Richland Mall is Waco's main enclosed shopping mall, displacing the older Lake Air Mall as the de facto "mall" in the area. It's not a dead mall (arguably even better than my hometown's Post Oak Mall) but it's a pretty sleepy center, with some odd "dead mall" type stores, for example, it has one of the stores with tacky suits and hats (see "Modern Man" below), a few restaurants instead of a real food court (the Wendy's had closed, but the Chick-fil-A had a steady line, even on a weekday afternoon), and some vacant spots (including a space that had a rotating line of pop-up boutiques).

The mall opened in 1980 as "Richland Fashion Mall" with JCPenney, Dillard's, Wilson's (later Service Merchandise, actually moving out in 1996 to a stand-alone location—that's why it wasn't in the 1998 directory), Bealls, and Sears. In the late 2010s a Dick's Sporting Goods was constructed in a side corridor, and based on construction, seems to have been built (at least the main mall entrance side) underneath the existing mall's ceiling. Dillard's had replaced Service Merchandise with a second Dillard's much like their store at Post Oak Mall, and by 2019, the original Dillard's was Dillard's Women with the Service Merchandise-Dillard's being Mens/Home/Kids. When Sears closed in 2018, Dillard's stepped in to replace it with a new store (Dillard's Womens/Home) and the Service Merchandise-Dillard's housing just Dillard's Mens & Kids. Subsequently, the original Dillard's became Overstock Furniture & Mattress. Bealls closed in 2020 and reopened as Gordmans (before closing for COVID-19 reasons) and by the time it reopened Stage Stores was going out of business. In the early 2020s it was replaced with Tilt Studio, bringing back a Tilt arcade to the mall, which had closed several years earlier.

These pictures were taken in June 2019.

I originally visited this mall in 2006. I saw the Wendy's (didn't go in), visited the Special FX Video Game Exchange store (which had a College Station store for years before it closed...) though I didn't buy anything. I did buy a few strategy guides for older games in 2019 with some store credit from the College Station store, but nothing in 2006. I had a pretzel from Auntie Anne's (the late, great "Glazin' Raisin") and tried a crane game (located in the mall hallway) for the first time, which twice in a row went in the same direction and dove in the same place each time. I always knew those things were rigged.

Somewhere I have a directory from this trip...but this lease plan is from 2024.

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