PlazAmericas
shopping mall in Texas, United States

PlazAmericas, formerly known as Sharpstown Mall and earlier Sharpstown Center, is a shopping mall located in the Sharpstown development in Greater Sharpstown, Houston, Texas. The mall is located on the northwest corner of Interstate 69/U.S. Route 59 and Bellaire Boulevard. This is the third mall to be built in Houston after Gulfgate Mall opened in 1956 and Meyerland Plaza in 1957, but the first fully air-conditioned mall in Houston. The area includes the Jewelry Exchange Center, a ten-story building. After the mall was renamed PlazAmericas, it took a Latin American theme and catered to Hispanics. The anchor stores are Burlington, SuperNova Furniture, America Cinemas, La Sorella, Gold Factory & Imports, and Clarewood Supermercado.
It was built in Sharpstown Industrial Park Section 12.
History
Beginnings and prime years (1961–1990s)
The mall opened as Sharpstown Center, on September 14, 1961, mere days after Hurricane Carla affected Houston, with future United States Senator Ted Kennedy appearing during the opening ceremony as the main speaker. A 1970 Houston Chronicle article stated that Frank Sharp decided not to delay the opening; therefore the morale of Houstonians would be increased. Not surprisingly, the first day of business brought only 8,000 shoppers (a number that was affected by the hurricane).
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “PlazAmericas” is shopping mall in Texas, United States. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through PlazAmericas, shopping and mall, not as a finished interpretation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7203569. The first chronological checks are 1956, 1957, 1961 and 1970.
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This entry incorporates text from “PlazAmericas” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.