It was 1999. I remember the year. I was staying at the Baymont and it didnt seem too far from that mall.
I also got off the wrong ramp or was coming out of the airport and noticed a strip club - it seemed all by itself on a dark side road. Sure didn’t look like an area I wanted to b around.
The mall I saw in the daytime; wound up turning around there. First time I’d seen an abandoned Applebee’s. So the whole thing was closed down by 1999. Looks like that other mall closed in 2015(?) - I’ll have to look again.
Probably the old airport, then. That was the only Austin area mall I could find on the Dead Malls website.