Amico Nave Ristorante

This one and the other photos were taken by author, February '24.
I had to pull the details of this one from my FM 1179 page, but this one came up for a post as the restaurant announced closing with the last day being February 24, 2024. So, with that in mind, we'll take another look at it.

Amico Nave Ristorante at 203 East Villa Maria Road was built in the late 1970s as a restaurant called "Pizza Planet" (many years before Toy Story, of course) and this lasted from 1979 to 1984. Because of spotty records, it later served (briefly) as Kelly-Moore Paint Company (according to taxpayer records) and a restaurant called Buffalo Joe's as late as 1994, but has been a beauty salon from 1996 to the very early 2010s (Shapers Hair Productions, though might've gone under a different name in the late 1990s). In spring 2013, it reopened as Amico Nave from the same owners (Wade and Mary Beckman) of Shipwreck Grill across the street. In its early years Amico Nave did very well: in summer 2013, when restaurants usually have slow business, the parking lot was packed out nightly. But I suppose all things have to come to an end. Enjoy the photos and check out the post for Shipwreck Grill.

Uh-oh, hours changed! Who could have seen this coming?

While the concrete base is old, this is one of the few new light fixtures for Amico Nave.

The building is visibly older. Currently, plans are in the works to renovate the building to look more like a ship and move Shipwreck Grill into the space.

IHOP on Northgate

The IHOP at College Avenue and University Drive kept up with recent logos in its nearly fifty years of operation but has come to an end.
The IHOP at College Main and University (104 College Avenue) has now closed, closing at the end of December 2023, as reported by KBTX who most likely looked at the old University Square post (as it appeared as of this writing, same as the past few years).

First opened in 1974, the IHOP (International House of Pancakes back in the day) has mostly operated 24 hours a day for many decades, and I'm not sure why exactly it closed...KBTX parrots the 2019 stuff I previously posted but can't do any reporting on their own. Regardless, I personally only went there once around 1999 and all I can say is even if IHOP wasn't the greatest restaurant around (it wasn't), it's a shame to lose yet another 24 hour restaurant. You know...Kettle closed a few years ago, Taco Cabana closed as did follow-up tenant Las Palapas...it's a shame that we can't have nice things anymore or get a sit-down meal at 3 am in the morning. (Hey, I worked night shift.)

The two other stores were opened in more recent years.

Workers were on site dismantling the restaurant.
All pictures were taken by the author, January 2024.

Chicken Oil Company

Chicken Oil Company is a ramshackle-looking business, this is the back view from the parking lot. The front view from College Avenue is harder to get. (Picture from author, 8/22).

Once again, we're on College Avenue, which unlike FM 1179 doesn't have a corresponding page where everything is covered so neatly, covering Chicken Oil Company, which is closed, at least temporarily, following a fire in April 2022. I could've done what Columbia Closings does, put together some pictures of the business, give a few words if he remembers it or not (and if the former, with fondness or not), but I wanted to try to give an overview of the property as I usually do.

The same sign, affixed with blue painters tape, was in multiple other places outside the restaurant. (Picture from author, 8/22).

While I've eaten Chicken Oil Company a few times, what can I say, good hamburgers and fries, the restaurant space started out in an existing gas station in the late 1970s and evolved to what it is today, dropping gas along the way and creating a cobbled-together building similar to Dixie Chicken, which had the same ownership.

The restaurant is decorated with old advertising signs, though these have not been well-maintained and have rusted away. (Picture from author, 8/22).

While the gas station dates back to an indeterminate time, a separate "party room" was part of another restaurant, the Triangle Drive-In. This link currently has a picture of the Triangle as it appeared in 1948 (if the link dies, search Project HOLD or its successors for "Triangle Drive-In; photos (Aug. 1948)" without quotes. Friend of the site "Bryan-College Station, Texas: Now and Then" explains some of the history here (archived link--Facebook not required).

From what it looks like, when the Triangle Drive-In expanded in 1957 to the Charcoal Room, the awnings to that building disappeared and another structure was built to the south. The 1940s building remained during all this time (though I'm not sure what it was later used as). By 1971, the original Triangle building was gone, as was the 1957 building. (Later, the space where the 1957 building was became the home of Tom's BBQ, and is now J. Cody's). I'm not sure what the "Charcoal Room" restaurant was used for in the interim.

Ironically, the "Charcoal Room" was not the one that burned down. I had to bump up the brightness a bit on this one. (Picture from author, 8/22).

As you might have noticed from the photo above, Chicken Oil has been closed since an afternoon fire on April 3rd, 2022. The insides of the building were photographed a few days after the fire (YouTube link). You can see that the kitchen areas were trashed but the dining room, while suffering extensive smoke damage, looks salvageable. Despite that, five months later, the restaurant has remained shuttered with almost no work done, yet the owners have vowed to reopen.

UPDATE 02-23-2024: Still no work has been done and looks very much the same as it did in September 2022. Fixed the YouTube link to local hosting due to its removal.

Former Student Korner

The twilight somewhat reflects the mystery and fly-by-night nature of the tenants here. (Photo from September 2020).
Once again, this is somewhat built out of an older post that I began writing in October 2020. The building dates back to 1972, with the original main tenant being Spin-N-Market, with one location at 1802 Welch (as Welsh was called back then) and the other at 502 Harvey Road.

It was rebranded as Korner Pantry (this was store #21), a Houston-based convenience store in the early 1980s, but that convenience store disappeared by the mid-1980s (as per Houston newspapers) and instead became a generic convenience store known as Student Korner. (It may have even closed briefly, given the lack of a listing in a 1984 phone book).

It was open as of 2003 but at some point around 2005 quietly folded, even though the Student Korner sign by the road remained. In the early 2010s, it was "Determined Faith Christian Center", which gutted the space and added some curtains and carpet, but only remained a few years. In the year 2016 (closed by very early 2017), it was Cachet Liquor Store. You can see that despite lacking any formal signage, an "Open" and "ATM" signs are there, as well as what looks like reflections of fixtures inside.

In late 2020, I wanted to take a daytime photo with some interior shots but was thwarted somewhat by a new tenant there, BetaMed, focused on mobility-focused medical equipment. The store was stocked but not much had gone in the way of décor, with the flooring being bare concrete showing the scars of Student Korner's tiles and the glue from DFCC's carpet. However, as of January 2022, BetaMed already seems to have passed on from this world given how the name (it was never on the building itself, just the window) and the building seems empty.

Next to it, in the same building, Coco Loco has been operating since August 2004. I was told that the Coco Loco was some sort of hole-in-the-wall Greek restaurant prior to Coco Loco, but I can't find anything on it. However, it was "Bombay Restaurant" in the year 1994.

UPDATE 12-01-2022: As of late 2022, Brew Supply Haus has moved here from College Station Business Center.

Jimmy John's on University Drive East

Might be a bit overcast but this is "Egg Roll House" looks today after an extensive re-do (June 2020 picture by author)
In perhaps a first for this site and sister site Carbon-izer, Carbon-izer was actually sourced on TexAgs for a bit on Egg Roll House, as opposed to the site's early days when TexAgs served as a primary resource for additional information beyond what I could remember or scrape from Project HOLD. While this restaurant was first covered on Carbon-izer, I can take some time to personalize the story about it.

Even back when I was younger, the University Drive East corridor was always one of the most interesting of the city (of College Station, anyway), a mishmash of suburbia both old and not quite as old, and going out to eat usually involved passing through the area. Of all the older buildings there, one building stuck out, an abandoned restaurant near the intersection of Texas Avenue and University Drive known as "Egg Roll House".

Egg Roll House actually started out as a location of Taco Torch in 1976 (not to be confused with Torchy's Tacos, a much more modern restaurant covered some years back), an early Mexican fast food option found in the Central Texas area, including Waco.

Taco Torch only ended up lasting a year (and had the address, at least to state tax records, 106 University Drive East as opposed to 200 University Drive East) before it was sold and became Egg Roll House. Egg Roll House was a strange-looking restaurant with hand-painted signage (may have had some sort of lighting on it) that operated from 1977 to around the late 1990s (as late as Christmas 2000), and sat vacant for close to a decade before around 2008 when it was gutted (a few walls were retained) and rebuilt for a Jimmy John's.

Speaking of the TexAgs post above, there were claims that Egg Roll House had a small apartment in it where the owners lived while it operated and several years afterward. If I had my 2005 phone book with me at press time, I might've verified that (or disproved that), but that will have to wait until a future update. The only fact that I did find in researching this for a full post is that former owner Yo-Fu Lee passed away in 2009.

Under the Water Tower

From John Ellisor comes this picture of Bud Ward Volkswagen. I think I see the old Holiday Inn in the background.
The pad site where Hancock Whitney bank (at 1912 Texas Avenue South) is today has its own history that's set apart from the large H-E-B store behind it. The water tower that stands guard over the H-E-B replaced a smaller water tower almost directly at the corner of the intersection, where the H-E-B gas station is today.

Originally, it was a car dealership. Richard Barton Mazda-Volvo was here from around 1975 to 1976 for sure, and from 1977 to 1988, it was Bud Ward Volkswagen, pictured above. A 1978 article from The Eagle mentions that Ward added Porsche and Audi lines (but did not stock top-of-the-line Porsche cars) when the facility expanded.

From 1989 to 1992 it was University Mitsubishi, and after that, car dealership use of the space ended (I was previously told Allen Honda was once located here but that seems to be incorrect). After that, it very briefly became Charlie's ("Charlie's Under the Water Tower") in 1993. I'm not sure if Charlie's built a new building (later used for El Chico) or used the same building. I was previously told Allen Honda was once located here but that seems to be incorrect.

In 1994, it opened as what I remember the corner being, El Chico opened in 1994. El Chico is still around in some form and despite a logo and image update, there's only 7 locations left in Texas from what was once dozens.

El Chico survived the construction of H-E-B, and continued with the chunk of the old parking lot they once shared with 1801 Holleman now connected to H-E-B's parking lot. Unfortunately, El Chico ended up closing in late 2005, largely citing popularity and access reasons (by that time, construction on widening Texas Avenue had begun).

A few years later, the pad site was demolished entirely (including the old parking lot) for MidSouth Bank, which was rebranded as Hancock Whitney in late 2019.

Southwest Village Apartments

Looks pretty structural similar to today, but not so much on the other parts (Advertisement from The Eagle)
I typically do not cover any apartment buildings on this site, the few exceptions being mixed-use structures or other legacy articles.

Today will be one of those rare exceptions, with this 1974 advertisement giving a rare glance into what was a nice apartment complex at one time at 1101 Southwest Parkway, then known as Southwest Village Apartments.

The exteriors themselves look like they did in the 1990s save for different paint jobs, and I assume the original cedar shake roof as shown in the advertisement was changed after a massive apartment complex fire in Houston in 1979 that ended use of them.

The complex became The Colony Apartments sometime between 1989 and 1993, and remained up until the late 2000s (still The Colony as of 2007). In 2013 it was University Park Apartments (despite being nowhere near the street named as such), and around very late 2016/early 2017 became "The Vintage", stylized as "the|Vintage". There's a real disconnect between what is advertised and the actual state of the apartments. It painted the apartments dark gray with splashes of purple or blue trim, did some interior work, and replaced the basketball court (which was built over a creek) with something else.

Based on exteriors alone, it still has a crumbling parking lot and carpeted open-air hallways that are grungy and reek of cigarette smoke, so by all outside looks the Vintage is just another repaint, not a total revitalization of the property (I'll let actual reviews of the interiors and management speak for themselves), and indeed, most of the apartment complexes (which were already showing signs of age in the late 1990s) are in similar conditions. They can try new names (The Grove at Southwood is Brownstone's second name change) and updates but they'll continue to slide downhill until major changes in the corridor are made. It's a bit of a shame since Southwest Parkway really did mean a lot to me growing up, but what can you do?

Smetana Grocery

Picture from May 2021. It's hard to capture this building in one shot.

Smetana Grocery is one of those old rural Exxon stores with the store name in a large red rectangle on the building, and originally opened back in 1972. It didn't become an idea for a post until I noticed an ad copy in a 1989 phone book. I didn't scan it (no logos, just text) but it is reproduced below:

SMETANA GROCERY

SPECIALIZING IN HORMONE FREE BEEF B3-R BRAND

• HOMEMADE POLISH SAUSAGE
• PARTY TRAYS & BEER KEGS
• BIODYNAMICALLY GROWN ORGANIC VEGETABLES (IN SEASON)
• WELEDA HEALTH FOOD PRODUCTS
• CAFE ALTURA COFFEE

775-9337

EXXON & OTHER MAJOR CREDIT CARDS
2 1/2 Miles West of Loop 2818 W Hwy. 21.....775-9337

Well, I was intrigued. Who knew that some rural gas station was selling a bunch of organic health foods and products that regular groceries at the time wouldn't touch? And this gas station is still in business today at 7700 Highway 21? And it's a 12-sided building with two stories? I had to check it out.

With the relatively recent passing of Brazos Natural Foods (mentioned over at this post which is in need of a re-do one of these days), there's no dedicated store for "natural" and "upscale" foods, but even before the situation last year, those types of stores were dropping off, with Earth Fare and Lucky's Market both closing in high-profile bankruptcies.

Sadly, but expectedly, this is not the case here. The merchandise mix is very much ordinary convenience store fare. The few notable exceptions are some bulk items that I'm not sure were meant to be sold as retail, like frozen Hunt Brothers Pizza, but there's no gourmet items, no produce. It also is no longer an Exxon, transitioning to Citgo between 2012 and 2016.

It's dark and dusty up there. The big white glow is sunlight coming in from a window above.

The mysterious upper level only seems to include storage. It doesn't look like living space...or anything finished at all. The current building was built in 1986 and appears to have added the gas station. (The older building pre-dated 1972 and may have a different name originally as it still had a parking area). Oh, and one more thing--it's not great, but here's my attempt at stitching two photos together to make a more panoramic view.

UPDATE 10-05-2023: As for the older one, I believe I correctly ID'd it on Vintage Aerial.

Burger Mojo, University Drive East

Burger Mojo doesn't have parking lot access from University Drive East, but neither did the previous tenant. (Picture by author. 7/29/20)

Yes, I know it has been a few months since the last update but this site is not yet dead. I actually have been making a few piecemeal updates here and there, and after evaluating the scenario, I will probably still post articles on this site rather than my own site (Carbon-izer), especially as 200+ articles seemed impractical to move. The "new" Bryan-College Station page includes several "street listings" with addresses in order, and hopefully contain some of the "less interesting" addresses that aren't much more than a photo and a brief blurb of information. (There are a number of recent "filler" posts like that on the blog).

Today's subject is 209 University Drive East.

The previous building here was a 1977-built office building that was essentially two connected octagons with a center portion connecting them. There were four suites, and each tenant got a floor of one of the octogons, with the center portion having access to all four (the upper level tenants had staircases, like an apartment building). Here's what the building looked like, with it last tenant, Lovan Animal Care, moving out at the end of end of 2015. (One of the other tenants that was there was "Hypnotik Salon & Tan", this left a year or two prior). This was part of the redevelopment of the block that included (but had nothing to do with) the Embassy Suites next door.

Note that the Google Maps Street View has a stone facade on the first level, that was actually a renovation over the original facade, which was mostly wood (which it was as of 2007).

Plans were to redevelop the site as a strip mall with Marco's Pizza and Dunkin' Donuts back in 2016, but ultimately they moved on, with Marco's Pizza going in near Tarrow, and Dunkin' settling in near Deacon and Wellborn (and as of this writing, is wildly popular, with cars still lining up well after dark). Instead it was developed (and opened in December 2019) as Burger Mojo, a new fast casual hamburger concept by the Eccell Group.

Even in a time where restaurants have really gotten screwed over recently, Burger Mojo has announced a second location, at a former Wendy's restaurant at Holleman and Harvey Mitchell Parkway South (and some big news with that, check it out).

Ponderosa Motor Inn

The motel hugs the freeway tightly. (Picture by author, 7/20)
Ponderosa Motor Inn first opened in 1971 at the intersection of Ponderosa Road and State Highway 6 (3702 Highway 6 South), citing the highway's presence and the continued growth of the city in that direction, both of which were true. While the motel had a restaurant, private club, and meeting rooms, all of which were standard in motels modeled after the standards that the growing Holiday Inn chain pioneered in the 1950s and 1960s, it was very isolated from just about anything, about two miles from the nearest commercial establishments on Texas Avenue (near modern-day Holleman), and a few years before even the Southwood Valley area began to take off, which would see new development, such as Kmart and Doux Chene Apartments within a few years.

As a testament to the old age of the property, some mercury-vapor lights still hang. It wasn't nearly as green as my camera it thought it was.
Ponderosa Motor Inn soon built an addition to the main two-story building and another building out back with additional rooms facing east and west, and for the next three decades it would be the furthest south motel/hotel in the city until Navasota. It wasn't until 2001, when Courtyard by Marriott built a hotel at Woodcreek Road and the Highway 6 frontage road, ending the motel's dominance as the furthest south hotel, and unlike the motel, was a true hotel with interior corridors. By that time, the area that Ponderosa had once been alone in was starting to get rather built-up, and it wasn't slowing down.

The hotel changed hands a few times (though it remained as Ponderosa Motor Inn until around the early 1990s), and after a brief time as "Varsity Inn", the motel became Howard Johnson Express. At some point, the hotel restaurant became an independently owned Mexican restaurant, Mi Familia Coco Loco.

When the motel became Americas Best Value Inn, the hotel used its new logo on the outside, but still had the older style of room numbers.
In 2016, the "second building" was torn down, and, after about two years or so of construction, a four-story Microtel Inn (or rather, "Microtel by Wyndham") was built in its place. The final product was outlined in blue neon, giving it a unique appearance but also unfortunately similar to the sleazier hotels along Houston freeways. Sometime around the time Microtel was completed, the original motel was rebranded as Americas Best Value Inn (a different owner than what Microtel and Howard Johnson's belonged to). Perhaps the Microtel will get an article of its own someday.

View of Microtel from the parking lot
It should be noted that today, Ponderosa's location is not that well located off of the freeway. Prior to the mid-2000s, you could access Ponderosa through the two-way frontage road it was on by exiting Rock Prairie from either end, and today is probably best worked through the back but in the early days (before the freeway lanes were extended down by 1991), Ponderosa turned into the northbound frontage road (two way) and turning left directly into Ponderosa was an option!

Note the southbound frontage roads were not complete at this point.

UPDATE 10-24-2023: In July 2023, the motel completed a renovation and rebranded as Hotel McCoy (see archive link). I also discovered something interesting. The original logo of Ponderosa Motor Inn, which you can see below in a 1980 phone book listing...is completely identical to the Ponderosa Motor Inn in Shamrock, Texas. I don't know the fate of the Shamrock location, but it's very likely the two motels were once related.

Jack in the Box, Texas Avenue, Bryan

The Box is back after an extensive rebuild.

The sister store to the College Station Jack in the Box further down Texas Avenue, 2906 South Texas Avenue's Jack in the Box was built in 1977 (#675), before the chain's dramatic makeover that dropped the "clown head" speakers and started to push a more "adult", upscale menu.

While the picture at the aforementioned post looks like this one before rebuilding around early 2019 (picture taken in March 2020), the picture here is the one that the College Station one also looks like now. As of this writing, the most recent Google Street View shows the old Jack in the Box building.

The construction also ditched the entrance off of Villa Maria for a new one to Maloney, but it's a moot point since medians installed since 2016 on Villa Maria make access difficult anyway.

UPDATE 01-27-2022: As part of putting this on Facebook in 2022 about a year and a half after the post was made and put in the queue, Google Street View has been updated here.

University Flowers

Taken way back in May 2014 by author

University Flowers has been here at 1049 Texas Avenue South since at least 1980 and all indications show that the building was built in the 1970s and opened as the flower shop. In the late 2000s, a "store-within-a-store", BCS Gold & Jewelry, opened at the site. It has common ownership and the same address (even the vehicles UF drives around has both names on it), but a different phone number.

Editor's Note: With a new schedule carved out of the wreckage of the three "series" posts, I now have a plan going forward. That does include, of course, filler posts, like this one I've had since 2014, taken with other Eastgate photos.

Former Taco Villa

Let's taco 'bout this vacant building.
The former RadioShack at 614 East Villa Maria Road goes back over 40 years. In June 1977, the building first opened as a Taco Villa restaurant (notice the picture) and remained as such for nearly a decade following.

One directory edition from the mid-1980s lists it as a Del Taco, which was odd as while the Texas franchisee of Del Taco did buy Taco Villa but indications were that the owner at the time (a subsidiary of W.R. Grace) wanted to convert the Del Taco restaurants it owned to Taco Villa (to avoid licensing fees), not the other way around.

In 1988, W.R. Grace liquidated Del Taco and Taco Villa, with the restaurant closing with the Houston stores, including this one (indications that Taco Villa did live on, and today operates stores in West Texas and New Mexico, though I'm not 100% sure they are the same chain).

By the early 1990s, it became a Quick as a Flash (likely a facade re-do/repaint happened around this time) and in 1999, it was still a Quick as a Flash location (the directory for that year lists "Back in a Flash", which was a similarly-named operation focused on film processing located inside the AppleTree stores and the College Station Kroger). The directory error also lends credence to the fact that the restaurant was never branded as Del Taco.

At some point, like the sister store in College Station it went under the Ritz Camera name, though it was probably a Ritz Portrait Studio like the other store. I'm not sure when it closed, probably early 2000s.

The back of the store still has some original stucco, giving clues to what the original Taco Villa looked like.
RadioShack, the last known tenant, moved in after the redevelopment of Sul-Mar Center at Villa Maria and Briarcrest around 2006-2007, where it had been previously been homed there since 1971 (originally opened as "Allied Radio Shack", a short-lived branding of the chain when parent company Tandy Corporation owned Allied Electronics). In 2015, Tandy Corporation (renamed RadioShack Corp. in 2000 to focus on its core business) went bankrupt and most of the corporate-owned stores closed. The corporate stores that weren't closed were converted to Sprint/RadioShack co-branded stores under new company General Wireless. Unfortunately, the partnership with Sprint dissolved with the bankruptcy of General Wireless two years later, closing the Sprint/RadioShack stores (including this one). The closure of this meant that RadioShack officially exited the Bryan-College Station market, and today, the closest brick-and-mortar RadioShack store is in Brenham (which is a franchised store).

All pictures here are by the author, March 2020.

UPDATE 02-04-21: A revisit to the area shows that this has now reopened as Fred Loya Insurance. Two tags ([Series: Closed & Closing] and [defunct]) have been removed.

Brake Check

Brake Check, pictured here in 2014 (by author).

It's Thursday, and there's no more posts in the backlog to feature. Time to make a new post, luckily there's source material to whip something up. In this case, it's Brake Check on University Drive East (only Brake Check in town as of this writing). Originally, when it opened in 2007, the text above was different ("Alignment" was originally "Shocks & Struts", for instance). Before Brake Check opened, it was a Sonic Drive-In, one of the first in town (the other was at 914 South Texas Avenue in Bryan, which remained open and was completely rebuilt in the mid-2000s). It was open even according to the 1980 phone book, likely opened in the 1970s. This location closed around 2004 (possibly 2003) and stood vacant for a few years before it was torn down. (There was a gap of a few years before a new Sonic at Cooner and Texas opened).

The new Brake Check did not have access to Poplar as Sonic once did, as Sonic was once part of a 1970s-era "restaurant row" with Egg Roll House (now Jimmy John's) and the Pizza Hut.

China Wok Express

This may be the start of a series of posts near Villa Maria Road and Texas Avenue, but I can't make any promises. (Picture by author, March 2020)

No fooling...today's post is on April 1st, and it's a brand new one. This building, 612 Villa Maria Road, was built in 1979 and first served as a Tinsley's Chicken 'n Rolls (and originally 512 Villa Maria Road West), a restaurant previously covered on this site. It served as Church's Chicken from 1985 to 1989 after Tinsley's sold out, and Cobblestone Quality Shoe Repair between 1992 and 1995. It returned to food service (and fried chicken) when it served as a Golden Fried Chicken (later Golden Chick) between 1996 and 2000. Sometime in the 2000s (possibly as early as 2002, which Brazos CAD seems to indicate), it became China Wok Express. I thought it was around 2005...notice the the building has a blue roof instead of the current gold-colored roof (which ironically, came after Golden Chick closed). The circle where the China Wok Express logo is used to be where Golden Chick's mascot used to roost...I'm guessing that when it returned to restaurant use from whatever it was previously, Golden Chick did some significant renovations.

View from the southwest. Not sure if I've ever seen that neon on top light up.
As you may know, the government warnings for COVID-19 have put the economy into a tailspin, with restaurants only offering carry-out or delivery, but China Wok Express is not among them, closing entirely and promising to return April 8th. However, the menu board, as you can see below, is so faded that one can barely see the letters, and one of the columns has a big hole knocked through it. I'm not in the neighborhood very often, so I'll have to see if China Wok Express will reopen or if this is their swan song.

Allegedly due to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, China Wok Express is now closed, with promises it will reopen April 8th, but it's doubtful as the menu board (and general maintenance) are clearly in a state of visible decline.

The menu board is so faded it's almost completely illegible.
By the way, the article linked above (mentioning the former blue roof) is the old Villa Maria/Texas Avenue article that has been updated with revised information and new photos.

UPDATE 03-24-2021: More precise dates for Golden Chick. China Wok Express DID reopen.
UPDATE 04-08-2022: Update with additional tenants, which should patch the holes.
UPDATE 09-08-2023: In summer 2023 the restaurant closed and by September was being torn down, to be replaced with 7 Brew. [defunct] added to post.
UPDATE 02-20-2024: 7 Brew opened 1/2024.

Plantation Oaks Apartments

For many years, Briarwood Apartments composed half of the former Plantation Oaks. Click on it to see the full resolution!
Back at Harvey Road once again, we're skipping directly from Kona Ranch down to Plantation Oaks (on account of either no information available or already covered). Plantation Oaks was built in 1972--before Post Oak Mall, before anything on Harvey Road worth mentioning, possibly even before what is now Earl Rudder Freeway opened. Plantation Oaks Apartments was initially an enormous apartment complex bisected by Scarlett O'Hara Drive and bounded by Rhett Butler Drive to the west (the theming not subtle), but by 1980, the western half section was sold off with a minor renovation done to turn it into Briarwood Apartments. True to many of the trendier apartments in Houston (or even College Station), it included a nightclub, Zacharias' Green House.

In 2018, the apartment complexes (neither in particularly good shape, judging by reviews) were re-combined under new ownership and renamed as Castlerock Apartments, which only listed a year before becoming The Grand 1501. The picture above is for Briarwood from 1980 (the Plantation Oaks ads from that era aren't nearly as interesting, and a color one from 2005 can't scan properly) and originally appeared on the old City Directories page from Carbon-izer.com, this blog's parent site.

The Notorious Harvey Road Apartments

From here, we see what was originally Tanglewood South.

I don't write about apartment complexes all that often, when I do it's usually as part of something more interesting, like Mansard House restaurant at Doux Chene Apartments. Later, during the period I ran The Houston Files, there were some quirky apartments I did cover but it's still a rarity.

Following the Harvey Road series (it's across from Fazoli's), I titled this the way I did because it's got some bad press in recent years (if we go by examples in Houston, dense, super-large apartment complexes are never a good idea) and it may not even be the Pearl Apartments in a few years from now. By the year 1984, three apartment complexes were operating along Harvey Road: Travis House (505 Hwy. 30), Tanglewood South Apartments (411 Highway 30), and Courtyard Apartments (600 University Oaks).

By 1998, Tanglewood South was now Kensington Place (401 Harvey Road, same block), with BCAD records indicate that the name had been in place since the early 1990s.

By 2002, the apartments were known as "University Place I & II", likely due to the common ownership around 2000.

Down the street, looking east. Note the Circle K in the distance.

Now, from what I could tell, as late as 2007, Courtyard Apartments (built in 1977, wasn't able to find when Tanglewood South was built) still operated independently, at least, as its own brand, with Campus View operating the rest (it had adopted the name by that time). In 2011, Vesper Campus View LLC, the holding company that owned the other two apartment complexes, bought Courtyard, and it was absorbed into Campus View.

In the last five years, the local media has shown a light on how bad Campus View really is, with hundreds of calls to the police every year, with drug issues, public drunkenness, fighting, shootings, domestic violence, along with multiple maintenance issues. At least under The Marc, the new name adopted in 2016, reviews have been horrible.

This picture illustrates all three complexes, notice the different building designs.

From reading, reviews under another name a few years later with new management, Pearl Apartments, have improved, at least in terms of better management and weeding out the worst residents. But these things can change on a dime (it doesn't help the last time I was in the area, the surrounding blocks were being swarmed with cops due to a shooting in the complex), and without living there it's difficult to judge.

Editor's Note: I wanted to mostly write about this for completionists' sake since it deals with the history of three different apartment complexes. In the next few posts, we'll talk about the restaurants along Harvey Road.

Pizza Hut, University Drive East

In 2014, the sun was starting to set on this Pizza Hut, figuratively and literally. (Picture by author)
With the recent news that Yum! Brands is closing some 500 sit-down Pizza Hut locations, that is, the ones that haven't already been closed down, it's high time for a look back at the sit-down Pizza Hut that College Station once had at 102 University Drive East (there was another short-lived Pizza Hut on University Drive proper in Northgate, and I promise I'll cover it soon enough). From newspaper archives and other sources, the Pizza Hut opened in 1974 but closed around July/August 2017. It did retain its iconic 1980s logo for a while after Pizza Hut started rolling it in more stores (probably as late as 2007), and today is home to additional parking for Fuego Tortilla Grill. The roof was redone in brown around this time.

La Quinta next to Denny's

The current La Quinta as of August 2019 by author. Will it continue to be a La Quinta when the new one on the freeway opens?

Both of these buildings have the address of 607 Texas Avenue, thus they'll be covered at the same time. The restaurant at the corner of Texas and Live Oak was built in 1978 with La Quinta Inn was built in 1979 (originally "La Quinta Motor Inn", later "La Quinta Inn", before branded as simply "La Quinta") right behind it and, with the restaurant being Julie's Place (no. 139). The "#139" implies more of the chain, but from the Houston Chronicle archives, there's only references to the College Station location (none in Houston). Boasting a menu including hamburgers and onion soup, Julie's Place closed in January 1987 after a murder (there was a story on MyBCS, though I'm sure I had heard it elsewhere about how the manager actually swallowed the key to the safe and the stabbings were to retrieve the key, but I'm not sure on that since that's just a comment on the forum and the official court summary makes no mention of the key-swallowing incident). That said, an article from the Houston Chronicle did mention the body was cut from the sternum to the pelvis, which lends credence to the statement.

By 1989, it had reopened as Bombay Bicycle Club (not the 1990s, phone book lists BBC in that era), which was considered one of the nicer restaurants in town (it didn't have anything to do with Indian food), and by the mid to late 1990s it became a Denny's.

August 2019 picture of Denny's by author. Until about a year or so prior, it had green trim.
Additionally, the La Quinta has some additional buildings behind what is currently Rice Garden and the La Quinta Inn was previously home to a "super slide" of some sort, but I can't find much information on that. (Parts of this post originally appeared here).

Diamond Shamrock at Texas Avenue and University Drive East

Diamond Shamrock signage, date unknown. From Project HOLD, cropped and re-balanced.

Located at 501 Texas Avenue South, this Diamond Shamrock existed from 1989 to around 1998 when it was closed in the process of the Texas Avenue widening. The convenience store probably wasn't even a full brand, not even Diamond Shamrock's "Corner Store" (which existed at least as far back as 1990, but I don't believe for any of the local locations until they were converted to Valero). Afterwards, it was absorbed by the U-Haul dealership (formerly Texas Avenue Moving Center) located at 519 Texas.

Diamond Shamrock had previously been a Sigmor Shamrock store (a predecessor company to Diamond Shamrock, though it might have converted to Diamond Shamrock briefly before being rebuilt, as at least one Sigmor store saw a conversion), as was a few others. The U-Haul dealership appears to have originally been on the site of a Philips 66, and records indicate they used a building leftover to do operations, but after Diamond Shamrock died, they moved to that building and removed the old one for more parking.

The style of Diamond Shamrock (black, multiple colors) had to have been more common but no pictures exist of that style on GasSigns.org.

Prior to Sigmor Shamrock, it was Mais Super Market (sometimes used interchangeably with Louis Mais Grocery), which dates back to the 1930s.

Despite having a Facebook page for this webpage which I (try to) update weekly, I despise Facebook. However, there is one group, "Bryan-College Station: Now and Then", which usually shares my posts with their larger audience, had a bit more on the actual backstory of 501 Texas Avenue South. I can't guarantee that this link will work without the page bugging you to sign in, but the page description has been recreated here with minor edits made for clarity.

We are so happy to share these photos that were contributed by Jeff Mais, who said: "This was the Mais' grocery store that was located at Texas Avenue and University Drive. Actually it was in the path of University Drive and was torn down due to "right of way" for the expansion of the road to the bypass. My grandfather Louis Mais and his wife Lydia started the store in the 30's. It began with Louis running a small gas station. He eventually bought the gas station. Aggies would use the location to catch the bus there and would often asked if they anything to eat. He started selling sandwiches and then just kept adding items that were in demand. Soon he had a small convenience store that made deliveries, and got rid of the gas pumps. Then Louis built a bigger store next door to the old one in the 50's which had a meat market, produce section, and also sold barbecue. My dad Donald tells me that he used to deliver groceries to Bear Bryant when he was the head football coach at A&M. As a child, I remember many people gathering in the back of the warehouse after hours to drink beer and talk about their hunting and fishing tales. The store was closed in 1969 to make way for the new road. Louis and Lydia Mais were hard working people who love the community.

The photos were taken by Donald Mais, who was the son of Louis and Lydia Mais. I am the grandson of Louis Mais (Jeff Mais). I lived in College Station until I was four (1966), then we moved to Houston where I grew up.

As an additional note, the gas station was a Conoco. Despite dramatically shaving the right of way (the building of Mais was almost perfectly where the modern eastbound lanes of University Drive East go, there was enough space at 501 Texas for a new gas station. "Fill-Em Fast" opened in 1972 which became a Sigmor station (#997) which was built in 1978. At some point in the 1980s, Sigmor began to rebrand its stations as Diamond Shamrock. It's unknown if this station ever got the brand changeover, but in 1987 the station was torn down and rebuilt as a Diamond Shamrock (still #997). This is the building that exists today.

UPDATE 08-05-2021: Substantial update on the history of the property. New title and labels.