The Westinghouse Building

The plant in its idle days (2010). It used more land than it sat on. Maybe they had plans for further expansion once.
Long before even the Southwest Parkway overpass was built, around 1980, Westinghouse Electric Corporation purchased a large 50-acre site off of the "East Bypass" and on it, opened a plant for their Westinghouse Electronic Systems division, employing just under 500 people, and featuring amenities such as a cafeteria, an infirmary, and even a racquetball court. This plant opened around 1983-1984.

Westinghouse began to scale down the plant's employee count in the early 1990s, starting a wave of layoffs that would ultimately gut the facility. In 1995, corporate at Westinghouse made a major purchase that would change the company—CBS Incorporated, which would become the main focus of the company. It would rename to CBS Corporation in 1997 and divest most of its remaining assets until it merged with CBS's former spin-off Viacom in 2000.¹

In 1996, Westinghouse Electronic Systems (as a division) was sold to Northrop Grumman, and the College Station plant went with it, but its best years were behind it. When Northrup Grumman shut down the plant in 1999 (just three years after buying Westinghouse Electronic Systems), it had only 100 employees down from a peak of 470 when Westinghouse was running it in the 1980s and early 1990s before the layoffs. For a period of about 10 years, the facility sat vacant. In 2005, I remember hearing the news about some vandalism of the facility, but I can't find an article for it.

In early 2009, Lynntech Inc., a local firm, purchased the site for their consolidated headquarters. Lynntech's idea was that they would use some of the space, and develop the rest of the space, including the area behind and around the facility. One of maps from the defunct AbouTown Press had a map of what the whole thing would look like when filled out (it would've had more buildings and facilities, though it did not have an extension of Appomattox, at least from what I remember), though I no longer have it.

From the start, it did not go well. The purchase was finalized in March 2009 but they could not move into the building until early 2010 (don't ask me why it has the year 2012 on the article). A biofuel company was scheduled to move in² but I can't find proof of that ever went through.

By 2014, The Science Park hadn't even filled the original building, much less build out anything on the massive 53-acre campus it sat in. However, a new proposal would completely fill the facility when Blinn announced they were considering the building for a campus expansion. The idea faced heavy resistance from the nearby Raintree subdivision residents on traffic noise³; the highway was essentially one-way in, one-way out, and didn't nearly have the outflow capabilities of the Villa Maria Blinn campus. Within a few months, Blinn dropped their plans and would continue to focus in Bryan.⁴

The next stage in the life of the campus would come in 2016 when Oldham Goodwin acquired the campus and renamed it to Providence Park. The big difference here was that the acreage was hybridized for commercial opportunities, and soon after, a good part of the parking lot of the facility was removed for the construction of a new Academy Sports + Outdoors store, moving from their old store at Horse Haven Lane. Additionally, one part of the building was removed near the front (probably the old cafeteria) and Northrup-Grumman Road, a small access road off of the highway that provided access to the back of the facility (and another access to the parking lot of St. Thomas next door), was largely rebuilt and renamed as Providence Road (though St. Thomas put up a gate that possibly opens on Sundays but it's closed most of the time).

The Westinghouse building has a common corridor to access the office tenants inside. (Photo by author, 1/2020).
New parking was built directly in front of the what is now known as "The Westinghouse Building" at 2501 Earl Rudder Freeway to replace the parking lost to Academy. Lynntech and a few other tenants still occupy the site. I haven't made anything about the current Academy—probably not since it's very much still there (what am I supposed to say about it?) nor the La-Z-Boy store that opened earlier this year...or VeraBank...but I do have something on the short-lived Varsity Grillhouse which you can read about here.

1. The drama between CBS, Viacom, and their on-and-off relationship is mildly interesting, but you can read about it elsewhere. Up until 2021 when the newly re-merged ViacomCBS (since renamed Paramount Global) sold the trademark back to former Westinghouse division Westinghouse Electric Company, they still owned the trademark through a licensing subsidiary.
2. If that link is slow, also check this one.
3. Raintree residents never did like the Westinghouse idea from day one. I'm not sure what the compromise was, or if the questions they had were just not applicable to what Westinghouse was doing.
4. After the Westinghouse plan was abandoned, Blinn settled on the northwest corner of Leonard Road and North Harvey Mitchell Parkway. This was ultimately abandoned when Texas A&M announced the "RELLIS" campus and ultimately the second Blinn campus was moved there.
5. Before around 2000, the address was 7807 East Bypass.

Abandoned Baskin-Robbins Factory

I don't have a good picture for this other than this imprisoned VW Rabbit that was here for several years. (Picture by me, 12/2015)
This is another Texas Avenue entry that doesn't have a Carbon-izer.com equivalent but something I wanted to talk about for several years at this point. 1918 S. Texas Avenue started out as an ice cream plant built in 1955 per Brazos CAD and expanded in 1956 under Sanitary Dairies out of Houston. The plant made ice cream for retail sale (the "Quality Chekd" brand), but also manufactured Baskin-Robbins ice cream under license (Sanitary Dairies was the franchisee for the Texas area). In 1969, Sanitary Dairies was purchased by National Convenience Stores Inc., which would be better known for its Stop N Go chain of convenience stores. They would buy 7-Eleven out of Houston in the late 1980s, get bought by Diamond Shamrock in the 1990s, and eventually disappear in favor of Corner Store and eventually Circle K...but that all came later.

Anyway, a few years later, NCS sold their Baskin-Robbins franchise directly back to the parent company, which at the time was banana giant United Brands (which owned A&W as well at the time) and with this, became a full Baskin-Robbins facility connected to the company. (A Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop was just right down the street). Baskin-Robbins was later sold to British company J. Lyons and Company and after a few mergers was owned by Allied Domecq. Despite serving much of the entire West Coast area and being one of only two plants Baskin-Robbins actually owned, in July 2000, Baskin-Robbins announced it was closing the plant and moving production to Alta Dena Certified Dairy in California, which manufactured frozen yogurt for West Coast stores. A plant in Owensboro, Kentucky continued to operate until it was finally sold in the early 2020s.

I had been a fan of Baskin-Robbins there at Southwest Parkway and Texas, and while Blue Bell made a lot of noise about being a "local" creamery, all this time the ice cream from Baskin-Robbins was made closer to home. (I don't think Baskin-Robbins did tours, though). Anyway, the plant auctioned off its equipment in spring 2001, The plant is currently owned by "TURK-AM PHOENIX PROPERTIES INC", which just appears to be a shell company based out of a private owner out of Spring.

The Failure of the Micro District

New Republic Brewing Co.'s original location, and later Rio Brazos. (Author's picture, June 2020)

Unlike the other big roads covered on this site, North Dowling Road (or Dowling Road if modern city signs are anything to go by) doesn't have a lot going for it. The two other items on North Dowling Road worth talking about, Former Country Grocery and Wickes Lumber were both covered years ago, and despite some newer development (an RV park, a mini-storage, and a few apartment buildings), North Dowling is relatively empty.

The exception, was, of course, the Aggieland Micro District, an informal name for 11405 North Dowling Road, a collection of warehouses dating back to 1994. The oldest building there is what is now home to Go Dog Customs, but in the early 2010s (and possibly original, as it was there in the late 1990s) was Quality Enterprises. This had the address of 11378 Hickory Road, and was accessed from Hickory Road.

The 11405 North Dowling Road buildings came in-line a few years later, with Unit A and Unit B in one building. Unit B (until fairly recently) was a warehouse for Texas Trading Post, which actually hung out in the links section as part of this website for years because they linked back here (they eventually took out the link, and when I discovered that, I removed theirs). This incarnation of 11405 North Dowling Road did add a connection to North Dowling Road but still had dirt/gravel roads. By 2006, all but the two northern buildings were built, and by 2010, when New Republic Brewing Co. first moved into Unit H, the driveways were paved (with asphalt, and a few years later it became concrete).

New Republic would move to C (and its adjacent space) a few years later, and by late 2015 it had been built up to a small but thriving brewery.

While the Aggieland Micro District was only a modest success, with food trucks and a band playing at NRBC on the liveliest of days, NRBC's attempts to further coordinate with Rio Brazos and Perrine Winery would fail.

The downfall of NRBC would begin would shortly after with the departure of brewmaster and co-founder Dean Brundage leaving for a new venture. An ugly combination of events including the COVID-19 disruption, issues with the landlord, and the departure of co-founder John Januskey would force NRBC to cease production.

When I visited in June 2020 for what I had planned to be my final visit, the brewery was in poor shape. Half of the space had been sealed off (the other half included a makeshift office and lab, and storage space for empty cans and other products). The other half was cleared of tanks, boilers, and canning equipment. Even the loft, where hops and yeast were stored, was being dismantled.

NRBC built up a full outdoor area complete with a stage.
With NRBC fading out and Rio Brazos said to have shut down its taproom, the Micro District appears to be dead with no chance of revival. It's disappointing that the Micro District would only be a footnote, if that, for the history of College Station-Bryan, and return to its original form, a collection of unremarkable warehouses. I suppose it's better that it has some physical memory, as even bigger places have faded away entirely, such as East Orange, Louisiana. Even physical places, of course, hide the time when they were really something. Neither the front office at The Flats on 12 nor the closed-down Tobacco & More suggest they were anything fancy at one time.

The other "Micro District" tenants include Rio Brazos Distillery, a small whiskey/bourbon bottler (largely just one employee, located at Unit H, NRBC's old location), Perrine Winery (a few doors down, opened 2016 after being at Post Oak Village for a few years). The only other retail tenant I can think of there includes Brazos Valley Trash Valet and Recycling at J-1 (opened 2009 after that warehouse section was built). (At Unit F, a business called Absolute Wheel Technologies was operating, but it has since moved out to Highway 30).