Loupot's Southgate

From The Eagle, August 12, 1988
As a complement to their Northgate location, then-locally based Loupot's built a second store here in August 1988. Like their Northgate location, however, the store closed in spring 2012. Sometime afterwards, Maroon & White, LP moved in, better known as TexAgs. (Their film subsidiary, Texas Filmworks, was in the building before moving out to the old Chevron, where you can also see a picture of the building). TexAgs owns MyBCS, a popular Bryan-College Station forum that they ended up fully integrating into their main site. (I will refrain from discussions regarding TexAgs directly, though I will comment that the moderation team takes the rather pretentious term of "Staff" despite almost certainly being a volunteer position).

There also used to be a barbershop accessible on the upper level (Southgate Barbers) but I think that moved out by the time TexAgs moved in.

The article above mentions a Quicker Sticker, but it wasn't there for very long (it first opened off Cavitt Street in 1984) and I don't see anything on old aerials. Did they operate out of the then-Gulf's garage...?

EDITOR'S NOTE: A major re-do was done to Westgate Center's article. Authentic coastline atmospheres, salsa-saturated sandwiches, and Blimpie's second run, it's all here on the new page! Don't forget to check out that Ko-fi link. If we raise $100 I'll make the Defunct Business List, a list of every store and restaurant covered in this blog with a link back to its appropriate post.

Former Boston's The Gourmet Pizza

This was taken in June 2015 (by author) not too long before Razzoo's opened (but before the old Boston's signage was cleaned off and new signage installed).
As the "FM 60" directory on Carbon-izer.com is soon to be dismantled (see this archived version), I should discuss the next restaurant just to the right of 830 University Drive East, this time 820 University Drive East. It's current tenant has been Razzoo's Cajun Cafe since August 2015, but opened in August 2006 as "Boston's The Gourmet Pizza", an export version of Canadian-based Boston Pizza (I believe it was to prevent conflicts with Boston Market, but as Boston Market's star fell, the trademarks eventually changed). This closed around summer 2014.¹

This post as currently written may have an update forced before year-end, as earlier in October, Razzoo's parent company has filed for bankruptcy, and while the restaurant chain may live on in some form, most of its locations won't. (It already closed three locations prior--Oklahoma City, Pasadena, and Corpus Christi, a store in Winston-Salem closed last year).

1. Boston Pizza closed their stores in San Antonio and Houston, but in Dallas, it lives on and you can see it retired the "Boston's The Gourmet Pizza" for just Boston's Pizza in around early 2018 if not the tail-end of December.

Holick's on College Main

Picture from Flickr user "treyerice". Unfortunately it's just a thumbnail salvaged from an archived version of this website, the original was deleted.
While it is the least interesting history of the buildings in the block, it's perhaps the most important, and the only one that hasn't been covered in detail yet. 106 College Main was the longtime home of Holick's (which makes the famous Corps of Cadets Senior Boots) for many years. The longtime home of Holick's was built in the 1930s and definitely operating by the 1950s, but in 2005 it was sold out of family ownership and moved to Westgate Center in 2006, which is about when that picture above was taken. By 2007, a sign hung over the facade for "Hookah Station" (looking even worse than the photo above, and lacked the maroon-and-white awnings), which closed in the early 2020s for One15 (moved from 115 College Main, a bit of a misnomer now).

EDITOR'S NOTE: I have been trying to clear out the queue of posts to be updated, which is why this post may seem a bit lackluster. Significant updates have been done to Texas Avenue Crossing and Under the Water Tower (renamed to "Former Bud Ward Volkswagen"), in addition to smaller updates on other posts. Westgate Center is another post that is to be updated in the future.

Orr's Food Center

This picture from Loopnet is the best picture I can find; unfortunately, it's the renovated version. It didn't use to look like this.

We've touched on Piggly Wiggly before, with the first local store in 1963 (well, under Piggly Wiggly Red River, anyway, apparently one existed a generation earlier in Bryan) and the fifth store they opened when Lewis & Coker departed from their space next to Kmart.

But an important part of Piggly Wiggly's growth in the area...before falling to an over-saturated market (the area was "overgroceried" in 1985, a chronic issue that would last into the 1990s with Winn-Dixie closing its College Station store for the same reason)...was Orr's. Waldon H. Orr got involved with Louis Mauro's Louis' Market at Main Street and 23rd Street in 1939 (324 Main Street, a small storefront by today's standards) and in April 1948 opened a comparatively modern store at 200 East 24th Street, featuring just 8,500 square feet of space. At the time, Orr's Food Center was the largest grocery store in town (a record that has been continuously been broken). A few years later, Orr opened a second store at 3516 S. Texas Avenue and in the 1960s completed an expansion that almost doubled the size of the store, to approximately 12,000 square feet. While the downtown location remained as Orr's Food Center, the second location was referred to as Orr's Minimax, a franchised operation of stores that was owned by wholesaler Fleming Company Incorporated¹. In 1971, both Orr's stores were sold to Piggly Wiggly Red River Co., Inc., a large Piggly Wiggly franchisee operation out of Shreveport with stores from Austin to Baton Rouge² and stretching up to Missouri, which simply rebranded the Orr's stores as its own name (you can see Orr's in Piggly Wiggly form here). In the early 1980s Piggly Wiggly Red River either collapsed or otherwise sold its stores to Six Star Foods, a consortium of local businessmen, at which point consisting of just the two former Orr's, the former Lewis & Coker store, the Hearne store, and a store in Rockdale. Six Star Foods ceased operations in December 1985. The first to go was the Rockdale store (closed within a matter of months), then the one next to Kmart, and lastly this location, along with it the other Bryan location (the Hearne store was sold to Malone & Hyde³).

In 1986 Frank and Pete Palasota reopened the store as Pal's Supermarket. Pal's rearranged the store to make the shelves lower and easier to get around the store (with making multiple half-aisles instead of longer ones) but I think this was just a way to stock less merchandise. Pal's was unfortunately a failure, closing sometime in late 1987 with little fanfare. If Six Star Foods couldn't keep Piggly Wiggly afloat with the competition, Pal's couldn't do better. Pal's was mentioned as one of the participating retailers of a Brazos Food Bank food drive³ and the last mention of it was in March 1987 when a 67-year-old man drove into the parking lot in his truck and took his own life.

Not too long after (I suspect Pal's sold the lease and quietly closed) A.B.E. Systems, an office supplies dealer took up the space but it must have left something behind as references appear in 1998 for an antiques store called "A Bygone Era", and in 1999, "A Better Environment".

By 2005, it was divided into two smaller medical suites, with an otolaryngologist taking up residence (David Suchowiecky, MD) and chiropractor David Bailey, DC, in the other (d/b/a Back & Joint Clinic), and by 2007 the ENT doctor had been replaced by Lone Star Legal Aid. By December 2012 it was Infinity Real Estate & Management and by 2016, Wayne Carroll Enterprises (looks like the corporate office of The Chocolate Gallery, if that's the same business).

By 2022 the building had been renovated, losing the original architectural features like the glazed glass blocks of Orr's and had smaller tenants. With the East 24th facade divided into 200, 202, and 204 (200-202 having AB Hormone Therapy, 204 having St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Store and the Tabor side also getting sub-divided, with 307 North Tabor Road getting a branch of Engel & Völkers, and 311 North Tabor Road getting Dirt Road Home, it seems that at least the building has a future ahead of it, but there's nothing at the site to remind visitors to downtown Bryan of what was once the town's largest, most modern grocery store.

1. For more information on Minimax, please see Houston Historic Retail. Fleming (later Fleming Companies starting around 1981) will also figure a bit into this story.
2. Piggly Wiggly was never truly a chain, it franchised its name and format, much like a fast food franchise. Both H-E-B and Winn-Dixie were originally Piggly Wiggly franchisees.
3. Memphis-based Malone & Hyde were the owners of the Piggly Wiggly brand at the time and based out of Memphis. Besides being the one-time owner of Piggly Wiggly, its biggest success was Auto Shack, founded in 1978 and spun off in 1986 (renamed AutoZone in 1987 due to a lawsuit by Tandy Corporation). Malone & Hyde (and by extension Piggly Wiggly) were sold to Fleming Companies in 1988, and in 2003 C&S Wholesale Grocers got the brand in Fleming Companies' bankruptcy.
4. The others included the "big three" at the time, Safeway, Kroger, and Winn-Dixie...plus 7-Eleven.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I'm in the middle of another project that I hope will be a big thing (can't reveal too much of it right now) but as part of that, Kettle and Fort Shiloh got big updates. Pay attention to the Confucius Chinese Cuisine page as well...that's also to receive a major update, hopefully coming by October 6th.