A Goodbye Letter to Sunrise Mall

By Autumn Hensiek

Spending a day at the arcade or the dollar theater. The way the first bite of Dippin’ Dots tasted and how it felt to be  lost in the dolphin mural. Sunrise Mall housed some of my greatest nostalgia. Chances are if you grew up in Corpus Christi, you have some of these same warm memories. Sunrise Mall was past its prime even in my day, but something about the design – the skylights, the white metal chairs, the giant fiddle leaf figs – always spoke to me.

Over the Thanksgiving break, I said goodbye to Sunrise Mall one last time. As of the time of this article, more than  half of Sunrise Mall has been demolished. It was a surreal experience walking through the corridors, seeing each storefront destroyed and thinking back to what it once was. Nothing was more heartbreaking than the once-magnificent fiddle leaf figs, now covered in dust  – somehow still alive and left to be bulldozed.

The loss of Sunrise Mall reminds me of the loss of “third places” in our city in general. I’m grateful for the time I spent in Sunrise as a teen that probably kept me out of a lot of trouble elsewhere. So thanks Sunrise, and rest easy. <3