Eastgate

Here's a look at another major neighborhood in town: Eastgate. Unlike Northgate, Eastgate hasn't quite gotten the "student saturated" appearance. Part of this is preservation of an actual neighborhood. The definition of Eastgate is the official, city-supported version, so we'll roll with that.

Here's a few things about Eastgate you should know. I covered Dominik Road a while back, so we'll go ahead and skip that. We're also going to skip the College Station City Hall and the first fire station, mostly on the basis that it's fairly well documented elsewhere (and we mentioned it here, which is where these things tend to wash up). The "Eastgate" businesses are mostly limited to a large area at Walton and Texas Avenue (though a few exist tucked in the back).

This was a proposal we got in the early 1990s, where Walton comes into Texas Avenue (originally, you couldn't turn left in or out of Walton--those parking lots were long yield lanes).



Unfortunately, this never happened, and all we got was some abstract art and a new stoplight.

But look at those businesses...a convenience store, only two familiar faces (Alfred T. Hornback's and Acme Glass), and no Layne's. Based on the placement of Eastgate Food Store, I'd put that at early 1990s or late 1980s.

Starting down the list, we have 101 Walton-103 Walton. 103 Walton was Robinson Pet Clinic in 1989 (but 103A, the space seems small enough so that there's no B...103 must be on the right). 101 was presumably Texcomm. Both are vacant these days.
The empty green roofed building, May 2014

105 Walton, which was a UtoteM since at least the early 1970s (and probably since Day One), became a Circle K in 1984 (if briefly) before becoming Eastgate Food Store in the late 1980s and early 1990s. After decades of being a convenience store, it became Military Depot, a retailer of military-related goods around '92-'93. A few pictures of the Military Depot facade...
You can barely make out the EAS here, I don't know if the shadow was from the military badge or not (probably)
Another view.

Valley Cycling (a 1990s business) was what I remember being in the "main" section of Eastgate at 107 Eastgate. This I do have a picture but it's only postage-stamp sized, and it's on my computer but I'm not going to dig it out right now. , as you may know, was where Textbook Solutions is now. Later, it became a vintage clothing/nostalgia-type store ("Left-Handed Monkey", which lasted...not very long. Blissful Wishes Bridal was here for a while, but eventually by the late 2000s, it was Textbook Solutions, which it remains today.

109 Walton wasn't always food related ("Wing Zone" being here in the early part of the 2000s, records indicate), and it's also where the "Guitar Shop" was in the diagram. Regardless, this is where Leaning Tower Pizza was here at 109 Walton for several years (Partners Food Delivery was here for several years prior apparently, back in the 1990s--but the tenant space for this one is largely drawing a blank). Primo Pizza & Rolls took over when Leaning Tower fell down in spring of 2013. Leaning Tower was an interesting place--it made a particularly greasy pie with a unique cheese mixture. It was also pretty grimy (that's why the pizza is piping hot). It had some garden furniture for an "eat-in" area and had "free delivery" that had a significant discount if you picked it up in store, which means it wasn't actually free at all.

Primo Pizza, a Charles Stover concept, initially planned to reopen the restaurant with a new name and theme and a similar recipe (the recipes were bought along with the store), but instead revamped the recipes and made a more upscale carryout pizza that had pesto on every slice (this opened in late summer 2013). For whatever reason, Primo shut down in February 2014 due to underperformance, but the way it was worded indicated that the closure could be temporary. After all, the sign remained up!

The pictures I took in May 2014 revealed the restaurant was gutted.

Primo Pizza in better days, September 2013
Gutted PP, May 2014
Gutted PP, May 2014. This is where the counter and menu were. The kitchen was behind that wall. This configuration was intact for both LTP and PP&R.

So why did Primo close? Now, I don't know the reason why, but like with Sully's I can make a few guesses.

There's always a chance that Primo Pizza will reopen since Charles Stover still has the recipes and name, but it definitely won't be Eastgate. Here's Primo Pizza's webpage, archived in PNG form.

Further down the line we have Eastgate Hair Shop for Men, I'm pretty sure this hasn't been updated in years (111 Walton) and Oasis Pipes & Tobacco, which moved here from a spot on University evicted for the Plaza Hotel redevelopment and was reduced to rubble soon before the Plaza Hotel came down. The business (and the sign) transplanted to here, 113 Walton, but didn't last long either. There appeared to be some baking equipment scattered in the building. This may have been a holdover from Partners Food Delivery.

Looking inside Oasis, May 2014
Eastgate Barbershop and Oasis, May 2014
Oasis, a body piercing shop, and an apartment finder service, May 2014

119 Walton is called "To The Point" now and the older spot of Textbook Solutions.
123 Walton (no 121 Walton, apparently) is now "Aggieland Apartment Finders", and way in the back behind the strip mall area tucked away is Lost Souls Fixies (it seems pretty sketchy in the areas behind the center).

Over on the other side, we see Alfred T. Hornback's, May 2014. This popular bar (120 Walton Drive) was here for many years, and although not built as it, had a large floor with pool tables and country music. Eastgate was not a huge draw like Northgate was and it closed permanently in summer 2011 though remained open for special events. After DC (Dixie Chicken, not DC Comics) moved out of the building that later contained Blackwater Draw Brewing Company. There's also a small professional office next to it, but I didn't read it too closely (nor is it particularly important to this narrative).

More businesses, May 2014. Behind these is Crossfit 979. Acme Glass is a viable company that's been here for years, but The Event Company has been closed for a few years (wedding planners). The business at 118 Walton hasn't updated its website since July 2013. Acme Glass at 116 Walton does a good business, this one is pretty stable, the building next to it appears to be the old Greyhound station (114 Walton), but it seems vacant and used for storage (a visit in 2011 revealed a filthy but late 1990s era washing machine). I don't know when it went out of service, but it was a while ago. 108 Walton was Wilson Plumbing, but now is the home of Layne's.

Layne's, May 2014. The former Sully's is in the background (check that out here). For what it's worth, Layne's opened before the first Raising Cane's (in 1994 vs. Cane's 1996).

Behind these businesses is Eastgate Park, a place in four segments: it's the medians between the parking lot and Walton, and about four or so vacant lots on Foster. However, city records show that this has been parkland since the late 1930s. Abstract art was installed in 2000.

Of course, that's just the tip of the iceberg, I could also go into the story of Munson Drive, which you could find and read about on MyBCS but since I read a scrapbook of articles, when Munson expanded to Lincoln in the late 1990s, the residents of Munson got the city to put up gates to prevent people from cutting through their neighborhood, which upset everyone else but it took nearly a year of fighting and countless letters to the editor before the city voted to remove the gates (and because at the time, Munson was where all the well-off and politically powerful people were, giving them enormous influence in the city). Or Thomas Park, which had always been owned by the city (all 16 acres) since 1938, but it wasn't until the 1970s when it began to become an actual park. The flagship of this was Thomas Park, which wasn't developed until the late 1970s. According to the great but dated College Station 1938-1988, it mentioned one of its accessories being a "plastic bubble dome which allowed indoor swimming during the winter months."

Either this plastic bubble was impractical and/or fear of lawsuits from people asphyxiating in chlorine gas meant that it would be never be seen again, because I know that Thomas Pool is definitely never open in the winter months to my memory. But such a thing did happen, and you can see some B&W pictures here and here which I originally scanned for Project HOLD.

That's all for now...

Stover Bros. And How It Came To Be

This post was originally focused on the Stover Bros. eatery in Village Foods and what led up to it. It was derived from an interview with Charles Stover. For the entries in this blog, please see:

- The Exxon on Boonville (Stover Boys first location)
- Square One
- Westgate Center (Stover Boys second location)
- Eastgate, regarding Primo Pizza
- Village Foods
- Post Oak Mall Part 2: The Food Court

Thanks.

Long John Silver's in College Station

Long John Silver's has been gone for years and replaced with this unexciting strip mall building. (Photo by author, 4/20)
Before the current strip center here was built around late 2005, the site at 1808 Texas Avenue South was originally Long John Silver's No. 5347 in 1980¹, and closed in early 2005.²
The strip center originally had a Verizon store (still here, though changed logos after the parent company did), Systek Computing, and a restaurant space. Systek moved to a strip center behind the newer plaza when it was built by 2011 (later on it moved and eventually merged out of existence), with its space here being replaced by "Cash Store" (payday loans--and apparently that IS its legal name). The restaurant space started as Doc Green's, a soup/salad/sandwich chain out of the Atlanta area. It made its first stand in Texas here in late 2007 (and in Austin a few months later) with a logo that is no longer used by the company. Unfortunately, neither one did particularly well. The Austin one closed up in less than a year due to back taxes being owed, and the College Station one was shuttered by the end of 2008.³

Doc Green's closed at the end of 2008 with Naked Fish replacing it in early 2009. Naked Fish continued to operate for about fifteen years before closing in April 2024, with Tikka House Indian Eatery opening in December 2024 to replace it. Cash Store was also not an original tenant, it was originally Systek Computing. Systek moved to a strip center behind the newer plaza when it was built by 2011 and ultimately moved on and disappeared.

1. Like Bryan's store, this originally gone by the chain's old name "Long John Silver's Seafood Shoppe", though like Bryan never updated to new logos beyond their 1994 logo. It looked just like it (before it was torn down and rebuilt, anyway).
2. Previous versions of this page refer to it being a drug front; the article was actually referring to the Conroe location. LJS closed around that same time here (while that Conroe location remained open for another five or six years).
3. In July 2012, Jenny Jenkins wrote in to say this: "Doc Green's opened February/March 2007. I worked there for a very short time (March to May/June). It was run by some disgruntled former Freebirds managers that thought they could run a restaurant better than Freebirds (where I also worked for a couple years). They couldn't have been more wrong. They were so horribly disorganized that I can't believe they lasted. For example, they were open for months and still hadn't installed paper towel dispensers. They couldn't keep up with ordering and wouldn't order the same things so the menu changed constantly just because they'd run out of stuff. It just was really poorly done. I'm not sure when exactly they closed, but I know it was longer than expected. They were pretentious for a restaurant that casual but the food was pretty good."

UPDATE 05-11-2025: Made some changes including some more details about LJS and integrated previous updates, with some rewriting done. Renamed post to "Long John Silver's in College Station" to complement the post Long John Silver's in Bryan.

Southwest Crossing

The sun angle was bad, plus it was taken on my old cell phone camera (circa 2011-2012)
Southwest Crossing was built in the mid-2000s, I believe it was late 2005 or early 2006 when it was completed. As far as a 15-year-old center goes, tenant turnover is surprisingly low, so here's what we got so far, starting from the side closest toward the university (from the left, should you be looking at it head on) and ordered in terms of addresses. You can see a PDF here (archived from here) of the center. Note that they call it "Southwest Crossing at Bee Creek", though the creek behind it is not Bee Creek, though it does drain into it.

The first thing to see is the stand-alone Layne's Chicken Fingers (which I don't have a photo of), the second Layne's ever and their first expansion. Still branded as "Layne's of College Station" as it was known when it opened in November 2006, and was far more modern than their Eastgate store. This has the address of 1301 Wellborn Road. When it opened and for many years before the franchisee bought the parent company, it offered nothing but chicken fingers, Texas toast, fries, and small containers of potato salad and sauce. The cups didn't even have Layne's branding. With the purchase of the stores by the franchised version, they now offer milkshakes and additional sauce varieties.

Behind that was originally C.C. Creations at 1311 Wellborn, and the first big tenant to open, moving from their warehouse center on Holleman. Interestingly, in 2013, they moved out, consolidating with the Trophies location (Harvey Mitchell Pkwy. and Southwood) into the former Red Oak Sportswear building (very close to where they were before). Later on, this became a fly-by-night tutoring operation (one-on-one, not a group "here's how to pass the tests" type) called Aggieland Tutoring. Around 2017, part of the space became Texas State Optical (now MyEyeDr), and another part briefly became Vivint Smart Home. A section still remains vacant and is rumored to become a restaurant (a drive-through was installed but never used).

The next building, 1411 Wellborn, has four spaces. The first one (Ste. 100) was originally (2006-2007) The Beverage Oasis, a liquor store, then Haix Stores, a shoe store that operated from summer 2009 to 2013 (the signage remained up for a while after that). Tacobar replaced it in fall 2016 and closed in late 2021 in preparation of moving to 404 Jane Street. Nick the Greek opened in suite 100 in February 2023 to replace Tacobar. It is the first Nick the Greek location in Texas (and the gyros are excellent). Suite 200 was originally New York Subs (1411 Wellborn Ste. 200) which opened in 2007 (reported as "New York NY Fresh Deli" but the signage was New York Subs). I can't confirm or deny it was the same restaurant at 301 College Main. In early 2009 it was rebranded as Sub Culture (legally overnight, likely because the master franchising company out of Arizona went under) and finally closed in 2011. In early 2012 it became "Harold's Hot Dogs & Ice Cream", a local outfit serving hot dogs and ice cream. Harold's itself was also a rename from the displaced Maggie Moo's from Rock Prairie Crossing. Harold's also expanded the menu to hot dogs but it closed in June 2014. (While some bemoaned the loss of its oatmeal cookie ice cream, promises to add a fryer to add french fries went unfulfilled...how could you serve hot dogs but not fries?). In spring 2015, it reopened as another Kolache Rolf's location but closed permanently in 2018. It is currently planned to be a location of Mochinut, which will sell mochi donuts and Korean corn dogs. The next tenant (Ste. 300) opened in January 2006 as University Book Store, one of the first tenants to land in the center. It only lasted a few months before the chain went under and ended up being a leasing office for the Woodlands of College Station apartment complex for several years. It ended up being Anytime Fitness, then Aerofit Express (closing before the chain was sold), and finally Marethouse Fitness, a locally-owned fitness center that had signage up during COVIDmania but later opened by late 2020/early 2021. Suite 500 (no 400) The Beach Tanning Salon (Ste. 400) was one of the original tenants opened in 2006, but it closed by the end of 2014. Later it became the similar Tiki Tan, but it closed in the summer of 2019.

The last building has two tenants with the address of 105 Southwest Parkway, holding a C&J Barbecue (third location) and Hungry Howie's Pizza, the latter being the first College Station-Bryan location in town. Both opened in 2006. The Hungry Howie's is still the only HH's Pizza in the county, as a second location in town closed after a few years). Here's two more pictures from 2012 of the center building.




Two more things that weren't covered in the original post is Copper Creek Condos behind the shopping center at 301 Southwest Parkway (built in 2016). Predating the center (but listed as "pad site available", so it's up for redevelopment) is a Citgo. The Citgo was built with a 7-Eleven in 1986. In the early 1990s the market was sold to E-Z Mart, which began to shed stores later. Since around 2002 it has been a Zip'N, though as a brand name is kind of meaningless.

UPDATE 02-15-2024: Everything has been updated in a major rewrite, from the fate of Layne's to the legacy Citgo. A new PDF was added, too.
UPDATE 04-21-2024: After their first opening got canned, Mochinut opened for the first time on March 27, 2024. I was their first customer.
UPDATE 08-14-2024: Suite 500 was later Palm Beach Tan (as of 2022), in August 2024 Half-Baked Goodness, a cookie shop, opened in the space.

The Burger King Near Blinn

From August 2019 with the gas station recently de-Rattled. Picture by author.
When I first made this post back in January 2012, it was titled "The Terrible Food at Blinn", which was a rant on how awful the food was at Blinn compared to my new digs at A&M (which only lasted one semester before food was outsourced to Compass/Chartwells). I have no idea what Blinn's current offerings are like but was astounded at what awful quality it was: there were very few places to eat on campus at all. There were vending machines (overpriced more than usual), the college bookstore with a small selection of convenience store items (Pop-Tarts were the usual item of choice here, despite an obvious push to stock more "healthy" items), and the student center having two "food court" type establishments, both of which were absolutely terrible, "Clux Delux" and "Block & Barrel". Clux Delux, according to what the packaging stating was supposed to be a bit like a poor man's Chick-fil-A, but it was just cafeteria food sitting under heat lamps, with cartoonishly bad everything. Unidentifiable gloop, an item on the menu literally listed as "chicken chunks"...Clux Delux had it all. Block & Barrel was just pre-packaged items including soggy, plastic-wrapped sandwiches (when were they made? who knows!)

This was depressing to me, as way back when Blinn was opening the Student Center building in the early 2000s, it had real fast food, one of which was a Taco Bell (I suspect the other was a Yum! Brands restaurant). Indeed, underneath the cheap banners of CD and B&B, you could see holes drilled in where the restaurant signs once were...and you know you're in for a real disappointment when Taco Bell is considered high cuisine to whatever they served.

Naturally, no one but the desperate wanted to eat the overpriced slop at the student center, so the nearest go-to place was a Burger King at the corner of 29th and Villa Maria, and due to schedules, was still too long to be walked to and from. Opened in 2007 along with an adjacent Rattlers', the first new Burger King in town in over two decades (certainly slow compared to the growth of the city's McDonald's restaurants). My memories of it were thinking it was grimier than the typical Burger King, and also around 2011 or 2012 when they switched to having monitors for the menu instead of just the normal menu system that slid to show breakfast and lunch items at different times.

The Rattlers', of course, is still branded as such, despite the takeover of the chain by Stripes. The chain's Shell stations have all been converted to Sunoco stations, but the Exxon-branded Rattlers' remain, for some reason. Or at least they would, except this is no longer a Rattlers', and instead a generic Exxon convenience store as of August 2019. (It also throws the other Exxon Rattlers', like the store on Boonville and Highway 6, or the one in Navasota, into doubt). This seems to have happened very recently, it's even still on the Stripes store locator page (#5258) as of this writing but lacks even the Stripes drink cups. The convenience store is at 2411 East 29th Street whereas Burger King is at 2401.

As an update to the above written, as of March 2020, the name of the convenience store is now called "Rustlers Den", a similar name to the Rattlers except with red lettering.

Tales of Defunct Restaurants at 1045 South Texas Avenue

Kerri's in better days. Sorry for the terrible scan and image quality, but this is what I have.

Back in 2012, instead of publishing articles on individual businesses, I made the wrong idea of dumping several restaurants into a single post called "Tales of Defunct Restaurants", which became a series. Initially, this contained a variety of other restaurants now covered elsewhere, namely Tuscany's, Yum Yums Texas Style, and Fort Shiloh Steakhouse, explaining the discrepancy in the comments below.I did update the post a few times since (though when I did that is lost to time) to add a picture of, and expand on, the restaurant that was last in the original building before Raising Cane's took it over...Kerri's Stacked Enchiladas.

But let's go back to the beginning, or at least the beginning as I can find it.

Built as a branch of California-based Sambo's (which had over 1000 in 47 states at its peak), the restaurant originally opened March 1974, replacing empty land. But in the early 1980s, Sambo's imploded. With mounting criticism from its name and theme by politically correct groups and problems stemming from a massive expansion, it filed for bankruptcy in 1982 and closed.

No restaurant appeared to be in place by the time the 1983 phone book was published.

In 1987, Wings 'n Things opened up by Mark Dennard. Apparently, this was related to the Houston-based Wings 'n Things as a franchise (or of the same corporate parent, seeing as how WnT opened the same year but for whatever reason, it fell through and Dennard renamed his restaurant in College Station to Wings 'N More soon after. It looks like it was founded at 2711 Fountainview, which was a Wings 'N Things just until this (re)writing in January 2017.

Sorry, Archive.is isn't working.

I can't find a lot of details on the split, or how much Mark Dennard was involved in Wings 'n Things, but apparently it did happen and the restaurant was renamed. Mark Dennard never opened very many other Wings 'N More stores (one in The Woodlands, one in south College Station in toward the late 1990s) but was able to franchise Wings 'N More in Houston (where Wings 'n Things was based), and those restaurants later became BreWingz as that spun off.

In January 2003, this location of Wings 'N More moved out to a modern location at University Drive East and Highway 6, where it remains today, but it wouldn't remain closed for much longer. In 2003, a new local restaurant replaced it, Kerri's Stacked Enchiladas. Despite a strong start, including winning Best New Restaurant in Best of the Brazos 2003 and Best Southwest Texas Cuisine a year later, it folded by 2005.

It made no changes to the outside of the old Wings 'N More, and from what I've heard, not much to the inside, either (except adding some new Aggie memorabilia). The logo was a semi-provacatively-dressed brunette (wearing one a torn shirt that was basically torn and twisted into a short top) holding a plate.

Open from 11am to "late", this is what the Dining Guide of 2004 had to say on the matter. Keep in mind that since I haven't heard great things about Kerri's in retrospect and this was written by the restaruant, chances are high that parts of this paragraph are blatant lies (already I see that they must have forgotten Kokopelli's, and the full paragraph is as follows:

The Brazos Valley's first Southwest restaurant has already been recognized among the very best restaurants in the entire Brazos Valley! Our unique stacked enchiladas are made fresh from scratch daily --topped with the freshest produce in town! At Kerri’s we also boast the best Fajita Stacks in town and offer a diverse menu sure to please everyone, from healthy choices like veggie quesadillas, veggie stacked enchiladas, stack house salads to main stay favorites such as ribeye steaks, chicken fried chicken, southwest lasagna, burgers and much much more. The desserts alone are worth the trip to Kerri’s. We have catered many special area events such as weddings, receptions, concerts, business luncheons and dinners, numerous city council meetings and an array of late night party events. Consider Kerri’s for all of you catering needs -- we will deliver to the location of your choice, or reserve our spacious dining and stage area or huge outdoor patio. Kerri’s has the freshest food in town at the most reasonable price. Go see for yourself why Kerri’s was voted Best New Restaurant in the Brazos Valley! While you’re here relax and enjoy our full service bar and ask your server how to get a
"soon to be famous"

All that disappeared by 2005 when Kerri's closed down. After the restaurant closed, someone made some sort of bizarre Pac-Man graffiti on the roof, with (illegible) names next to Pac-Man and the ghost. I'm not sure what they meant, but with the highly visible graffiti, a nearby dead Mobil (which closed in about 2004), and the closed Texaco down from it, by mid-2005 it contributed to a feeling that the stretch from University to George Bush just started feeling really run-down.

By January of 2006 (according to TexAgs archives, and sounds right in my memory), the building was torn down and a Raising Cane's was put in its place by summer. Raising Cane's actually has the date the store opened (June 2006) along with a little blurb about it. I wish more chains did that...that's really cool. You can see a picture of the building here that I took in May 2014.

Chicken Express, Downtown Bryan

The Chicken Express here didn't look much different from the Burger King it replaced (you can see that picture on Yelp). This picture is from August 2019 by the author.
The Chicken Express at the corner of South Texas Avenue and East 29th Street is rather pedestrian, and probably would not have been covered had it not had a previous tenant that had fond memories for me. As a kid living and growing up in College Station (this was originally named "College Station Roads & Retail", after all), going to downtown Bryan was a fairly rare occurrence. Of these trips, most of them were to the downtown Greyhound bus station where relatives would often come down by bus (Waco or Houston), including cousins and my grandfather. This is why Chicken Express is covered, is because of that bus station (located at 405 East 29th Street).

Granted, it was dirty and run-down especially by the late 1990s and early 2000s, and I've been told the building started out as a UtoteM (and that may have had Amoco gas, from what I've heard) and became a bus station by 1980. I don't think it was remodeled much at all between tenants, and it had a drop ceiling, florescent lighting, really worn tiles, possibly dated from 1960s to 1970s, some rather drab and cheap-looking chairs, and the like. There were a few vending machines, including some candy dispensers and (if I remember right) even a coffee vending machine. While it was a miserable place that seemed to be falling apart, it had charm (though I'm sure I'm the only one that thinks that) as a wonderfully grungy place that was a gritty time capsule of the 1980s.

After it was torn down in the late 2000s, the replacement of the store was a Burger King with the address of 401 South Texas Avenue (ironically, despite the new Texas Avenue address, the site was rebuilt to not allow access to Texas Avenue), part of a proposed bunch of new stores as part of a new franchisee. The new Burger King opened around April 2009 and closed in January 2011 (but not reopening). Reason was probably because B-CS just isn't a Burger King town (the one at Texas and Deacon seems to get pretty low volume). It reopened as a Chicken Express some months later (2012 I believe) which did little to the restaurant except give it red trim instead of blue (and serve an entirely different menu under new ownership and a new name, of course).

The redevelopment into Chicken Express also demolished a building (built as a house, though it likely was no longer serving as residential by the time it was torn down) at the corner of 29th and South Houston Avenue. This may be researched in a further update.

Updated in July 2020 to further expunge the original "downtown Bryan memory" format

Dave's Seafood & Steak / Tom's BBQ and Steakhouse

This restaurant was built sometime in the early 1980s (build date unknown due to demolished building) as Dave's Seafood & Steak Restaurant (operating from 1983 to 1985), closing as one of the restaurants that got washed out in the mid-1980s recession. Other than the ad above I have little information on it. It was briefly another restaurant (Johnny Peppy's) in late 1985 and early 1986 (it lasted for less than six months but it did open based on a mention in a Chamber of Commerce newsletter).

It later became another restaurant known as Karin's (according to The Eagle, so far, any other proof up to and including tax records has proved elusive) and in 1991, it became the College Station home of Tom's Barbecue & Steakhouse, which also changed the address from 2005 to 2001 Texas Avenue (though I believe it was the same building). Tom's Barbecue had been in town since the late 1960s and had established a new-build Bryan site just six years earlier at 3610 South College Avenue (now home to J. Cody's). While I never remember going there, it was a well-known restaurant in town and right across from the H-E-B Pantry Foods where my family regularly went grocery shopping.

Tom's Barbecue & Steakhouse began as just "Tom's Barbecue" in 1969 and moved around town a few times before settling at 3610 South College Avenue in 1985 in a newly-built location (now home to J. Cody's). The College Station restaurant officially opened in 1991, with both locations featuring a meat-based menu of steaks, burgers, barbecue, and a few others. It was also known for the "Tom's Famous Aggie Special", which gave you barbecue (your choice of meats, whether it be ribs, brisket, or whatever), a block of cheddar cheese, pickles, half an onion, bread, and served on butcher paper with a knife. The food quality, however, started to go downhill toward the end of the restaurant's lifespan, likely when pitmaster Wayne Kammerl left following new ownership in 1998. In April 2001, both restaurants abruptly closed.

Here's a menu from Project HOLD (which was supplied by me, actually). I don't know of the date, maybe late 1990s?

Originally some menu items were removed and blacked out (like the Veggie Basket), while some were added (they were stapled to the front)





There also used to be a Buffalo Wings one stapled on, and it used buffalo clip art, again.

In 2011, I found the old Tom's BBQ website (as early as the late 1990s, the College Station Tom's BBQ website disappeared and the domain was taken over by an Arizona-based Tom's BBQ). Here's the History page from it (thanks, Archive.org)


If you go to the archived website, you can see that for early 1997 and late 1996, it was a pretty advanced website: you could order online for pick-up, which wasn't common back then.

After serving for parking for the adjacent E-Z Travel Inn for a few years, it was torn down for a strip center.

- The main tenant was originally Blockbuster, which moved from 1800-B Texas Avenue South and was here from 2005 to early 2011. Following the closure, it became MattressFirm a few months later.
- Directly next to it was Rhino Video Games (also opened 2005), also owned by Blockbuster at the time though I don't think there was any interior access. Rhino was bought and absorbed by GameStop in early 2007, which was disappointing as I heard Rhino actually carried classics like Super Nintendo, which GameStop had long since scrapped by then, and didn't have GameStop's aggressive policies that made it disliked by many people.. However, Rhino didn't have much of a footprint in Texas; there were only a few other stores and all of them closed by the time it was rebranded.
- Rosie's Pho Asian Noodle, opened 2006 but closed around 2019 due to bad reviews, bad food. In 2021 Taste of Thailand opened in the spot.
- Batteries Plus opened in 2007 which eventually became Batteries+Bulbs in a corporate rebranding in the late 2000s.
There's four more suites I didn't cover--realty, nail spas, vaping, cash stores...but that's maybe for another time (if ever).

UPDATE 07-13-2021: New restaurant addition with Karin's (the restaurant added in an update a year ago) downplayed.

UPDATE 10-31-2024: A few notes were added to the current tenants.
UPDATE 01-13-2025: A few additions/notes to amend above.
- Dave's went by "Dave's Restaurant & Bar" until around mid-1984 when it slightly altered to its present name.
- Karin's appeared in 1986 shortly after the demise of Johnny Peppy's but also closed in 1987. It appears that the restaurant was vacant until Tom's moved in (with an address change).

College Station's Kmart / College Station Shopping Plaza

The former store as it stood c. late 2010


The shopping center at the northwest corner of Harvey Mitchell Parkway and Texas Avenue has a long and storied history. This post originally went up in June 1, 2010 and has been added and edited to over the years and last received a rewrite in 2014 before the current rewrite in 2021.

There's many reasons for the decline and disappearance of Kmart. Under its original form (pre-2002) it was due to poor management and culminations of not investing properly in its store base, preferring store growth over investments in its old stores. Post-2004 was all about draining assets from it along with Sears, but that happened long after Kmart left town (though could be seen with Sears at Post Oak Mall, unfortunately.

Kmart opened at 2700 Texas Avenue South on May 18, 1974, not long after the opening of FM 2818, the "West Loop". Unusually for Texas Avenue, it was not located on the road directly, instead on the frontage roads that curved into FM 2818. When the Kmart opened, it was store #7013, one of their smallest prototypes (without the 9000-series used in rural stores) in the south end of College Station. The store also featured an adjacent grocery store as well. In the early days of Kmart, "Kmart Foods" was a discount-oriented grocery store not technically part of the store (no cross-buying between sections) and operated by a local third party. (Target also did something similar in the 1970s). In the case of this part of Texas, it was Houston-based Lewis & Coker, which opened as its own name rather than Kmart Foods.

The stores did have an interior connection, but not for very long, as the whole Kmart Foods program was already on its way out at the time of the store opening. The Kmart was typical of stores of that era: a white slanted roof and ridged concrete. Lewis & Coker would close this store in the late 1970s with Piggly Wiggly taking over in 1977. The changeover was similar to the gutting of AppleTree years later, quickly go through and change prices in around 48 hours. The store was only about 19,000 square feet (of selling space) and was the only Piggly Wiggly to have a bakery. At some point in the late 1980s, however, Piggly Wiggly closed, and Kmart found a new neighbor across the street that would ultimately contribute to the store's closure (and would do irreparable damage to the chain as a whole), the Wal-Mart at the southwest corner of the intersection, opened in 1988. Kmart expanded into the old Piggly Wiggly space and did change to the 1990s logo soon after but didn't do anything beyond that.


Kmart advertising in a 1976 Texas A&M-Texas Tech basketball program

In February 1995, facing a (relatively new) Wal-Mart preparing to remodel, a nice new Target up the road (opened 1992), the Kmart, now badly dated, was shuttered in a round of closings announced in September 1994 (it never even got automatic doors). Target remained popular and the renovated Wal-Mart got a new shade of blue that Wal-Mart loved so much in the 1990s and even had a McDonald's inside, and of course, both still operate today.


Kmart, shortly after closing. Ferreri's Italian is in the upper right.

With Kmart's vacancy, it left nearly 83,000 square feet open. By the end of the year, however, Tractor Supply Co. moved in the far left part of the store (or the southern part, for those thinking geographically) and remodeled the interior and exterior (the exterior being the metal siding TSC is known for) but only for that part of the store. The TSC took over the garden center part of the store and was rebadged as 2704 Texas Avenue, as most of the former Kmart was still vacant.

In 1996, Big Lots opened in the center of the former store (taking the main facade) and Dollar General (cutting into the ridged '70s concrete Kmart was known for) opened in the remaining space. Big Lots took the 2700 address and I believe Dollar General did too (though I'd have to look at my phone books to confirm that). Dollar General only lasted a few years before giving way to Goodwill (though it ran a store at Longmire and Harvey Mitchell for a few years as well), and around 2001, a discount grocery store concept called "YES!Less" featuring a rather obnoxious-looking anthropomorphic exclamation mark filled in the vacant Kmart Foods/Lewis & Coker/Piggly Wiggly (and ironically, this was operated by Fleming Cos., which was Kmart's main food provider at the time). The former Kmart and its adjoining stores were finally full. There's not a lot of pictures of Yes!Less out there, but you can see a picture at my Waco - Valley Mills page at Carbon-izer.

In 2003, Fleming went bankrupt and everything went on the sale block including YES!Less. The leases of YES!Less were acquired by and reopened under California-based Grocery Outlet. The media reported them as being called "Grocery Outlet Bargains Only" but that was also their logo at the time, so it really might not have differed from their West Coast stores other than being substantially older stores. Save-a-Lot bought Grocery Outlet's Texas stores in fall 2004 and reopened them AGAIN if ever so briefly, and I'm sure it was gone by spring 2005. It only lasted a matter of months, and I don't remember it much at all.

Big Lots closed around 2005 (there was a store closure wave), and with the added vacancy of the grocery store space, it once again started to look like it had been a decade prior when Kmart closed.

In 2006, the entire shopping center was given a major exterior facelift (though was never able to get rid of the Kmart concrete ridges), three new tenants were signed on, and it was renamed as "College Station Shopping Plaza". BCS Asian Market (also known as BCS Food Market) came around this time to the old Grocery Outlet (with 2704 Texas Avenue #4 as the address), AutoZone was built in the parking lot next to Taste of China (2706 Texas Avenue), and U-Rent-It (2704 Texas Avenue #5) built on the side of the building and using cinderblocks instead. The parking lot lights are also original. The big change was that the stores were ALL renumbered as 2704 (this probably means Goodwill, now 2704 #3, was changed, since Goodwill opened while Big Lots was still extant).

U-Rent-It closed in 2008, and was eventually replaced (2010) by "The Everything Backyard Store", which renamed to Champion Pools & Patios (same business, though I'm afraid the Facebook proof from that is gone) and relocated out a few years afterwards (by 2012, it looks like) to the College Station Business Center just west of the center until it eventually disappeared. Ultimately, the space at CSSP remained vacant until a 2015 renovation to Impact Church, and became CSL Plasma in 2016 (still open as of December 2018).

Big Lots remained vacant, however. but returned to College Station in 2009 when it occupied an old Goody's further north. In spring 2014, it was finally filled with Vista College (training in things like HVAC, so no Blinn competition here). Vista College also replaced a rusting roadside sign that used to be where the Kmart sign was.



The 2006 redo effectively deleted the 2700 address for years until a new building was built next to AutoZone around late 2017, which was labeled 2700, but as of November 2024 this building remains vacant.

UPDATE 11-09-2021: Another update/rewrite completed. It fixes an error from the 2014 rewrite, gets rid of the "three parts" structure, and updates the dates of when TSC and Big Lots opened.
UPDATE 04-05-2023: I totally missed the fact that Vista College abruptly closed in 2021. Some other changes were made as well.
UPDATE 09-14-2024: Found proof of the expansion, so that has been amended.
UPDATE 11-02-2024: Update a bit as far as Grocery Outlet went. The modern "2700" is still empty.

H-E-B College Station

Author's picture of 1900 Texas Avenue South from June 2019
This H-E-B store opened as the FIRST full-line store in the Bryan-College Station area (as opposed to a Pantry store) and it replaced the H-E-B Pantry Foods across Holleman. The store opened in spring 2002 around the time that the H-E-B Pantry stores in Houston were being replaced at a rapid rate, and while I had been in a "real" H-E-B before, the now-defunct Valley Mills/Dutton store in Waco (that's a link to my other site, Carbon-izer), the H-E-B here blew it out of the water, offering everything the Pantry had (except for the nice ambience) and adding a real bakery (with bolillos, which were a favorite when visiting the Waco store), a tortilleria, a pharmacy, a floral department, seafood, and a deli.
Up until 2015, the store's décor and layout remained largely the same, with some changes have gone on within H-E-B in the past decade. Originally, they had a video game section with a display in the middle that had TVs playing the Super Smash Bros. Melee trailer (hey, it was early 2002), and you could buy a portable PSOne there. This was gutted for more of the "general merchandise" selection they have today. Unfortunately, it was one of the earlier departments scrapped when it became clear what customer's buying habits were, though it was for the better (H-E-B's merchandising is not quite as sharp these days). The sushi-making kiosk and "Showtime" were added later during later reconfigurations, and at some point in the early 2010s, H-E-B moved away from plates in the deli (though there wasn't much besides dried-out fried chicken and potato wedges) in favor of cold "grab-and-go" items (and later, "Meal Simple" kits). In the front, there were what appeared to be large sheds (they were later removed to accommodate more garden supplies), and there was also a Washington Mutual bank inside (which may or not have been the first bank there). Fortunately, H-E-B converted it to an IBC bank (removed circa 2012) before Washington Mutual collapsed completely.

The store really is big.

Until COVID, the store was 24/7 all year, which made the store extremely convenient (and not even all of the Houston area stores did that). Of course, night hours meant that the stores were cluttered with boxes and the service departments were shuttered, but it was still extremely convenient (though H-E-B wasn't the only one that stayed open that late)...though the store's popularity and tight footprint meant that parking was an issue, and that tight footprint meant that the store could never be physically expanded. The 2015 remodel mostly just replaced the existing décor ( tearing off the giant lettering on the sides of the colored walls), moved the florist to the other side of the store near the pharmacy (where the books and magazines used to be), rearranging the produce area so that it was easier to access the main store instead of winding around it, and adding the "Curbside" service to the store (using old bank space, but taking up even more parking).

Enjoy these few pictures I took at H-E-B in June 2010, taken with my old cellphone camera.

 

 

 

 

In the early days of this post, I used to have H-E-B directories from 2002 and 2005 available for download, but I figured it wasn't worth re-uploading from the Dropbox Public folder where it used to be.

The H-E-B saved part of the parking lot that El Chico used (though a few years after H-E-B opened, El Chico was torn down entirely for a bank), which was once part of a larger parking lot. Across from El Chico (on the other side of the parking lot, further down Holleman) was a shabby-looking maroon building (with cedar shake shingles if I remember right), built in the mid-1980s, holding Aggieland Printing (1801 Holleman), and later Early Bird Cleaners. Both moved to a new building in the parking lot of the H-E-B at Park Place. This was the only other retail the H-E-B had near it.

Aggieland Printing was at 1902 Texas Avenue South from 2002 to 2019 when Aggieland Printing owner John Stimson retired, and it was merged into Angonia Print and Copy of Bryan, which adopted the Aggieland Printing name, and in 2020 was replaced with a HOTWORX fitness studio. 1904 Texas Avenue South held Sew Vac City by 2005 and into the mid-2010s when it was replaced by Mattress One. They were still here in 2018 but a few years later had been replaced with F45 Training.

Smoothie King moved into 1908 Texas Avenue South in early 2010 (they used to be at the Kroger shopping center, 2416C Texas Avenue South). LA Weight Loss had previously been here since 2003 and through the 2000s (and I believe that this is where Early Bird Cleaners might have been when it first moved, didn't last long...but the drive-through presence would support that). There doesn't seem to have been a 1906 Texas Avenue South...everything has been accounted for. Below, you can see the configuration of El Chico and surrounding retail before the H-E-B was built.



UPDATE 07-19-2021: Spun off El Chico (and the car dealerships before it) into a new post. This is not the first update of this post. Major rewrites had been done in 2015 and June 2019.
UPDATE 04-05-2023: Another significant rewrite, better incorporating the adjacent retail building.