Days Inn on University Drive East

I realize that taking a picture from the official website of the hotel is a cop-out but on the plus this should last for years after it changes hands in reality, and I don't think I'd get a better shot.
I did want to cover this one as it's part of dismantling the FM 60 page on Carbon-izer, and while I find hotels interesting, there's not a lot to say about this one. 901 University Drive East has been Days Inn by Wyndham College Station University Drive since December 2016. It has been associated with Best Western for most of its existence. From what I can tell it opened in 1983 as The Inn at Chimney Hill (back when Best Western was more an affiliation and not a brand)¹ and while it did have an unbranded in-house restaurant serving Chinese food². In 1986 it was foreclosed on, with the paper³ noting the University Drive East/Tarrow area was hit hardest by the recession. In 1988, the restaurant area was retooled again as Crepe Myrtle Bar (with "fine spirits and authentic country food"). Things didn't change much at the hotel, it was still a Best Western into 2005, though by 2007 it had lost that branding (just The Inn at Chimney Hill) and in January 2008 was rebranded as a Travelodge under then-owner Rossco Holdings (the old Holiday Inn/Forum reopened as such around the same time). By the early 2010s it took the EconoLodge name, by 2015 was branded as "Executive Inn & Suites and as previously mentioned became Days Inn after that.

Just as a side note, the Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant and the Comfort Suites hotel just to the east of this opened in 2005 and 2006, respectively, but since they are the original tenants they won't be covered anytime soon unless there's a really good reason.⁴

1. As a general rule, even up until around the mid-2010s, the "real" name of the hotel was below the Best Western sign.
2. The Chinese restaurant concept was changed by 1984, ads stopped talking about "authentic Chinese food" and starting talking about "now serving Omaha steaks".
3. "Hotel, shopping center posted for foreclosure". 7/29/86, The Eagle.
4. If, say, you wanted a sponsored post that would be pushed to the top of the site for a few weeks and be part of the permanent archive, the line is open. Advertisers, this means you!

Varsity II Apartments

Varsity II shortly after suffering a fire (The Eagle, 8/20/94).
Located at 100 Jersey Street (later 100 George Bush Drive) and built in 1966, Varsity II Apartments¹ was a victim of right of way expansions for the George Bush Drive underpass project, which still has yet to be built. The apartments dropped the name (at least on the front of the building) sometime around the late 2000s and torn down around 2017, but despite their long run there's not a lot I can say about them other than they were just a fixture of Southgate and in the 2000s there was usually some old man at the stoplight impressing passers-by by grabbing the FM marker sign pole and doing horizontal pull-ups.²

The only major story of note I found about the apartment buildings was in August 1994, when 29-year-old Carl Henry Blue bought 50 cents worth of gasoline in a paper cup from the nearby Chevron³ and set his ex-girlfriend, 38-year-old Carmen Richard-Sanders⁴, on fire, with the resulting fire injuring one other person and doing "extensive damage" to the apartment building. It isn't clear to what extent things happened. The building wasn't torn down and only a few units were destroyed, but all the residents had to move out for a few days, mostly in relation to repairing gas furnaces. Richard-Sanders had to be airlifted to Hermann Hospital in Houston, but it was too late; she died of her injuries within 24 hours. Blue, who had already turned himself in when he caught wind of a manhunt, was charged with felony murder, found guilty, and sentenced to death.⁵ It was not the only fire at Varsity II over the years, but certainly the most notable one.

1. The question if there was a Varsity I is inconclusive. A few pre-1966 references have a reference to one being near Marion Pugh Lumber Company and having central air, so it's not 303 University and it's not clear if this was one and the same with Varsity II.
2. Bart Braden was his name and attracted a bit of notoriety including a Battalion article written about him. He passed away in January 2026 during the writing of this article.
3. While the Chevron or ownership was not charged in relation to Blue's crimes, it was (and is) against the law to sell gasoline in an unapproved container like a paper cup. Also, 50 cents in the mid-1990s was a significant amount of gasoline, closer to half a gallon...but the cup was probably not filled up to that much.
4. Initial reports put the victim's name as "Carmen Richardson", likely from a communications error.
5. Carl Blue was executed by lethal injection in February 2013.

Woodstone Shopping Center

They may have been overselling Woodstone, but it was at least unique for its time. (Eagle advertisement, 10/25/1980) There isn't much left on Harvey Road that I haven't covered yet¹ (especially with adding Post Oak Village and Advance Auto Parts last year, and 620 Harvey Road the year before that², but there were a few things left on the now-removed Harvey Road page on Carbon-izer, most notably, Woodstone Center.

Woodstone's history goes back to 1907, and it wasn't even on Harvey Road. That is when Southern Pacific built a train station in Waller, Texas, and operated until it closed around the mid-1960s. That was in the same era of time when the College Station depot shuttered, the Hempstead-to-Giddings line was abandoned³, and the passenger train industry was on a steep decline. But unlike the fate of the College Station depot (which was later demolished) the Giddings depot was saved and transplanted (cut in two and reassembled, with a large expansion to double the size) to its new location at 815 Harvey Road, with the new name of the C&S Transit Co. restaurant, opening in April 1977 with a large menu of pizza, sandwiches, and pasta dishes.

Between October 1977 and February 1978, the restaurant renamed to "The College Station Depot" and by spring had closed, replaced with another restaurant called Beef & Brew (not related to the similar Beef 'n Brew at Southgate, later on), a steakhouse with complimentary drinks and salad. In late 1979 it became C.K. Krumboltz, another steakhouse, owned by Thomas Nolan⁴, and by summer 1980, it had changed hands again, this time back to a reincarnation of Beef & Brew (new ownership, looks like). By fall 1982 it was closed once more and by summer 1983 it was Park Avenue Club & Cafe.⁵ In July 1984, an advertisement for "Malibu Beach" appeared in the Battalion ("We're bringing a little Florida and California to College Station!"), by January 1985 there was an ad in the Battalion for the grand opening of BeZerk (if that's how it was stylized) which mentioned it was "formerly ANX", which means that by 1985 Malibu Beach already came and went. After that, I can't find anything until sometime in 1986 when it became MC² (that's not a footnote, that's the name of the establishment, as in Einstein's work, which had moved from 109 Walton).⁶ In November 1986, a fire at MC² caused extensive exterior damage, which is probably why the current building doesn't resemble an old train station much anymore (it appears to have not been reopened under that name, giving this post a [death by fire] label). In 1987, the building was repaired and reopened as another club, Parthenon, its 11th name in a decade, and briefly Club Fahrenheit in 1990. Despite the numerous names the building had since moving to College Station, in 1990, The Tap opened, and it has been The Tap since.

Moving over to the east side of the complex, 919 Harvey Road was home to Hamburgers by Gourmet, a hamburger restaurant that operated mostly in the Houston area in the 1970s and 1980s (a short-lived "revival", or knockoff, in Nassau Bay notwithstanding). It closed around December 1983 and reopened as Archie's 39¢ Hamburger Place, a restaurant chain founded in Austin a year earlier owned by E.C. "Archie" Archambault of the local Taco Bell restaurants⁷, which he advertised with. Archie's Hamburgers closed around 1988-1989⁹ and in 1990, the third restaurant opened, DoubleDave's Pizzaworks, its fourth local location.⁸

This operated until 2005, and by 2006, it was Shivers ice cream and snow cones (it had a Bryan location as well, though the College Station had relocated from Dominik Drive). It closed in 2009 and was quickly replaced by Carroll's Giant Burger (out of Navasota) though that lasted only a few years before being replaced by How Do You Roll?, a fast-casual sushi restaurant (basically you picked ingredients on a sushi roll, much like Subway or Chipotle) chain. I always wanted to try it but in early 2015 the College Station closed, and within two years the entire chain was gone. There was Eskimo Hut following it from late 2015 to January 2019, and in January 2020, the spot reopened as Tacos La Perlita, which it still is.

The rest of Woodstone isn't that interesting, though. The center is designed so there are some exterior facing tenants and others (primarily offices) face inside. Clockwork Games & Events (traditional games like board games and tabletop games, not video games) has been at 903 Harvey Road suite A since 2012 (after being at 913 Harvey G for a few years). At 913 Harvey Road C, a Subway has been operating since 1983 (the second of its type in the area, and one of the few in the state at the time). 907A held Coffee Station since late 1997 until around 2009, a railroad-themed coffee shop with a cool loft area, which was sold and briefly closed for a redecoration and rename to Mugwalls, though that closed for good in 2016. From 1984 to 2012, there was a Rother's bookstore (later known as Traditions) here as well. There are a number of other tenants and addresses here, on Carbon-izer I have hosted a full layout of the place, from Loopnet.

Finally, there are some additional stores that have come and gone from Woodstone...the stuff mentioned here is by no means a complete list. There was The Unicorn & Which Witch?¹⁰ (come for the mysticism gifts, stay for Misty the cat), The Cookery (opened 1980), Carroll's Baskets and Wicker (opened 1979, not to be confused with Carroll's Giant Burger)¹¹, The Modern Touch, The Dandylion Dress Shop, and many others over the years. - footnotes - 1. West of Earl Rudder Freeway, at least.
2. At the time, the former Johnny Carino's, and later Anchor Bar, which came and went after just over a year.
3. The line went to Austin. Past Giddings, the rail line exists (unlike east of Giddings, where it's completely gone except for a short segment in Brenham), but the line is railbanked with no freight or passenger activity east of Elgin. It has been recently cleaned up with new signage, though!
4. Nolan does not have a label on this site currently, but has owned a number of establishments including The Peanut Gallery and Piknik Pantry, the latter in its pre-Chinese food early days, and Zacharias' Green House.
5. An application was made as "Confetti's" but I'm not sure if it opened under that name.
6. Currently La Gabriella bakery. That page has gotten a huge overhaul recently but it missed the nightclub there.
7. It's unclear if Archambault owned the chain or not. The articles about the restaurant and its other location in College Station at 310 N. Texas Avenue make it seem that way, and all the remaining restaurants became Archie's Hamburgers before disappearing in the early 1990s.
8. The previous three have been covered by this site...Carter Creek, Northgate, and Southgate.
9. Archambault tried a spin-off restaurant next to Pepe's Mexican Cafe which we previously covered. But by 1990 the Hamburger Place restaurants were gone. The Waco one lingered into the 1990s, though.
10. Not to be confused with Which Wich?, the sandwich shop that has since closed both its university and off-campus location.
11. An ad for The Cookery and Carroll's Baskets and Wicker can be seen here.

Taco Bell of 29th Street

I admit that this Taco Bell doesn't look distinctive. Picture by author, March 2026.
Two fast food restaurant posts in a row, yes! If you read the archives of this website, I've told you of the Arby's restaurant at Southwest Parkway. It remains the only Arby's restaurant in town though not too long after its opening, a second location would open in Bryan, with its grand opening set in September 1983. Unfortunately, this second location was not nearly as successful, as it was closed down just less than five years later.

In 1989 it became "Bless Your Heart" (a health food restaurant featuring whole-wheat bread sandwiches, frozen yogurt, salads, and soups). Sometime around 1992 or 1993 it was renamed to "D'Lite Bites" before closing in 1993 and reopening as Arby's sometime around August or September of that year. Perhaps Arby's could have a second chance in Bryan after all. Sadly it was not to be, and this second incarnation of Arby's was shorter lived than the first time around and in June 1996, it reopened as the area's newest Taco Bell...though not exactly, as it was actually a relocation of their first local store and has been there since. Obviously it's had some updates over the years (the exterior was redone in 2016, though the exterior already had Taco Bell's design), did the promotions, even did Taco Bell's breakfast menu for a while when it was introduced around the mid-2010s (this one did it until fall 2024)...but yes, other than that, just an ordinary Taco Bell.

Culpepper Plaza's Burger King

Burger King is no more, it's a Chick-fil-A now. (Picture by author, 3/26)
Recently I re-did Culpepper Plaza's article and in the process eliminated 1719 Texas Avenue South, Chick-fil-A, also formerly the site of a Burger King.

Our area has never been much for Burger King. Its first attempt was at 3807 S. Texas Avenue in Bryan back in '69, but it closed in 1977. In comparison, McDonald's first landed in 1973 and it's been expanding since. By 1985, there were four restaurants in operation, and in that year, Burger King decided to try again with another restaurant in Culpepper Plaza. In the next twenty years, however, Burger King never built any other stores in the area, and although Burger King was a common treat on road trips, I don't remember eating here too often. I do remember the Pokémon promotion, which should've been huge if they hadn't been hit with a recall.1 I can't find exactly when it closed (I believe it was late 2006 but it might've been early 2007) there's a gap before the Texas Avenue and Deacon store opened, though it appears to line up with the East 29th and Villa Maria Road East store. Franchisee Shiloh Foods ultimately opened more two more Bryan stores (one of which folded within a few years of opening) before selling out in the early 2010s. I can't remember what the Burger King looked like, I do remember it had wood paneling on the outside but was not the common 2500 Model found in stores built in the 1990s. I've searched around in vain for a picture but you can just barely see it here without the modern paint (so a brown roof, and wood paneling on the right side). In spring 2008, Chick-fil-A replaced it, which at the time was a huge deal. There was only one stand-alone Chick-fil-A (in Bryan) and the only College Station stores was a popular outlet at Post Oak Mall and four "Express" locations on campus (most of which I've covered previously, Ag Café, the MSC, the Underground, and the Commons). Chick-fil-A is still there, of course, but in 2017 upgraded its drive-through (you couldn't park in front of the store anymore) before redoing it around 2023 to a new drive-through lane altogether.

1. I believe I still have my original toy, but it's still near-worthless on the used market.

NorthPark Center

I thought I had photos but I didn't, or can't find them. In lieu of that, this is from that PDF shown.
While we covered the pad site of this shopping center (currently Tim Hortons, but served as Bush's Chicken and Mr. Hamburger in the past), we haven't covered the actual NorthPark shopping center (not the one in Dallas) yet other than something I wrote on Carbon-izer (since removed). The plaza was built around 2007, and I've attached an out of date PDF (it's what I could find—archived from here. Around spring 2023 it was also repainted to white with the ends black. Keep in mind that this post has been sitting for a while in the "future posts" folder and it may be already out of date as of this writing. (In fact, there's a draft from 2014 for this one, but it never went anywhere).

The suite numbers go from north to south. First up is Little Tokyo (unrelated to the Post Oak Mall food court place that operated in the late 2000s and early 2010s. The Instagram page¹ shows that it sells a small selection of Japanese goods (not much that you can't find at H-E-B for a better price) and a menu featuring the box art of Cooking Mama: Cookstar². Previous tenants include Babylon Cafe (2014-2024)³, Habanero Mexican Grill & Bar (2010-2011, about six months), and Pyro (2008-2009), a "Mongolian fusion grill" restaurant. That first one closed not too long after the general manager stole thousands of dollars from the restaurant. Next up is suite 300 (no 200), La Riviera Restaurant & Bakery operated here from 2007 to 2017, an upscale New American cuisine restaurant. "Tap That Axe Bar & Grill"⁴, an axe-throwing facility/restaurant opened here in early 2020 but closed in 2021. Frida's Kitchen & Bar, a Mexican restaurant, has been here since early 2023. Suite 400 was originally ACE Cash Express and later Vapor Pursuit (as of 2018). Vapor Pursuit folded after a few years but in 2024 reopened as a second location of Tortilleria Mi Tierra. Suite 500 is Bryan's Red Wing Shoes has been here since 2007 (relocating from 3810 Texas Avenue).

Suite 550, however, has been more complicated. It was a franchise of Lenny's Sub Shop from 2008 to 2012 and closed after several changes of management. Around 2016 (if ther was anything in between, I missed it) it became Time for Thai, a spin-off of a fast food Thai restaurant in Houston, and that closed in 2020. In fall 2021, H&J's Tea House opened, the gimmick that they were the area's first and only cat café. A year in, however, the business was struggling financially and in early 2023 the restaurant closed and within a year or so was replaced with Koala Bakery & Cafe.

Suite 600 was Tejas Cuts was at suite 600 but only operated from 2007 to 2016 and as of this writing (1/2026) Starships and Dragons⁵, named after a similar establishment that operated in town years ago. Suite 650 is Heights Finance as of January 2026 and Covington Credit as of 2022. Sam Nails is at 700 as of 2022 (formerly Creative Nails), suite 750 is Direct Auto Insurance as of August 2025 (this was briefly Wild Side Smoke Shop in 2015, but I don't have any other information on former tenants), at suite 800 is Cindie's (link NSFW) out of Houston. This opened in March 2008 and nearly closed for violating an ordinance about sexually oriented business locating, but got away with it based on what percentage of the merchandise was sexually explicit or not. Finally, at suite 900 is Chubby's Public House. This opened in 2022, replacing Master Yakiniku (2016-2021?), Lanna Thai (2012-2015), and Teriyaki Park (2007-2011).

Additionally, there's a smaller building, 3600 Texas Avenue, at Dunn Street, has four smaller tenants. As of August 2022, these include Vape City (suite 100, All Phone Toys from 2006 to sometime in 2021), a vacancy at suite 200 (formerly Fred Loya Insurance, still here in April 2021 despite the reopening of the former RadioShack building at 614 East Villa Maria Road not far away), Easy Phone Repairs at suite 300, this was Jackson Hewitt from before 2007 to around 2015-2016, and Audible Hearing Centers in suite 400, opened in the mid-2010s.

1. Instagram won't work if you aren't logged in or (if you're like me) have a Tampermonkey script that will let you see everything.
2. You can't purchase this game anymore, as it was a digital game without a physical version. A dispute with Cooking Mama's IP holder meant that the game was pulled within two years of release. It didn't get good reviews, though. I don't think you're missing much.
3. Closed August 2024. In this post, I listed ten places that had gone under that year, and it mentions that there may have been more. Looks like I was right!
4. With a name like that, you'd think the waitresses would have something to show for it, but nope, just a bad pun.
5. It still lacks a sign...at least the last time I was in that area.

Editor's Note: Culpepper Plaza's article has gotten a major update with lots of former tenant information.

Kreuz Market

The best picture I could find was from Loopnet. Who knows how long the page is going to stay up?
Much like Hooters, Kreuz Market was one of the newer restaurants along North Earl Rudder Freeway that weren't able to make it even seven years. Kreuz Market, based out of Lockhart¹, opened February 2, 2015, connected to the parking lot of IHOP and Best Western. The restaurant opened with much fanfare, with trucking in coals from Lockhart...and decided not to have forks or sauce, as was the tradition in Lockhart. That wasn't well-received and changed a few months later (especially in terms of just having plasticware rather than a good knife²). Eventually, they franchised out the store and the Bryan location folded in September 2018. Twin Peaks later reopened the location in June 2021 (probably sooner if not for 2020). The idea of a spin-off restaurant in Bryan-College Station isn't new. After all, Royers' had long since come and gone.³ As of this writing, however, the chain's parent company, Twin Hospitality, has filed for bankruptcy, so its future is currently in doubt. We may have to come back around do an update on it being closed just like we had to do with Razzoo's.

1. See the Numbered Exits counterpart!
2. See Tom's BBQ and Steakhouse, specifically the "Tom's Famous Aggie Special" on the menu.
3. Other examples include Boomtown BBQ out of Beaumont (but the parent restaurant failed too), Mr. Hamburger, and Pie in the Sky Pie Company, the latter only applying if we don't count the Houston location that came and went before they opened here. Other than that I can't think of any other examples that are still around.

980 University Drive East

Grub's space went through several incarnations, and may yet continue to do so (from The Eagle, 4/27/08)
We've covered the restaurants around the fountain (except for Blue Baker/Atami, which are still their charter tenants from almost twenty years ago)—Abuelo's Mexican Food Embassy (now Casa Mangiare), the building that once held Veritas Wine & Bistro, Ben & Jerry's, and It's a Grind (and their successor restaurants), and what was, until recently, Razzoo's Cajun Cafe...plus, the stand-alone restaurant east of it, the old TGI Friday's. Beyond that is 980 University Drive East.

It featured four spaces, with 980A (instead of 100), suite 200, suite 300, and suite 400, and as of 2025 there are two vacant spaces, though most of them have operated in the last twenty years. The first space was originally home to Pei Wei Asian Diner, a fast-casual concept owned by P.F. Chang's China Bistro, operating from late 2005 to August 2019 (Pei Wei closed a bunch of restaurants during this time, likely stemming from being spun off from P.F. Chang's). In late 2021, The Cookshack, a restaurant serving Nashville hot chicken, opened, but it too closed as of November 2025 (seems the whole chain imploded, at least partially). Suite 200 has SportClips (the first local location) since around 2005, nothing dramatic there, suite 300 had Jamba Juice, which closed in November 2023 (I don't think it ever got the new "Jamba" branding).¹ It is still vacant to my knowledge. Suite 400 opened in 2007 (maybe early 2008) as Eccell Steakhouse, a new concept by Eccell Group, before it closed in 2010 and became Bodega Coast, a seafood restaurant, trading in the Cafe Eccell-inspired menu for the nearby La Bodega, and that lasted six months before another concept, Knockouts Grill House (I think it was a sports bar) came. By January 2012 it was closed and a few months later, Grub Burger Bar opened. Grub Burger Bar was a relatively successful concept and opened a number of locations all the way to the East Coast, and by the time it was acquired by Hopdoddy in 2018, had 18 locations (several had closed in 2020). Grub doesn't exist as a chain anymore...Hopdoddy rebranded them and probably would've done the same here as it already had a location at Century Square about a mile or so to the west.

What does the future hold for this site? Prognosis isn't looking good, it's 20+ years old, half-vacant, and Hopdoddy is probably letting Grub Burger Bar run down its lease². This may end up being the first true redeveloped building on the strip, even if many of the restaurants in the center are second-generation.

1. Jamba Juice wasn't new to the area, not exactly. In 1999, they purchased the Zuka Juice chain, which had two locations, one of them part of the Exxon center at Welsh and FM 2818, the other near Best Buy and Office Depot, but these closed in 2001.
2. The other possibility is that it's Century Square they don't want to renew on, and will close down Grub for a new Hopdoddy location. Either way, Grub's future is looking dim.

Ken Martin's Steak House, Original Edition

Of course, this restaurant didn't actually start out as Ken Martin's... (source)
The [Ken Martin] label now covers almost every single restaurant M&W Restaurants was involved in that had a College Station/Bryan address (except for Pepe's Mexican Food, which is still open).

Our look at 1803 S. Texas Avenue begins around 1964 when it opened as a location of The Chicken Shack (Leslie's Chicken Shack) originally and at one time, you could access the restaurant next door with the parking lot. In 1971 it closed and became "The Steak House" later that year, owned by Ken Martin and Joe Ruiz (see article). By 1974 it was advertised as being "Ken Martin's The Steak House" and then, Ken Martin's Steak House. The first incarnation of Ken Martin's had what I've heard was the "cave room" (a dark dining room area) but don't have any pictures of it.

In 1985, the restaurant relocated to the former Pacific Coast Highway at 3231 East 29th Street where it would remain for almost the next thirty years.

In 1992-1993 it would briefly serve as one-off Sparkey's Pizza before Allred Motor Company in 1996, which gave way to Eastep Auto Sales in the late 2000s, which abandoned the location in the mid-2010s to move across the street. Finally, there's this Loopnet with some great aerials. I've got them all backed up for posterity.

From Loopnet. I don't want to see this showing up on Facebook.

A North Bryan Family Legacy

The former J.J.'s Liquor as it appeared in January 2026. (Picture by author).
Sometime relatively recently, I had a very brief conversation with Ms. Ferreri, whose late father, Joe, built a number of restaurants and a few hotels in the area.¹ But among those, Sugar 'N Spice, the other drive-in, was missing from my site, so like Wendy's and H-E-B Pantry, lets go for covering a complete set. From what I can put together, 1215 N. Texas Avenue was the original address of the location and aerials back this up.

It was in 1951 that the drive-in opened (as a North Bryan counterpart to the Triangle) by 1968 was under new management as Ferreri moved on with bigger projects (the hotels). By fall of 1970 it was closed permanently but Luke Court was to reopen the store as "Sugar N Spice Drive In Grocery", now at 1219 N. Texas Avenue, likely reusing signage.

A second location of this "new" Sugar & Spice soon opened at 601 W. 28th Avenue as well, and by 1972 two more locations were in planning or operation, 1402 W. 25th Street and 300 W. 19th Street.² In 1974, Court sold these to Southland Corporation, which first had advertised as 7-Eleven in spring of that year (with a few locations of its own also being built), and by August was holding grand openings for what would be eight locations.³ Apparently, 7-Eleven did add gas to this location, but its time as a 7-Eleven was short-lived. By 1978, it was sold and reopened as J.J.'s Filling Station, owned by J.J. Ruffino (the son of whom I have also briefly spoken to), which by 1981 would ditch the gasoline and become J.J.'s Liquor, which it would remain for almost the next thirty years.

This garage door faces Texas Avenue. (Picture by author, 1/2026)
As I previously mentioned in another post, Spec's bought the three JJ's Liquor stores in 2010. The one on Texas Avenue in College Station was their wholesale warehouse for a while, while Rock Prairie Crossing and this one continued to operate. But within a few years of that, the JJ's at Rock Prairie doubled in size when it rebranded, and this location simply closed up shop (around that time the H-E-B was rolling out its full size store, and it's a mystery why Spec's couldn't have replaced its store with something there, or expand the Bryan store).

While part of the lot was redeveloped as a self-service car wash at some point that continues to be in operation at 1217 N. Texas Avenue, the building, which had served under Ruffino, Ferreri, and 7-Eleven, was abandoned.⁴

1. Most notably Ramada Inn, Ferreri's Italian Cuisine, and Triangle Drive-In. This post should finish them.
2. The addresses, 1402 W. William Joel Bryan Parkway and 300 W. Martin Luther King Jr. Street respectively, are no more. The latter was demolished in the late 2000s while the former disappeared between 1995 and 2003. 601 W. 28th Avenue is still in operation as a convenience store, but not a branded one.
3. The local 7-Eleven stores were sold to E-Z Mart in 1993 after Southland's 1990 bankruptcy. By that time, none of the Luke Court-era stores were in business as 7-Eleven.
4. Abandoned on paper, maybe. There was a truck parked outside the building when I was taking photos and I could music coming from inside (which was crammed with boxes and other junk), so I'm hoping it was just security of some sort...but I wasn't about to find out! It's why I don't have too many pictures of the property.

Editor's Note: I've been trying to make a post for days that weren't previously made but this has created a problem of tightly packing too many in at one time, or outright missing deadlines. As a result, the updates of this blog will be uneven. There are about five or six posts that I've been meaning to re-do that I'll be working on, as well as upgrading stuff relating to Post Oak Mall. Join me at Numbered Exits in the meantime.

The Shipley's That Sold Hamburgers

The little "Entrance" sign doesn't light up anymore. When did it ever? When was it installed? (Picture by author, 1/2026)
Picking up immediately after The Now-Defunct Dairy Queen on Highway 21 is another Bryan restaurant that deserves to be covered, 3310 South College Avenue. The first reference I can find for 3310 South College Avenue (subject of today's post) is in 1970 with Shipley Do-Nut Shop, a significant departure from the modern Shipley's in that it had a more complete menu including hamburgers ("Flame Burgers") and milkshakes. This did not seem to be a corporate decision out of Shipley's Houston headquarters (none of the Houston locations seemed to do this, even in that time) and more of a liberty taken by the franchisee¹; continuing to do this even as of 1981. In 1982 Shipley moved out to its current location at Villa Maria and Cavitt and dropped the hamburgers from the menu, with the College Station location opening in 1984.

After sitting vacant for nearly a decade it reopened as Archie's South College Grille. Teaming up with E.C. Archambault of Archie's Hamburgers and Archie's Taco Bell, the restaurants operated as essentially a dual-branded operation...with two restaurants and dining rooms. For whatever reason it did not work out in that form. In fall 1992 this was retooled as The Country Diner (without Archambault) but that too closed within a few years. In August 1994 Wok Express, a Chinese buffet, opened (closed in late 1995). Golden Dragon replaced it in early 1996 but didn't make it more than three months. Bruegger's Spuds opened in 1998 but also failed within a matter of months. Burger House, however, opened in fall 2000 and became far more successful, lasting 25 years and counting, more than any other establishment in the spot combined.

1. As I understand it, this wasn't uncommon for product-based franchisees back in the day. Kentucky Fried Chicken was notably a menu item originally, not a full restaurant, with a lot of variations and options for Orange Julius, too.

The Now-Defunct Dairy Queen on Highway 21

Music for the Funeral for Queen Dairy
If you read my stuff on Houston (you should) there's a lot of stuff on there that have fallen victim to TxDOT's highway expansion plans. In addition to covering some of Northwest Freeway's lost businesses, there's also a big section on Katy Freeway, which had some major clearances, like a whole strip where five restaurants (including McDonald's, Whataburger, and Denny's), La Quinta Inn, the entire REI parking lot, and an independent car dealership just got wiped off the map (and that's just one section). While Highway 6's expansion has generous ROW for TxDOT to work with, a few businesses on Highway 21 aren't so lucky. One of those is Dairy Queen at 3003 Highway 21 East¹, which closed January 27, 2026.

The sloppily copy-edited press release.
This particular Dairy Queen opened in 1977 (judging by the one-year anniversary) as the 6th Dairy Queen in the area² and other than that there's not much I can say about it with other than update in the early-to-mid 2010s. Of course, Smith Dairy Queens, the current area franchisee, is not going to replace it, of course, blaming medians but while Wendy's, McDonald's, Jack in the Box, Whataburger, and others have since expanded out locally to varying degrees of success (medians or not), Dairy Queen hasn't.

All pictures were taken by the author, January 2026.

1. For years, up until at least the mid-1990s, the address was erreoneously written as "3000 East Highway 21". It was never on that side of the street.
2. The five others were the ones that still exist today (minor relocations excluded), with the exception of a store near what is now William Joel Bryan Parkway and North Parker Avenue.

Editor's Note: Several more posts have gotten major upgrades. Walton Shopping Center replaces the Primo Pizza article and the old "Eastgate" article while FedMart has been fully rewritten.

Plaza 3 Theatres

Here is the subject of today's post as "The Globe", following its closure as a movie theater. It looked like this when opening but no longer does today. (source).

We've covered a few of the Schulman-owned theaters in town, with almost thirty years of cinema at the Blinn site and the late Campus Theater but one of their theaters didn't operate for very long, the Plaza III at 226 Southwest Parkway East, only operating from August 1985 (first films were Volunteers, Years of the Dragon, and The Return of the Living Dead) to 1991. In 1993, it became The Globe, much to the consternation of the Oak Forest Mobile Home Park, with the residents remembering the loud music of the Edge nightclub in the Winn-Dixie shopping center a few years earlier. The Globe opened with no live music and other limitations, opening in late 1993. Despite that, The Globe soon gained a bad reputation as far as incidents requiring police were involved, and by fall 1994, the nightclub, now named Aftershock, was still giving CSPD problems before closing for good a few months later. (It might have been a TABC license revocation). In 1996, it reopened as HomeStore Furniture, but the furniture store closed less than two years later (it was a one-off operation, not a chain). By the end of 1998, it was back to being a tavern (Rack's Warehouse, a pool hall). Also around this time (maybe early 2000s), the whole area, which had been drawn out as commercial space with concrete driveways, was rezoned as residential and one of these driveways was sealed off from the rest of the development and became a city street (Ashford Drive). After Rack's closed around 2001, it became another nightclub, Time Square, in spring 2004, which did feature live acts, including a weekend of local metal bands in October 2005. In spring 2006, Time Square closed and the building was purchased by Brazos Fellowship as their first permanent building and opening in November 2006, almost two years after the official founding of the church in a living room.

In 2012, the church began a massive remodeling project that demolished the original theater facade for a new addition, with a four-story addition being built around 2018 (which can partially be seen from the Southwest Parkway E. side, for a glimpse, see the post on the Wendy's). It has been almost twenty years since Brazos Fellowship took over the building, and even memories of Time Square become ever-distant.

O'Reilly Auto Parts on University Drive East

O'Reilly Auto Parts and its predecessor has been open here since the Arab Oil Embargo. (Photo by author, 1/2026)
As per standards made in fall 2021, the last time we covered O'Reilly Auto Parts it wouldn't count, but this one does. Opened in 1973 as Hi-Lo Auto Supply #34 (later branded as later branded as Hi/LO Auto Parts), this¹ became the first O'Reilly Auto Parts store in College Station (there was also a Bryan store) when O'Reilly bought the chain in 1998, adding around 182 stores to its repertoire². (O'Reilly certainly grew faster than Hi/LO did...in 1975 O'Reilly had just 7 stores compared to the 34 or so Hi-Lo had, by 1998 they had over 250 stores.

O'Reilly's website includes a picture of a typical Hi/LO store and it is what College Station's store looked similar to. Within a few years of the purchase, it had O'Reilly's branding and color scheme, and remained that way until 2016 when O'Reilly modified the facade to remove the large mansard awning.

1. Located at 210 University Drive East.
2. Hi/LO had 189 stores, but they sold the seven stores in California to Carquest of California, as O'Reilly didn't have any West Coast stores at the time.

Editor's Note: We (the royal we) have been hard at work updating some of the older posts on this site. Most recently (and most importantly), the articles for Former Fitzwilly's and Campus Theater have been upgraded. Nothing too groundbreaking...but perhaps you could throw in something for the site's future development?

Aggieland Outfitters of Southgate

This building has been Aggieland Outfitters for the last 20+ years but time is running out...
Technically this is not a day later after January 7th's post as I've made a placeholder, something I've done for Numbered Exits.¹

The earliest reference I can find for the address (208 George Bush Drive, formerly 208 Jersey Street) is 1962 with the opening of a medical doctor, David J. Shannon with the address being used a few years later for Gala Realty. In 1972, the first convenience store, Sak & Pak, moved in. In 1977, this was replaced with UtoteM (I can't tell if they purchased it or not) and in 1984 was rebranded as Circle K (#3346) as it took over the chain. In 1993 it was sold (by this time the address was 208 George Bush Drive) and became Tropicana Quik Mart (a locally-owned operation)². It closed in 2000 with Aggieland Outfitters taking over the entire building in 2002 with a large indoor-and-out renovation. This also took over the 210 space. This was the home of Cut-Rate Liquor (later Coach's Cut Rate Liquor—this I DO remember, it was on the left side of the building; the door doesn't even exist anymore). This operated from 1971 to shortly before Aggieland Outfitters took over. It replaced Big G Malt Shop, but I can't find too much on the restaurant, only that it existed in the late 1960s.

Among the new features of the store was a little fenced-in area with a Bevo statue with its horns sawed off and for a decade when A&M left the Big 12 and stopped playing University of Texas, it was replaced with a "Gig'em" statue in a wave of related iconoclasm, but as of summer 2025 the Bevo statue is back. In fall 2023, a new location was built just about three blocks away due to eventual construction at the intersection (most of the other places have been closed or cleared, including McDonald's at Marion Pugh, the Equity office, the Unitarian Universalist church, 101 Grove, a large apartment building that sat on the corner of the street, and a few other houses. Despite that, both stores continue to operate, at least for now.

All photos in this post were taken January 2026 by the author.

The liquor store may have had a pick-up window.

The north side of the building dates back to the opening of Aggieland Outfitters and has faded over the years as murals tend to do. That iteration of Kyle Field, once iconic to College Station, is now just a memory.

This alley area was created when a shed was built behind the store around 2013. Note the cinderblock on the right, which was created on the liquor store side of the building and dates back to that time.

Bevo's back, but that statue isn't the same as the original pre-2012 one.
1. It's a way to fill every day that I haven't made a post with something, and the next one will come on the 23rd.
2. The phone books had been pretty good about when businesses stopped operating, but still listed the Circle K after it changed hands.

The Newer Shell at Villa Maria and Its McDonald's

Picture from June 2019 by author. The McDonald's sign looks significantly worse now.
We are back in business in 2026. There are many things that are yet to be covered, and there are many things that have already been covered. If you look at the picture for the Map, it's substantially emptier than what it looks like today, which for future-proofing purposes is illustrated below.

This picture doesn't show how anemic the Bryan posts were until a year or so ago. Like many of the posts from last year, we're doing another Bryan post. I've talked about fast food restaurants in the area that have since passed on, last year I covered the following former fast food restaurants: Taco Bell, Roy Rogers, Zaxby's, Pizza Hut, Popeyes, Wendy's, and Bush's Chicken, plus an unusual "gas station Wendy's" and the Long John Silver's before it was rebuilt. Today's post is on a McDonald's, a subject that has been previously explored It hasn't closed yet but is on the list to be replaced, which makes sense as the sign is falling apart and despite often playing up the nostalgic angle, is a "mansard roof" McDonald's which the company is trying to eliminate.

The new location is already drawn up to be at the currently-undeveloped wooded northeastern corner of Villa Maria Road and Harvey Mitchell Parkway. It's not the first thing to be drawn up in the corner, in 2017, it was slated to be a 36,000 square feet Lidl store before they aborted their Texas expansion plan a few years later.

The current gas station as-is hasn't changed much in the almost twenty years it was built (all references say 2005, I'm guessing McDonald's had a ground lease that was for 20 years), with Shell gas, Space Liquor, a convenience store, and of course the McDonald's. I've mentioned this gas station on an old page called "Stories of the West Loop" or something along those lines, and in a comment someone said that Space Liquor was delayed for several months due to some issue by the TABC but their "Public Enquiry System" suggests their license was secured in a timely manner with the other stores.

It's not a good picture but it kind of shows the McDonald's facade (and prices before post-COVID price gouging). Picture from June 2019 by author.
I do remember when it opened, though, it felt less of a modern complement to the "other" Shell which at the time was not actually located at the intersection at the time, and felt more like a direct competitor to the Exxon across the street (which felt different enough than the nearby "La Brisa" Exxon). The McDonald's there at Greens Prairie Road and Highway 6 South had a "two-pronged" sign like what I had seen on road trips (if significantly shorter) but the one at 2818 did not, likely owing to sign restrictions (the older Shell and the older Exxon had taller signs). Even the Highway 6 one was shorter than what I had seen on trips.

Chipotle on University

1984 advertisement celebrating the newest owner at the time.
As I mentioned in a recent post, most of the University Drive part of the FM 60 page has been covered (very unlikely A&M United Methodist Church will be discussed—churches only get on here usually due to special circumstances). Only 815 University Drive has not been covered yet. While the address hosts a Chipotle today, it replaced a gas station that was a "garage"-style gas station, with a full service auto repair center (mechanics, state inspections) but not so much a convenience store (not that Northgate was lacking in convenience stores). The earliest reference I can find was in 1959 for University Mobil at 815 Sulphur Springs Road. The station changed hands a few times (but remained a Mobil) before finally being closed as late as 2002, at which point it was torn down for a Chipotle Mexican Grill. It was perhaps fitting that Chipotle was next to McDonald's as McDonald's corporate owned some 90% of Chipotle at the time, though by the time the College Station store opened in 2003 McDonald's was re-thinking that strategy and by 2006 had sold it off entirely. It retained its original facade until around 2024-2025 when it was changed to reflect Chipotle's current design standards (and the 2009 logo).

Anyway, much like we did last year and the year before that this is the last post of the year. This year, we spiked at over 43k visitors in a single month (August), the busiest time ever (usually this site averages 5000, which jumped up from 2000 a few years ago). Oddly, despite 10k in September, the site cratered to less than 1000 in October, numbers so badly that they haven't been seen since 2011.

As far as top posts go, Former Fitzwilly's takes the #1 spot (it was #3 last year). Skipping sub-pages (the Post Oak Mall sub-pages don't count, though no doubt they were bolstered by the big Post Oak Mall page I made on Carbon-izer), Manor East Mall will take the #2 spot despite the page needing a major rewrite. Going down the list, newcomer Blinn Bryan Campus featuring Schulman 6 takes #3...though I have a feeling that people found it through searches for Blinn and not because of the movie theater. Campus Theater took #4 and Café Eccell's Former Domain takes #5.

This year, more Bryan posts than ever were produced. Of the (numbers from 11/9 here) 50 posts produced this year, almost half were in Bryan. The long gap between the last post and this one proves I can't consistently month after month keep producing content, but that's not what this blog is for. I don't know if I'll be living in the area a year from now. There were times I weren't or got burned out. It's unlikely I'll hit 50+ posts in a year anytime soon, possibly ever, and with 52 posts it's second only to 2013. I'd also like to take the time to share my own personal top five posts, that I think you should check out, with the top 5 starting with my 5th favorite.

5. Wendy's Tiger Town. Wendy's served nachos and pitas in addition to hamburgers, and the signage is still original.

4. Post Oak Village had a spread of several stores, and it hosted a few chain stores over the years, including Color Tile and Catherine's.

3. The Veggie Garden was fun to research. It was a long-standing mystery and while I think that the location is underused, I've always had a bit of an affinity for buildings in that stretch (Barry Pool Co., Sunset Gardens).

2. Finfeather's 7-Eleven. This post allowed me to take another look at the crossing at Villa Maria and Wellborn Road. The underpass is much nicer in many aspects (unless you really wanted to access Finfeather from Villa Maria, and vice versa), but I still sort of miss the old crossing.

1. Winn-Dixie on 29th Street: This post celebrates the other Winn-Dixie and a 20th anniversary of the bankruptcy. It was even a bit brighter than originally planned as investors and C&S Wholesale Grocers had bought the company back from Aldi, sparing it from complete destruction.

Several posts also got significant updates...Krispy Kreme of course burned down but updates to the article talks about Grandy's in more detail. I updated 110 College Main with more former tenants as well as adding a new page to Post Oak Mall to discuss all that in more detail. Boyett Businesses was retooled as a new post with some new tenants unearthed. The Lost Buildings of Villa Maria Road and Texas Avenue also had substantial updates added to it with information on El Caribe and Pizza Inn.

The only bummer is that my Ko-fi was a bit of a bust, but if you could throw in a few bucks...

We'll be back next year, returning January 7th.

Abandoned Ready 2 Go

November 2025 picture. This was attempted to make the same angle as the GasSigns.org picture below.
Billups Service Station first opened at 1600 S. College Avenue in 1957 in what was a huge opening for a small gas station, and in the mid-1970s rebuilt with a modern convenience store (Brazos CAD says 1975). At some point in the 1980s, the whole chain was rebranded as Charter Food Stores, and in 1988 the chain was bought by Circle K. (There were 538 stores at the time, with three in Bryan and one in Hearne).

Remarkably, there is a picture of what it looked like in the Charter days, perhaps one of the only examples of what Charter looked like. Despite Circle K's plans, the gas stations remained as Charter¹ but otherwise was a Circle K in all but name² and was sold to Duke & Long in 1999 with the other (few) Circle K stores in town, all getting rebranded as Conoco (with an "Everyday" convenience store). Within a few years this had dissolved and the former Circle K stores went their different ways, with this one becoming Ready 2 Go by mid-2003, and if it had the Conoco branding in this era that went away by the mid-2000s. After deteriorating for years, the gas station was finally dead by summer 2020.

1. Circle K filed for bankruptcy protection in 1990, which probably explains why Charter wasn't rebranded.
2. Local ads referred to the stores as "Circle K/Charter".

Orr's Minimax

Orr's had a sign, of course, but this one was far more prominent. For many years, it was blue and read "LAUNDRY".
Waldon Orr's follow-up to Orr's Food Center in downtown Bryan was Orr's Minimax¹ in the Ridgecrest neighborhood of Bryan at 3516 South Texas Avenue in late 1953 (at around 15,000 square feet) and in the 1960s an expansion was done to 22,000 square feet (if it was the biggest supermarket in Bryan at the time, it was soon to be broken by Weingarten within a year). It was also next to the Ridgecrest Washatorium, which opened around that same time as part of the building...though it looks like it shared the building with Orr's as it moved to a new portion of the building in 1958 (3502 S. Texas).

The Tim Horton's is the former Mr. Hamburger, looks like the renovation was faster than thought. Unfortunately it's not open yet. Like its downtown counterpart, Orr's was taken over by Piggly Wiggly in 1971 and closed in 1985. By 1986 it wound up in the hands of Malone & Hyde, which owned the master franchise for Piggly Wiggly.² It was growing its chain of Auto Shack automotive parts stores and even though by 1987 it had officially spun off Auto Shack, it must've had some ownership in it as Auto Shack announced its opening with the idea of it hitched to Piggly Wiggly. The Bryan store was both in smaller markets than what Auto Shack was used to opening in, and even was a bit larger than the average Auto Shack store. In February 1988 Auto Shack opened, though in 1989 adopted a new name after losing a legal battle with Tandy Corporation (of Radio Shack), which sued for trademark infringement...AutoZone. While AutoZone continued to thrive as a company, around 1996, AutoZone moved to 1640 S. Texas Avenue, and the space was taken by Aaron's rent-to-own a few years later. Aaron's didn't use all the space of Orr's/Piggly Wiggly (I'm not sure if AutoZone did); Dollar General shared it at 3518 but they left a decade later (replaced briefly by Awards & More; now vacant).

Now we get back to Ridgecrest Laundry, which continued to exist into the late 1990s (outlasting both Piggly Wiggly and AutoZone) all the way into the early 2000s.

The reason I bring up the laundry is it had a large 1950s-style sign on Texas Avenue that still stuck around after the laundromat closed, until a storm destroyed it at some point in the 2000s. It was rebuilt as a sign for RIMCO (its new tenant) in 2006, which at the time was owned by Aaron's (later sold and rebranded as Rent-a-Tire in 2015). I can't find when the laundry sign was destroyed but I want to say sometime around 2004 or 2005. It was in the papers but I wasn't able to find it.

1. Minimax was a franchised grocery operation and when Orr's Minimax joined the franchise it was still growing. Not too long after leaving Minimax, the Minimax franchise would go into decline.
2. As previously mentioned, see Wikipedia for the ownership changes of Piggly Wiggly over the years. In particular, Malone & Hyde was purchased by Fleming, which also owned Minimax. Go figure.

UPDATE 11/10/2025: Retroactively added the pictures (taken by me, November 2025). Also I didn't mention this because I couldn't tell, but Rent-A-Tire did at some point close, so if the sign gets knocked over again, who will host it?

Rent-A-Tire status: definitely closed.