property. In 1995, the mall's developers, JMB Realty, defaulted on the development's $33 million mortgage, which was subsequently purchased by American General. By this point, large portions of the mall—including the entirety of the third floor—were vacant.
The Texas Legislature created the Memorial City Management District in 1999."About the District." Memorial City District. Retrieved on January 25, 2009. That same year, the city of Houston proposed the creation of a new Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone (TIRZ) for Memorial City. TIRZs levy incremental taxes on commercial properties to fund new infrastructure within their boundaries. The Memorial City TIRZ, which was proposed to fund new roadway infrastructure and potential office and residential development around the mall, faced strong backlash from Memorial-area residents who expressed skepticism of developer MetroNational's intentions and fear of the traffic congestion new development would bring to the area. A June 1999 area mobility plan accompanying the TIRZ proposal included controversial suggestions to extend roads through existing park space. Ultimately, with the support of mayor Lee P. Brown, the TIRZ was approved by Houston City Council in July 1999 despite a visible and contentious campaign by over 1,200 area residents. City councilmembers, justifying their support of the tax district, expressed their concern about flooding and economic decline in Memorial City.
In 1999, a proposed redevelopment of the mall by management firm Taubman Centers—which would have introduced high-end retailers Nordstrom, Lord & Taylor, and Neiman Marcus—was scrapped, with Taubman Centers exiting out of a 55-year management deal it had brokered with MetroNational in 1996. MetroNational devised its own redevelopment plan for the property, beginning with the construction of a new Foley's in 2000. The $100 million redevelopment project, which renovated the entirety of the mall, was completed in 2003, expanding the mall to —the second-largest in Houston, behind The Galleria—and adding retailers Target and Dillard's. A 16-screen Cinemark movie theater opened in 2007, ending the mall's six-year run without a movie theater. After the renovations, retail rents at Memorial City doubled from $200 per square foot to over $400.
Meanwhile, Town & Country's malaise continued into the early 2000s as American General attempted to sell the property. The mall lost most of its major tenants with the departure of Saks Fifth Avenue in 2000 and Dillard's in 2002. Town & Country's demise was in spite of an otherwise strong retail environment in west Houston at the time, with the full-scale renovation of Memorial City to the east and the reconstruction of high-end Town and Country Village to the south. In 2004, the property was sold to developer Midway Companies, which immediately announced Town & Country's demolition. In 2007, Midway announced a new $500 million mixed-use development on the site, CityCentre, which was designed to reduce automobile dependency by combining high-density office, retail, and residential components in a pedestrian-oriented urban space. The first phase of the CityCentre project was completed in 2009. In 2014, Midway announced CityCentre's second phase, featuring of office space in two 16-story office towers and a 13-story apartment building on of land fronting Interstate 10. In contrast to Town & Country Mall, CityCentre has been successful, reaching 90% retail occupancy in 2015.Following the expansion of Memorial City Mall, MetroNational began developing large tracts of land along Interstate 10 in the late 2000s and early 2010s. To the west, Memorial Hermann expanded with the addition of a 33-story office tower, architecturally notable for its "futuristic crown," a Westin hotel, new professional buildings, and a retail center dubbed "The Gateway". To the east, a large tract between the mall and Bunker Hill Road was gradually filled with high-rise office, hotel, and residential developments, including the U.S. headquarters of Air Liquide. In 2017, Memorial City expanded north of Interstate 10 for the first time with the construction of the U.S. headquarters of Cemex. The district has also attempted to brand itself with the construction of four five-story obelisks with lighted tops along Interstate 10."Memorial City stages all-star branding show." Houston Business Journal. CityBeat. Friday July 17, 2009. Retrieved on July 18, 2009.
Cityscape The district straddles Interstate 10 (the Katy Freeway) between Beltway 8 and Bunker Hill Road.Memorial Management District Boundary ." Memorial Management District. Retrieved on January 25, 2009. While consisting mainly of retail, medical and office complexes, the district includes four apartment complexes with a combined total of 988 units. One, the Terrace at Memorial City, is only for senior citizens. The Villas at Bunker Hill is located north of the Memorial Management District district boundary at the southwest corner of Bunker Hill and Pine Lake Drive."2007 Inventory and Database ." Memorial Management District. 18. Retrieved on May 31, 2010.
As is the case in several of the special management districts of Houston, Memorial Management District uses street name signage of a different graphic design style and color scheme than the standard white-on-green signs used in many neighborhoods throughout the city.
Economy
Many of Memorial City's employees live and work within a radius of the intersection of Interstate 10 and Gessner Road, covering portions of suburban Harris County and Fort Bend County."2007 Inventory and Database ." Memorial City Management District. 4-5. Retrieved on May 31, 2010. The three largest employers include Memorial City Mall, with 5,000 local employees, the Chase Bank Service Center, with 1,100 local employees, and the CEMEX United States operations, with 1,000 local employees."2007 Inventory and Database ." Memorial City Management District. 9. Retrieved on May 31, 2010.
There are 24 retail centers in the district which each have more than of space, making a total of of space. The Memorial City Mall has over half of the retail space in the district, with of space. There were no gross retail sales figures for the Memorial City area that were available from public published sources, so the district used the publication the average sales per square foot statistics for shopping centers in the Southern United States stated in the publication "Dollars & Cents of Shopping Centers/The SCORE 2006." To calculate sales of single tenant big box stores, the district used average national sales data for specific stores. Using the data the district estimated that its annual retail sales were $1.1 billion in 2006 dollars, making an average of about $300 per square foot.