The Sandstone Center

Initially this was out in the sticks, now it's just north of the Costco. (Ad from 1989 phone book) This site rarely covers churches, and when it happens it's usually an extenuating circumstance, like it wasn't always a church. This is one such instance. Sandstone Psychiatry (at 4201 Highway 6 South, though the ad says differently) opened in the mid-to-late 1980s with inpatient and outpatient care. It was a hospital/long-term care in some form and even featured a swimming pool. In the early 1990s, The Sandstone Center changed hands to become the Desert Hills Center (see update below), but at some point in the 1990s closed. In the late 1990s, the space in front of the former clinic was purchased by Christ United Methodist Church and a new facility was built (likely around 1999, the old address according to a 1998 phone book revealed that the church body existed but had no permanent space, listed as 4719 Shoal Creek Drive). By 2004, a second building was built as the main building while the old Sandstone building was used as auxiliary classroom space. In 2008, a third building was built between them, while integrating the parking lots better and adding another entrance off of Highway 6. The three buildings were connected with covered walkways. This would remain the configuration for the next decade. By the late 2010s, new roads were developed around the church. The main south entrance was removed for the construction of a segment of Pebble Creek Parkway, which was (presumably) to extend to the main road off of Highway 40. A few spaces in the back were removed for access to the Lakeway Drive extension. A driveway built on the north side of the property was developed as Carroll Fancher Way. Within a year of the expansion, the orphaned segment of Pebble Creek Parkway was renamed as Corporate Parkway, and Lakeway Drive's extension (including the segment of Lakeway that had opened in 2010) as Midtown Drive.

The old drive-up of Sandstone/the church following the 2020s renovation.
Around 2021-2022, the "Sandstone" building was completely renovated, removing the pool and expanding the building to integrate with the 2008 building, as well as removing the concrete beneath the concrete drive-up. All during this time, it was renamed as Christ Church (disconnect from the Methodist church over theology). The circa '99 building does not connect to the main combined building and still retains its covered walkways.

Desert Hills facility, 1995

Two buildings as of 2004.

Three buildings as of 2011.

Two buildings as of 2022.

UPDATE 01-26-2025: A bit more on Desert Hills. It was a youth facility explicitly for troubled students (not those words). According to another article, "almost all of the students have abuse and/or neglect in their histories, officials said, and their behavior problems range from at-risk delinquent youths to moderately emotionally disturbed". Desert Hills was definitely still operational in 1996 (one caption was amended to account for this) as per this newspaper ad.

A 1998 article (when it was discussed of closing in September) mentions that placement was dictated by government entities (CPS and Juvenile Services). It worked closely with CSISD though it did receive an official charter to open as its own charter school before closing permanently. All this came down to money and politics. (Still, [school] has been added here).

CUMC bought the property in front of it in 1999 and built a small church with the address of 4203, the purchase of the former Desert Hills facility was in 2000, and that's when it adopted its current address.

Connecting Point Church / Former OfficeMax

Reusing the big box.

To break out of the recent hiatus, I had to think of a splashy new idea, and not just some random photo of a small commercial building (it would have been quite easy to just post a photo of the Southwest Parkway Wendy's and call it a day). I had started writing on the Westinghouse plant/The Science Park/Providence Park but I still didn't have photos for it.

Rather, I was walking around today in the Harvey Road area, and it hit me. Why don't I make a series on Harvey Road? Not on the road itself, although I've done that in the past, but rather some of the things along it. Previous posts on Harvey Road as of this writing include Former Circuit City, Post Oak Square, and the building which is now Fuddruckers.

The first building is one at 410 Harvey Road, which opened around 1997 (possibly 1998—very difficult as I only have some construction-related documents and nothing on grand openings) as an OfficeMax superstore, with all of OfficeMax's "store-within-a-store" features at the time, like FurnitureMax (office furniture) and CopyMax (print-for-pay services). The new OfficeMax also included space for a small fast food restaurant in front of it (later developed as Fazoli's), and a new access road, a stubbed-out George Bush Drive East road that ended before crossing Wolf Pen Creek.

I never went to OfficeMax all that often, probably collectively less than a half a dozen times before it closed in early 2012 and moved to a smaller location at Central Station and later closed. Within a few years, the building began hosting Connecting Point Church, which later renovated the building (not much, really) and put up permanent signage on the building.

The church's foyer area and entrance to the coffee shop.

As the church is fairly small, there are two sub-tenants inside, both of which connect to the church foyer proper, The Brew Coffeehouse, open from 7am to midnight daily (except for Friday and Saturday, when it closes at 11), and Aggieland Pregnancy Outreach.

The back corridor with the restrooms hasn't changed much since the OfficeMax days.

Editor's Note: Next post will be a short post on Fazoli's, and about six other landmarks on Harvey Road will be covered by this series before the new Post Oak Mall post, and then I'll segue into/tease the next series, which will be the new idea for posts going forward, rather than a random grab bag of what I've collected recently. All pictures in this post were taken by the author, October 2019.

Former A&M Presbyterian Church

The road doesn't go much further than this. (Picture by author, 2014).

For many years, 301 Church Avenue was the home of a church, in this case, A&M Presbyterian Church, with the oldest reference to the address in 1959. In 1999, it was renamed Covenant Presbytarian Church following a merger with Trinity Presbyterian Church (founded in 1996 but with no permanent home) and moved out in 2000 to a new campus on Rock Prairie Road (though according to their website the first service at the new church was in April 2001, indicating that they might've also been in temporary locations in that time).

"The Tradition at Northgate" (301 Church Avenue) began construction in 2000 with the parking garage construction in 2001. It likely opened in about 2002, as that's when most of Second Street closed off and became a pedestrian promenade, the remaining part of it turning directly into the Northgate Parking Garage. Notably, there was supposed to be a retail food court at the bottom with lease space—this never opened but I do remember reading it had a dining hall just for residents but this seems to be renovated out of existence as the apartment complex became "Twelve North" sometime in the early 2020s (or very late 2010s). UPDATE 02/23/2025: Some more information. Because of its length I've gone ahead and updated and reworked the entire post, renaming it from "The Tradition at Northgate" to "Former A&M Presbyterian Church".

The Grapevine

A bit off the beaten path, but the fence wasn't here when it was a restaurant.
201 Live Oak Street was built in 1981 as the new location of The Grapevine, a restaurant that had jumped around in recent years in the area. The first incarnation of The Grapevine was a wine shop and delicatessen located at 315 Texas Avenue owned by Bill & Patsy Perry¹, a long-gone address that will soon be covered on this site. In 1976 it was moved to the Saber Inn as the restaurant lease before moving out in 1981 to a purpose-built building.²

Patsy Perry (later Zabel) operated the restaurant for another twenty years before she retired in April 2001 and closed the restaurant. She was unable to lease it as another restaurant due to its out-of-the-way location but anticipated it might end up becoming office space.

In late 2004, the dream of it becoming a new restaurant became a reality when The Grapevine reopened under new ownership and featured many of the same recipes. Unfortunately, the restaurant closed around summer 2005, this time for good.

Normally we would just put up an ad (as seen above) but today, we're presenting (and this is something I've worked out) real recipes from The Grapevine. The dressing, the potatoes, and the cheesecake have all been released on a Facebook group, and they're here now. (Yes, I got permission and yes, the link does in fact work!)

I also acquired a partial menu from late 2000 (with the last price increases in place--a typical entree held a cost of about $8.50) but I decided against putting it up except on request.

This blog reports it was "Lighthouse Christian Church" for a while after the closing of the Grapevine. The blog talked about said baked potatoes in great length, which I have reproduced here. I was going to leave a comment, but comments are closed on that post. Their loss, I suppose. I don't know how long Lighthouse was there, the blog was published in June 2007, but June 2007 happened to be when the current tenant, the Rohr Chabad Jewish Center, opened its doors for the first time.

Nearby: Fuego Tortilla Grill, La Quinta next to Denny's, and Rice Garden

<sup>1. At some point early on, Bill and Patsy divorced. Her name remained Patsy Perry in 1981 but Bill was not mentioned, by 1996 it had become Patsy Zabel.
2. Per this article</sup>

UPDATE 03-11-2025: Rewrote post with new information later learned.