As part of the on-going reorganization of some of the stuff I've written for Carbon-izer, I wanted to bring up the former Fiesta Mart at 4200 San Jacinto Street in Houston, Texas.
My fondest memories of the former Fiesta Mart #17 (45k square feet) was in 2014 with its distinctive "marquee" facade that lit up the night, and even in 2014 that felt quaint and a reminder of a different time (though it did open in 1988, there were other places from my past that weren't nearly as old as I thought they were). In any case, this Fiesta closed in July 2020. The closure of Fiesta was met by dismay by the neighborhood but there were several problems, including Fiesta's new ownership remerchandising and modernizing the chain, the large homeless population that milled around the area and intimidated shoppers (sometime in 2019 a fence was erected around the property with a gate that closed nightly), the new H-E-B at McGregor Road, and most importantly--the fact that it was connected to Sears' ownership. The store had opened as a supermarket complement to Sears on land it owned formerly used for parking. When Sears closed the store in the late 2010s and handed it over to Rice, Fiesta was on borrowed time and eventually the lease ran out and was not renewed. With the former Sears becoming the core of the new "Innovation District", the former Fiesta reopened as Greentown Labs, a clean energy business incubator. It should also be noted that since at least 2007 to its closure it had a Church's Chicken inside.
Update: I have been informed that the land was originally Rice's, Sears leased it long-term.
No comments:
Post a Comment