Marooned on Northgate

Courtesy Project HOLD
Editor's Note: Originally, I had created this page as "104-115 College Main". It was created to follow the breakup of an even larger page on Northgate (now offline). This page was later slowly broken up to make new pages like Kyoto Sushi, Antonio's Pizza by the Slice, Sarge's, Dead Lazlo's Coffee Pub, and Former Aggie Cleaners on College Main.

Pictured here is what is now known as Social Lounge but was Marooned in the 1990s (1990-1998), a record store that many still remember today. After a brief stint as a Quizno's, in 2005, it transitioned permanently into bar space, originally named V-Bar. In 2007, V-Bar had a bit of bad publicity when a Rice basketball player was killed during a stabbing, but ultimately, the story came out that the man (and his brother, who was also injured) were killed because they were beating another man to death and the man's friend came to his aid. That's the short version of it anyway, but because of the bad publicity from the attack, in the late 2000s, V-Bar became "Social Lounge" (same ownership).

From what information can be found on the building, here is a rough chronology: Stereo Shack (fall 1972)
The Hanging Tree (1973-1974)
Taipei Express (1989)
Marooned (1990-1998)
Quizno's (2002-2004)
V-Bar (2005-~2007)
Social Lounge (~2008-present)
Due to the fact that there are large gaps in between, this probably isn't the complete chronology of the space (see below). Making this complex is it's technically a part of the same building that holds Foundation Room (colloquially "Foundies") today. As mentioned before, that building was previously covered on the blog; however, the gaps don't seem to indicate that a larger tenant occupied both at the same time. UPDATE 04-02-2022: Cut down post to just 110 College Main and updated that section.

Ardan Catalog Showroom / Rolling Thunder / Gattiland / Thunder Elite / Planet Fitness

The former Ardan/Gattiland/Thunder Elite (and current Planet Fitness) at 1673 Briarcrest as it stood in June 2015. (Picture by author.)
This place in Bryan-College Station is best remembered (at least to me) as Gattiland, but the history of the building goes farther beyond that, and we'll start there instead.

There were plenty of discount stores and similar operation in the 1960s and 1970s, most of which were bankrupt by the mid-1980s (if not earlier) and part of the problem was that they were scattered across the country with no real distribution system in place. Naturally, Bryan would be the home to a few of these doomed ventures including Cook's and Ardan Catalog Showroom. Despite being the fourth-largest in the country in 1979, there isn't much information on it. Even Google brings up this very page as the first result. Based out of Des Moines, there were about ten stores in Texas though none in big markets. No stores in Houston, just Bryan, Beaumont, and Galveston. The whole chain went under in 1986, and by that time Service Merchandise had taken over Wilson's and was firmly in a bunch of markets.

One of the ads Ardan ran locally, from November 1983. This, coincidentally, is a great example near the apex of when the video game industry crashed and retailers were forced to sell cartridges at low prices.

While Ardan was designed to have additional smaller stores, mostly on the Kent Street side of the center, the closure allowed the main space to be subdivided, and this is when longtime tenants like Brazos CAD (which was there until the late 2010s) to move in, and Ardan's old space was whittled down to around 18k square feet. Rolling Thunder, a skating rink (roller, not ice) moved in by August 1989, with the name of the shopping center changed to Travis Landing around this time (you can see a picture of the plaza here from c. 1989, though the tenant listing is newer). In 1994, however, Rolling Thunder was sold. Rather than new ownership reopening the rink (it closed in May 1994), everything was dismantled and moved to Wolf Pen Bowl & Skate where it would remain for at least another decade.

Ardan Catalog Showroom ad from 1985 after many of its stores closed; these were the ones to close in 1986. Note the newer logo.

On May 1st, 1996, Gattiland opened (see the Mr. Gatti's on Northgate post. While at one point Mr. Gatti's operated a location not too far away from the Briarcrest location, this gave Bryan a new Mr. Gatti's location (I'm not sure how it was signed, if it was "Mr. Gatti's Gattiland" or whatever, but it was definitely colloquially known as Gattiland), and was the place to have fun/birthday parties/etc. (as Pooh's Park was dead and gone by this time, leaving little but the sign...and Putt-Putt was a bit of a joke even in its prime) for anyone growing up in College Station between the late 1990s and early 2000s. Oh yes, it was definitely something: there was a large buffet and a regular eating area, the party rooms, a large room that showed Cartoon Network on a projection TV (remember, this was Cartoon Network of the late 1990s, which is still spoken of very highly), and the "Midway", which had the prize booth right as you went in. To the back was the bumper cars and a huge McDonald's Playplace-type playground, only larger (with one of those things you could grab and push off and it would slide down the metal rail: I don't know what it's called). There was also air hockey and tons of games, both redemption type games and arcade games (including several linked Daytona USA arcades). Unfortunately, I don't have any photos of the inside but I can remember most of it on the inside and could probably describe parts of it to you if asked nicely (it was the purple bumper car that was put in storage in the later years, for example).

Well, it got really run down pretty quickly, accelerated by an incident where some "unruly teenagers" released early from school damaged machines and culminated in someone going through one of the huge 10-foot windows in front of the restaurant (read the article, second page too). Some of the damaged machines never worked quite right after that and by the time it moved, the playground was dismantled as well; it was quite sad because just a few years earlier it was a premier place to be. In 2003 it moved to College Station and renamed to Gattitown (which will continue here). The building sat vacant and eventually became "Thunder Elite", a kids gymnastics/cheerleading place for a while, too, though it eventually packed up and left as well (new location).

Google Street View
In mid-2014, the former Gattiland/Thunder Elite space became Planet Fitness. It also gave part of the facade a purple paint job which didn't match the rest of the plaza.

So that's it for Gattiland, Ardan Catalog Showroom, and the like. Pictures are welcome, you know...

UPDATE 01-13-2023: Fixed dead links, got rid of the antiquated light blue text and other rewrites.
UPDATE 01-19-2025: Significant rewrite including the article where Gattiland lost its soul, better integration with other articles, and a lot more on when Ardan and Rolling Thunder came and went.