As of this writing, the new Aspire Reserve1, after a few years of construction, is nearing completion with 19 stories and 346 units (though, as it's a student-oriented property, sells itself on 873 beds). I'm sure that I'll probably get hits on this post strictly because it IS an apartment complex-based post, but let's get down to the fun part...what did it actually replace? The stuff it replaced is within recent memory, but let's go down the list.
A good chunk of the land is recycled from the long exit lanes that branched off of University Drive, but there were namely three buildings on Church Avenue that it took over. The first one was 102 Church Avenue, the most interesting of the three. It was built as a house in 1959 as per Brazos CAD, built as a house, the first reference coming from a 1963 obituary about one Mrs. Marguerite Mary Edmonds, age 48, and at some point in the 1970s it was abandoned.
"Dead Solid Perfect" was a hamburger restaurant and the first that opened in the former house in February 1976. According to this article, "[owner Searcy Bond] did nothing to the building" during conversion to a restaurant, which matches up with this description is from Yuccadoo on TexAgs, with "no exhaust vents, smoke pouring out a coupla windows in the kitchen". It closed at some point in 1979.
In December 1979, One Potato Two Potato opened; I'm guessing it was the first "meal in a peel" style restaurant in town. In the summer 1983 it was retooled as Two Blocks North and added hamburgers to the menu. In 1983 Two Blocks North closed, and in August 1984, La Taqueria & Tortilla Factory opened, by Donnie Anz, who later opened the nearby (and more successful) Cafe Eccell). "La Taq", though, was arguably the most memorable of the restaurants at 102 Church Avenue and is still talked about sometimes today but it closed around summer 1991 in response to the opening of Two Pesos. It was extensively remodeled2 as a new restaurant called Planetary Grub & Juice Bar, featuring trendy California cuisine, opening late August for the new fall 1991 semester. Unfortunately, it was mistaken as a vegeterian restaurant (no doubt, the California/Austin vibe it gave off turned people away) and after just a month of heavy losses, reopened as Rosalie's Pasta House on September 25, 1991, which proved considerably more successful, closing around 1997 in favor of Cafe Eccell Annex, serving as Cafe Eccell's banquet hall.
After Cafe Eccell and its sister restaurants were sold to co-owner Costa Dallis, 102 Church Avenue reopened as a restaurant with La Bodega Baja Taco Bar opened in October 2000, and closed in November 2014. I do have a picture of the specials as of May 2014 including the gimmick of the hotter it was outside, the cheaper drinks were. By the end of 2016, it had been torn down.
The second of the three buildings was the original 100 Church Avenue. Despite many buildings in the Northgate area being decades old, there was no 100 Church Avenue (colloquially Church Street, though the annexation of Wellborn meant there was now a Church Street proper in the city limits) until 2010, built and opened as a modern restaurant conforming to Northgate design and use at the time, called "Church Street Blues and Barbecue". I never got to visit it as it was never open for lunch and only in the evening and night of certain days (weekends and the days leading up to it). It was one of the first places to have New Republic Brewing Company beer on tap back in 2011, but in 2014, Church Street Blues closed. It soon reopened as "West End Elixir Company" in late 2015, which catered to an older crowd, with much of the staff being veterans.3 A Bryan location followed a few years later, but in 2018 the decision was made to shutter the Northgate location. In late April 2022, CALZ, a cazone restaurant opened having signed a lease a year before. Unfortunately, CALZ shut down in less than two weeks after a legal dispute (allegedly), the social media pages wiped and the doors locked, perhaps becoming one of the shortest-lived restaurants in town. By spring 2024 it was torn down, with the construction of Aspire Reserve starting shortly afterward.
The third building was just an apartment building (104 Church Avenue). It was built in the early 1970s but some of the units had been converted to offices—namely, this is where Eccell Group operated out of4, even in the mid-1990s. It was torn down around the same time as La Bodega. I did take a picture of it, but my finger covered a quarter of the shot (May 2014). It's not much better than what you can see from the older shots on Google Maps Street View.
There was also a fourth business on the premises, Wayside Food Park (taking the address of 203 First Street). It was supposed to be a permanent place for food trucks complete with electrical conduits and a covered pavilion area, but it failed hard, opening in December 2017 and closing by early 2019. In previous versions of the post, I had referred to it replacing 104 Church and La Bodega, but it didn't even sit on the same part of land, suggesting that it had nothing to do with the demise of the two Eccell-affiliated buildings.
1. Originally planned and announced as "Nova Northgate"
2. At some point, a renovation that brought the building to code as a restaurant and less of a house, it's possible it happened during this time. 3. Dustin Batson, the proprietor, wasn't always doing bartending, he was forced to resign from the local Walmart after shooting a shoplifter in self defense.
4. Eccell Group briefly was at University Square Shopping Center, but nowadays Mojo Concepts, the successor business, operates out of a mailbox...1511 Texas Avenue, PMB 333.
UPDATE 07-23-2026: Renamed and rewritten post (previous updates archived), merging in 100 Church Avenue. (Last titled as "A Look at Former Restaurants at 102 Church Avenue"). New tags were added ([2000s], [1970s] , [residential] ,[2020s], [punny titles])
