CityNorth Industrial Park at the Former Greenspoint Mall, Houston

Houston’s Greenspoint Mall is coming down to make room for warehouses. Demolition started Oct. 13, 2026, on the 80-acre site at 12300 North Freeway, where Lincoln and New York Life Investment Management plan CityNorth Industrial Park, a $150 million redevelopment with 1.2 million square feet of cross-dock and rear-load industrial buildings.

Greenspoint opened in 1976 with Sears, Palais Royal and Foley’s as anchors and was, briefly, the largest mall in Greater Houston. Its decline ran for decades: anchor closures, a crime reputation the area never shook and a stint sheltering Hurricane Harvey evacuees in the empty Macy’s in 2017. The mall closed in June 2024.

Project Scope

Powers Brown Architecture is designing the park, Kimley-Horn is civil engineer and E.E. Reed Construction is general contractor. Lincoln is pitching the buildings to logistics, distribution and manufacturing users, with some retail and service uses on the site. Building count and individual sizes haven’t been released. Fitness Connection, a mall tenant since 2005, stays in a new 45,500-square-foot build-to-suit.

The City of Houston and the North Houston District are putting $15 million toward demolition and public right-of-way work, tied to the Greater Greenspoint Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone. Former anchor parcels with separate owners aren’t part of the park. The first phase is due in the first quarter of 2028. The developers expect about 300 construction jobs and roughly 1,200 permanent jobs at full buildout.

Why It Matters

Dead-mall-to-warehouse deals aren’t new, but this site has the location for it: the northeast corner of I-45 and Beltway 8, with the Hardy Toll Road close by. “The scale of this site gives us the flexibility to accommodate a range of users,” Lincoln executive vice president Gabe Lerner said when the plan was announced in September.

The better question is why industrial got here when everything else stalled. A $32 million renovation plan in 2006 went mostly nowhere, and later apartment and retail ideas were shelved. Industrial is a simpler product with less dependence on foot traffic and the neighborhood’s reputation, which is probably why it’s the plan that reached the wrecking crews.

For contractors, the demolition of a roughly 1.4-million-square-foot mall with public money attached is a sizable job before the first tilt-wall panel goes up. For North Houston, 1,200 jobs on a site known mostly for bad headlines would be a real change.

Project Team & Details