Oaklawn Village Plaza, Texarkana, TX

Welcome to Plazas, a series on my blogger where I take a look at dead and dying shopping plaza's, or strip malls, whatever you want to call them.

In this post, we're going to be taking a look at the Oaklawn Village Plaza, a shopping center, which unlike all of the other entries on this series so far, is not a dying shopping center, and actually has almost all of their tenants filled, but its still worth looking at none the less.

Let's go take a look;

The plaza has a wierd-ish layout where there's a random strip of stores in the parking lot. Basically, the plaza has an outparcel, and it's another, smaller, plaza. That's what we'll be looking at first.
(Image via Google Earth)

Former Rent-A-Center

This small portion of the plaza is pretty much unremarkable

Filled with local tenants, Exception of the former Rent-A-Center

The plaza even has its own theater

It's not a movie theater, however, as it is more of a performing arts theater. The building did serve as an actual movie theater a while back, but not anymore.

This upscale looking Big Lots here clearly wasn't built as Big Lots

This building here originally start out as a Belk department store, going under the name of Belk Jones

Former flea market

This plaza has had a weird history of flea markets and thrift stores out of all things, considering how many of them co-existed in the same plaza

Some of the thrift stores here last longer than others

Some more local businesses

And last, but not least, the main anchor of the Oaklawn Village Plaza

The first time that I came across this building here, I had no idea what it was

It wasn't until I turned the corner that I figured out what this building originally was, a Montgomery Ward store (believe it or not)

What gave it away was the former Auto Center...

Which still has it's original sign up!
Even though it's currently being used by a local place, and it isn't even abandoned

Looking at the old Montgomery Ward website, it would appear that this location actually made it until the entire company went under in 2001

Thanks for reading

All images are from Google Maps / Google Street View. I take zero credit for any of these photos