Holiday Inn College Station / Four Points by Sheraton

To replace the stock picture that used to be here, here's one from 2015 taken from the Jack in the Box across the street.

The building at 1503 Texas Avenue South was originally a Holiday Inn, opened in 1973. Why Holiday Inn didn't build new on the highway, as that was their modus operandi, was because even though the bypass did exist at that point, there was nothing on there, and Texas Avenue still was where the activity was (even a decade into the "East Bypass"' existence, there were the duplexes on the frontage road in Bryan, the mall, and Plantation Oaks Apartments).

While it hosted guests for the next three decades as a Holiday Inn, the most interesting part of the story of the Holiday Inn was the restaurants. One of the things about Holiday Inn was their restaurants, good enough that it was able to function on its own as a semi-independent component and not just a liability to keep guests in the hotel. The link to Pleasant Family Shopping above talks about this in great detail, and given that the Holiday Inn restaurants (among others) attracted guests even in cities with more dining choices, I'm guessing that the idea of advertising a hotel restaurant as an independent restaurant has largely gone out of style, though the restaurants with Holiday Inn seemed unique enough into the 1990s to stand alone.

From what I could tell, the first restaurant (at least as of 1980) was the Brazos Room Restaurant & Lounge. It wasn't especially well-publicized, but the newspaper did still have advertisements of what they'd be serving that day (1983 papers seemed to mention only what they'd be serving, Mexican, etc.) That all changed in 1984, when the restaurant became Mongolian House, a Chinese buffet and Mongolian grill.

"American menu also available"

Garfield's was a higher class establishment than the more family-oriented Mongolian House. Open 6 am to 11 pm, Garfield's marketed toward more than the hotel crowd, and offered a menu that included prime rib, steaks, seafood, burgers, and sandwiches, as well as "54 beers of the world", which was rather good considering that craft beer was not the market it was today, and between Garfield's and Mongolian House, there was "Daddy O's" according to a city directory, and by the mid-1990s it was "Bronco's - The Texas Café", and in 2001, Beckendorf's. Naturally, there are going to be some I missed.

Holiday Inn's got your goat...and your fajitas, too!

A new Holiday Inn opened off the freeway around late 2005/early 2006 (which we have profiled here) and while that was in the works according to a 2005 directory...

Seems like a simple case of moving... ...the actual deal looks like the original hotel dissolved its franchise agreement before the new Holiday Inn was built. The same owners since 1994 (phone book advertising also indicate that they owned the Ramada Inn practically across the street during this time) renamed the hotel to Clarion Hotel by September 2005 (restaurant report cards from The Eagle) but by October 2005 the new Holiday Inn was still under construction (Google Earth imagery).

From a source that I forgot when I originally posted it, here's what the Four Points/Holiday Inn looked like as a Clarion .


By February 2009, Clarion had been converted to "College Station Inn" (which changed the Clarion sign at the top of the hotel), and sometime in late 2010 the hotel closed. After a major renovation inside and out that took place in 2011, Four Seasons by Sheraton opened, a mid-range brand owned by Starwood Hotels & Resorts, in April 2012. Four Points had a small in-house eatery, the Century Café, which was one of the first clients of New Republic Brewing Company, even before they started making cans.

In September 2020 the hotel closed during a downturn in the restaurant and hospitality industry (do I even need to explain it?) and was removed from Marriott's website (Marriott had bought Starwood during this time).

This time, there was no second chance at the hotel. After over two years of abandonment, it was announced that it was to be Melrose College Station (not to be confused with the clothing store in the mall), an assisted living facility, which opened late 2023. I'll leave you with one last look at the hotel as a Holiday Inn when it was still doing well, advertising in a local tourist guide.

Notice the text below the sign has been added in after the photo was taken. UPDATE 10-01-2020: The hotel closed around September 2020 permanently for unclear reasons, and has been removed from Marriott's website. The rest of the article is unchanged, however, and will probably update again when it inevitably reopens under a new name...or gets demolished.

UPDATE 10-12-2020: A recently uncovered picture to be used in a future version of the article shows that the "square" was on the top level was never there as a Holiday Inn, only getting branded with Clarion after the hotel swapped names. That line has been removed from the article. A full rewrite of this article will arrive when the property changes hands again.

UPDATE 10-15-2020: Clarion picture restored as part of "featured post" upgrades.

UPDATE 04-01-2023: Full rewrite done following announcement of the hotel becoming Melrose with a new picture, new mention of the Brazos Room, and a new picture.

UPDATE 12-19-2023: A few minor touch-ups including mentioning opening.

UPDATE 06-17-2024: It should be noted that the restaurants post-1991 (specifically Bronco's) were leased operations and not run by Holiday Inn. A tax entry for "Fulin Restaurant" exists for the Clarion days but otherwise information remains sparse.
UPDATE 01-25-2025: Minor updates, removed [defunct].

Blackwater Draw Brewing Company, College Station

I liked Blackwater Draw's food, despite its shortcomings.

Back in the days prior to the 1950s, professors lived in houses on campus, from the place of the modern-day Memorial Student Center and parts south. Most of these buildings were not demolished, however--they were literally partially disassembled and placed in other parts of town. The house on 303 Boyett at Church Avenue is one of them. Of course, a lot of them still have been demolished, but the one at Church and Boyett hasn't. I'm not sure of the house's history since being moved off-campus, but it has served as restaurants in recent years.

By the early 2000s, it was "Satchel's BBQ & Steaks". According to Restaurant Row, it was "a casual family style restaurant with a rustic ambiance, a fireplace, cozy booths and knickknacks placed throughout. The cuisine is traditional American fare with beef, turkey, pork, chicken, steaks, and seafood entrées. The bar serves domestic and imported beers, wines and mixed drinks. They offer a kid's menu, take out and catering."


From LoopNet, back when it was Fredriko's
By 2005, Fredriko's moved here from the old Fajita Rita's (I ate there once—it was forgettable). It closed in 2009. By 2011 (roughly) the building was "DC, Inc.": the headquarters for Dixie Chicken and other related restaurants (Dry Bean Saloon, Dudd's, Chicken Oil Co.), but by 2013 it moved again (former location of Alfred T. Hornback's) and started to renovate as restaurant space again: the Blackwater Draw Brewing Company, a brewpub owned by the same owners as O'Bannon's. Given the generally positive response to brewpubs I visited in Michigan, I had high hopes but was tempered by the lousy reputation of Northgate (Chimy's, I remember, was a huge disappointment). Reviews looked great though, and upon trying it (in November 2013, if I recall) I found the food to be very good, a decent value (more expensive than a typical campus lunch option) with good beer. One downside was limited burger toppings without an extra charge (even things like tomato). The menu was a bit limited as was the seating. I always wished that they expand and open a larger location, taking the example of The Chimes in Baton Rouge, a popular bar/restaurant near campus, which ended up opening a larger, two-story location called The Chimes East away from campus with a ton of parking (for a restaurant, that is).

In December 2015, they did open a second location in downtown Bryan, but it was only to focus on beer production, and did not serve food. The Northgate location ended up closing in May 2018 due to rising rents in the Northgate area, replaced with another restaurant by fall, "The Spot on Northgate" which was more of the same in terms of Northgate food variety (burgers, beer).

During the Dixie Chicken Inc. days, a banner outside said "Come And Drink It" in the form of "Come And Take It" of Texas Revolution lore.

UPDATE 03-26-2022: Following the last update in 2019, it appears that Satchel's operated from 1998 to 2004 and may have been officially recorded in tax documents as "Savannahs", and also the first restaurant in the spot. Fredriko's was here from 2005 to 2009.
UPDATE 05-10-2024: Updated with new information including Fredriko's moving from Texas Avenue.
UPDATE 08-17-2024: It appears Satchel's changed its name to Savannah's Catering in mid-2004, which was clearly short-lived. It at least accounts for that discrepancy.

Northpoint Crossing

One of the coveted corners of this building is taken by a small convenience store, and not even a big name. (Picture by author, 1/20)

This post was originally written as "Other Buildings Demolished for Northpoint Crossing", as I intended to write a full article for the new development, and some of this content originally been part of the Plaza Hotel article a long time ago. Later I did make a Northpoint Crossing article, but at that point it was little more than a picture, as burnout had settled in.

Today, the Northpoint Crossing complex is composed of six large apartment buildings, some of which have retail space. The retail space never really took off, with notable exceptions. World of Beer (opened September 2015) sits on the corner of Texas and University in the 425 Northpoint Crossing building. Minuti Coffee opened at 424 Northpoint Crossing, the next building down, around the same time. The first tenant was actually a location of Toastie's Sub Shops out of Austin opening in spring 2015 but closing a year later (coincidentally, around the same time an Austin location was locked out for lack of lease payment, and by January 2017, the Toastie's chain, was, well, toast. In June 2018 it became Smallcakes Cupcakery & Creamery. Elsewhere in the 424 building but at Northpoint Lane and a road what we can only assume is also "Northpoint Crossing" a Gateway Newstands convenience store opened.

The Clubhouse is for residents only, standard for student apartment complexes. (Picture by author, 1/20)

What about the places before Northpoint Crossing? That's what you came for.

This represents the area circa 2011. Ignore the building marked as "2", it was covered in the main Ramada Inn article.
1. This was originally a Gulf station, opening too long after the Ramada, with a garage. It was kept relatively updated, with the only known change being turned into a Chevron in the late 1980s, which gave it a re-do on the trim from red-orange tiles to the early 1990s-era Chevron blue-and-gray. This was, of course, due to Gulf Oil being bought by Standard Oil of California in 1985. Standard Oil of California changed its name later that year to reflect its flagship brand, Chevron.

This particular Chevron gas station was finally shut down in the mid-2000s and torn down circa 2007. I don't remember the garage specifically, however--it's possible that it was converted into a convenience store in the 1990s (but I have no proof of that). Some older phone books refer to this as "Piper's Gulf (later "Chevron", of course) Service Center". The address of this was 420 Texas Avenue. A decent enough picture of the gas station (Chevron) can be seen at the main Ramada Inn article.



3. This was was built as a UtoteM convenience store, once extremely common across town and the state. It became a Circle K in 1984 with the buy-out of the chain (and was already closed by 1989 following Circle K's massive retraction). Later on by 2007, it became "Ink Dreams", and a few years later, "Oasis Pipes & Tobacco". The address was 1405 University Drive. I don't have the full history of the building, however. In July 2013, I discovered in 1995, it was listed as "Sterling Automotive". Since the lot of the former UtoteM is pretty small, it's likely that this was either just a showroom or the old parking lot behind it (as seen) was used for Sterling, and not for University Tower. Oasis moved to Eastgate after it was evicted. There's a back portion of this, I don't know if the buildings were physically connected or if it was just an additional office space area off of Meadowlands.

4. 1403 University Drive held a Kettle restaurant, dating back to at least 1980. Distinctive because the yellow and black P A N C A K E S sign, it closed sometime in the 1990s (it was open at least into 1998, so that's the date I'm going to go with). While the Kettle signage disappeared several years before its demise, the PANCAKES sign (not unlike the Waffle House logo, which it's often confused with) was very distinctive. Kettle sold the property in 2004 to Leonard Ross (Rossco), which like other properties he owned just deteriorated until it was sold to the Northpoint Crossing developers in 2011.

Regarding these two I have two Google Maps Street View photos, one from 2011 and one from 2007 (it shouldn't be too hard to tell which one is which). It also clearly shows the P A N C A K E S sign, so if you have any doubt that it was a Waffle House, you can dispel them, because we never had one and from the likes of it won't be getting one anytime soon (let's be realistic here).

6. These were some apartment buildings colloquially known as the Meadowland Apartments,
Originally part of another development called North Park (and the building out of the rest of Meadowland Road), the Meadowland Apartments (6) were (likely) built in the 1980s and were owned by the same owners of University Tower at one time. I'm guessing these were closed in 2005-2006, but I don't know for sure. I believed them to be located at 701 University, but later evidence suggested that they had individual addresses per building, which I haven't found yet. Remarkably, a few still stand: I guess that Northpoint Crossing never managed to get all of them. At least one of them was demolished for the "Home2 Suites by Hilton" hotel. The two today are fourplexes with 1402 Northpoint Lane and 1404 Northpoint Lane, but these have been changed. They weren't originally 1402-1404 Meadowland.

5. This was the only remaining house left on the block, 125 Meadowland. This was taken out for the redevelopment. It looks like it had a second structure behind it: possibly additional bedrooms. I had some friends who lived in Eastgate around the time I originally wrote this post, wherein at least two lived in the main house, and at least one lived in a shack behind it. I'm not sure if that was even allowed via ordinances.



7. This was a 1960s-era building has seen a few things come and go. The address was 100 Texas Avenue South.

The mid-mod building started out as the Dutch Kettle Snack Bar (*not* related to the Kettle restaurant on University) there at Hensel and Texas, and probably one of the first (if not the first) 24 hour eateries in College Station. Alas, while other 24 hours eateries benefitted from the Plaza implosion such as Fuego and Denny's, this did not, as had been closed for years (even as the donut shop, which was decidedly NOT 24 hours). In the late 1970s, it became Schlotzsky's (one of the first franchised locations), though a 1976 article suggests that a short-lived location at 808 East Villa Maria Road may have been the first), and remained as such for years, even into the 1990s). By 1980, this store and a Culpepper Plaza store was in place (unknown address for Culpepper Plaza). By the late 1990s up to the mid-2000s, it was "Snowflake Donuts", which closed without much notice well prior to the demolition of the area (presumably after Schlotzsky's moved closer to Northgate . This was, as John Ellisor has mentioned, a chain, and even today, a a sibling store is off of Gulf Freeway in Houston. The Houston location was heavily modified at some point in the past while the College Station one was virtually untouched...but the Houston one still stands with its dual chimneys. Later on, this became the leasing office for Northpoint Crossing where it continued to use the address.


Not mine, originally from a Brazos County history book


Street View of the restaurant shortly before demolition

Updated January 2020 to include actual Northpoint Crossing information along with some other stuff

University Apartments and Century Square

Trendy mixed-use right in the heart of the city! (Picture by author, 2/20)

This post was originally written as "University Apartments", which focused on the group of university-owned apartments that were largely torn down around 2014 for what we now know as Century Square. Initially, I had no interest in covering Century Square as I had updated the post to my standards at the time to wrap up the site (it's why there's an eight month gap between the last 2014 post and the first 2015 post). As a result, this covers the predecessor of Century Square, the University Apartments, first, and we'll progress to the present day and the current occupier of the site.

During my time at A&M, I was thankful that I had enough sense to photograph many buildings on their way out in terms of demolition or extensive renovation. I didn't get enough pictures of the old Scoates Hall, and no inside shots of Dulie Bell, but did get pictures of The Commons, Zachry Engineering Center, Read Building, G. Rollie White, and of course, these.

When making this post originally (or at least doing a significant update), I had done research at Cushing Memorial Library, which refers to Battalion articles that aren't available to be linked. Some of the links that were available, dating from the mid-2000s have been removed from the Battalion's webpage (with no Archive.org to rescue them, I didn't have enough sense back then to archive my links).

Originally rows and rows of two-level Army-style barracks filling up the diagonal-row roads in the early 1950s, with two complexes, College View and Southside, a federal grant in 1957 (to the tune of 2.5 million dollars, which would be about 20 million today) allowed more to be built.

From what I could tell, the original College View Apartments were Army-style barracks filling up the diagonal-row roads east of Northgate built in the early 1950s (at the same time Southside was built, which appeared to have been at the northeast corner of Wellborn and modern-day George Bush Drive, more on that another day).

In 1960, the Hensel Apartments (later Hensel Terrace Apartments) were built, and originally not air-conditioned (until likely the 1970s). The new College View Apartments, built in 1969, were built facing FM 60 and according to The Battalion were "cool, comfortable, and complete", being climate controlled at 70 degrees.

Interestingly, despite the new College View apartments replacing the old College View buildings on a 1:1 basis, only about 7 buildings were built. Nearly 30 others were torn down (a few lasting into the early 1980s, a footnote at a document called "Brazos Valley Chronology" at Project HOLD, mentions the last of these were removed in 1982) without replacement, and until the Century Square development, those spaces remained vacant, possibly due to lack of funding. The back 13 were redeveloped into Avenue A Apartments on a 1:1 replacement, but it was still a lot of vacant space. The 1970s also saw the construction of College Avenue Apartments, which were directly across College Avenue from University Square Shopping Center.

As time went on, the Married Student Housing became known as the "University Apartments", as it started to become known for international students as well. The maintenance of the apartments declined and the roads started to deteriorate, but there wasn't any major trouble. Piecemeal improvements were made to the complex, including the addition of the Becky Gates Children's Center, a 1997 addition on Hensel that would have childcare for students married with children. Later on a community center and playground were built as well. However, it was an incident in 2004 that did change the University Apartments forever.

One day in July 2004, residents complained about a smell of natural gas in the Hensel Terrace Apartments. The maintenance worker responded but decided to not repair the leak until the next week (in fact, they told residents to close their windows, thus making the smell inside worse). Saquib Ejaz, a resident of those apartments, lived with his wife and daughter at Hensel Apartments. His parents were visiting from Bangladesh. While his parents, wife (who was pregnant with another child), and daughter were home, the gas somehow ignited and fire consumed the apartment's interior, severely burning all four. His wife and father survived, but his daughter and mother did not. Other apartments were damaged, as well, however; the structure itself survived.

Lawsuits were filed, and by 2005, a number of new improvements were announced, including new stoves, new detectors, and much better maintenance. This still wasn't "enough" maintenance, as the apartment complex was still falling apart, with the College Avenue Apartments on Ball Street having unleveled floors.

However, by fall 2006, a plan was approved to add the Gardens at University, which, instead of building it on vacant land, would replace the existing apartments. When I first wrote this article in 2012, the College Avenue Apartments had been demolished in 2011 (without replacement), and two-thirds of the Hensel Terrace Apartments (including the rebuilt apartments where Ejaz's apartment was) had been torn down for the Gardens. Nothing else had been altered since then.

In early 2013 "Campus Pointe", a long-planned redevelopment of the area, was trotted out again and approved. This would essentially lease the university's land to a private developer, becoming one of the few shopping malls built on property leased from a university (Stanford Shopping Center is another example).

College View Apartments, Hensel Terrace Apartments, and Avenue A Apartments were marked for destruction--all residents had to move out. There were even stories of the mattresses being moved out first, so many had to make do with sleeping on the floor, and a new field designated for playing cricket (popular as most of the residents came from overseas) had to be closed. Despite (presumably) assistance, the apartments all near campus had much higher rent, and both Northgate and Southgate had undergone some degree of gentrification.

While The Gardens, the daycare, and the maintenance building were not affected and still stand, the demolition for redevelopment seemed to take a long time, for months, the abandoned apartments (speckled with graffiti) stood, then for many more months with just vacant land. Sometime during all of this, Campus Pointe was renamed to Century Square.

A friend and I took these in May 2013, soon before eviction in summer 2013 (the picture at the title is also from that):

Nobody's home.

Avenue A Apartments, which has eight units per building, four of which are seen here.

There is so much open space here, great for large group games or tossing a Frisbee around. Too bad this will go away...

College View Apartments. These face University Drive.

Hensel Terrace Apartments. Most of these are already gone, including the unit that exploded in 2004. It's worth noting that the building wasn't actually destroyed. The apartments have concrete foundations and despite being old and run-down, are better built then similar apartment complexes of the same era.

The Gardens at University Apartments. These will stick around.

Interesting vents on the University Apartments Maintenance Building.
For the next few years, the entire area was gated off as new construction began to take over, opening as Century Square.

The center would open in phases, with many of the restaurants coming in-line by fall 2017 (the hotels opened sooner). I haven't actually been to most of what Century Square has to offer...the parking is a major issue, in an effort to be more like Houston high-end development, the developers instituted paid parking everywhere except the garage (which also once had a strict time limit for staying).

The "mall space" is composed of a bunch of buildings floating in parking lots. As the way I'm going to explain it is going to be confusing, I recommend you look at the PDF directory to understand the layout. It's an archived version, and will go increasingly out of date as time goes on, but the link should stay up.

1025 University Drive - Located at the corner of the development, closest to the College Drive/University intersection, this building has, from left to right, Red's Ice House (opened February 2025), Orangetheory Fitness, Sharetea, and Piada Italian Street Food. All of these opened around 2017 except for Red's, which replaced Mo's Irish Pub (May 2018 to June 2024). I ate at Mo's Irish Pub not too long after it opened, it was an airy, modern space with cute waitresses, but average food with only a few token "Irish" dishes. Two vacancies are Merge Boutique and Clean Juice (given the last update, they closed between 2024 and 2025).

1099 University Drive - This is almost the same building as 1025 University Drive except there's a covered open-air walkway between them. This building has three tenants, Velvet Taco (opened September 2021 and the former home to Runway Seven, a women's clothing store, which closed sometime in 2019 after about two years...it looks like the other stores have since closed as well), Tiff's Treats, and Cava (opened 2023 to replace the original 2017 Zoë's Kitchen, which was phased out as a chain).

1133 University Drive - One of the new "Phase II" buildings from around 2024 has, from left to right, Original ChopShop (opened January 2025), Wells Fargo (moved from down the street), a full Sephora boutique (opened December 2024), a vacancy, and a space soon to be home of Dimassi's Mediterranean Buffet out of Houston.

1177 University Drive - This is the other new 2024 building, it features Houston TX Hot Chicken and CoCo Shrimp with two empty spaces between them. CoCo Shrimp opened in November 2024. I believe Houston TX Hot Chicken opened afterward.

1027 and 1037 University Drive - Directly behind the 1025/1099 building is 1027 and 1037, a two-story building that wraps around the parking garage. This is where Star Cinema Grill is, located on the second level with the 1037 address. The 1027 addresses face University Drive while 1037 faces Century Court. Working from the farthest corner on the map, there's TruFusion (boutique fitness club but not yet open as of this writing), Grass Stains (a specialty boutique with its only location here; the original location in Graham, Texas has since closed), College Station's own Lululemon (with its pricey, brand-name yoga pants), Harvest Coffee (opened 2018 after its original 2014 Downtown Bryan location), a vacancy (it was second local location of I Heart Mac and Cheese, opened September 2020 but closed in early 2022), and finally, Brazos Running Company, opened around 2023 and moved from Central Station. Beyond that is other vacant spaces.

166 Century Court - Directly east of the preceding building, 166 Century Court is a multi-story office building ("Century Square Two") with six retail tenants currently on the ground floor. Luchesse Bootmaker (opened early 2021), a vacancy (temporarily home to "selfie museum" Instaland BCS and soon to be RenewYou), King Ranch Saddle Shop (opened late 2020), Apricot Lane (opened early 2022), Onward Reserve (opened November 2019), Kendra Scott (opened early 2022), and Hemline, a women's clothing boutique out of New Orleans.

144 Century Court - To the east of the preceding building. Hopdoddy Burger Bar, Hey Sugar, and Ring Guards by Montelongo's, are all located here. Ring Guards opened to replace Sabi Boutique. Sabi Boutique had maintained at storefront at The Lofts at Wolf Pen Creek for years (even when they couldn't hold onto any other retailers) and opened a new location at Century Square in April 2019. However, within a few months of opening at Century Square they opened a University Drive East location a few months later. By May 2020 Sabi had decided to close the Century Square location. The other two places, Hopdoddy and Hey Sugar I've never bought anything from, and I have some less-than-flattering impressions that I could tell you about, but it would be bad form to disparage open businesses.

143 Century Court - The "mirror" of the preceding building to the east, on the other side of The Green (an open space for outdoor events and al fresco dining) has three more tenant spaces: Blaze Pizza, Lick Honest Ice Creams (opened in October 2022 to replace Sub Zero Nitrogen Ice Cream, which closed in or around February 2020), and Sweet Paris Crêperie & Café. I've never been to Sweet Paris but I do know of it since it had replaced the Rice Village location of Texadelphia (a fact mentioned in our Texadelphia post).

175 Century Square Drive - The only retail tenant below the Century Square One office building is Galleria Spa Salon, formerly Galleria Day Spa (for years it used to be at the corner of Cavitt Drive and Villa Maria Drive, until it moved to Rock Prairie, which is still there). The office tenants include Breakaway Ministries, UBS Financial Services, and BRW Architects (among others).

Going counterclockwise around toward the back are two boutique hotels, "The George" (with "1791 Whiskey Bar" inside), which opened August 2017, and Cavalry Court, which opened November 2016 (one of the first tenants) with its "The Canteen" restaurant. Despite being a four-star hotel with off-season prices being around $120 a night (as of 2021), all the rooms open to the outside.

Directly behind The Green was Poppy (named after the late Bush 41's nickname). Sometime right around very early 2020 before you-know-what happened, Poppy closed for an upscale Mexican concept, opening in May 2022 as Juanita's Tex Mex Cantina (it was delayed, but it happened). West of Juanita's is Porters Dining + Butcher, a high-end (well, at least for College Station) steakhouse.

170 Century Square Drive - Finally, to the east of the complex is 100 Park, an apartment building that fits into the whole modern "mixed-use" concept, though not oriented toward students. At the bottom of this apartments include Pokéworks (opened January 2020) and MESS Waffles, which opened October 2018. This used to be known as Wafology, which was mentioned at the 711 University Drive article. There's also (opened 2024) an Amazon Pickup & Returns Store.

1289 University Drive - The first tenant to come...and go...Neighbors Emergency Center opened in October 2016 but closed around August 2016. This opened in October 2016 as Neighbors Emergency Center, a private 24-hour care emergency clinic that was the first open tenant in the Century Square development. However, it closed within about 10 months. In November 2018, CapRock Urgent Care opened in its place, and in spring 2021, became Integrity Urgent Care as CapRock sold off most of its facilities.

Of course, Century Square didn't take up all of the old University Apartments facilities. In August 2024, PopStroke (a miniature golf/sports bar concept owned by Tiger Woods) opened at 255 Ball Street on the site of the Ball Street Apartments (but not using up all the space) and in summer 2025, "Varcity", a retirement community was announced, which would take up all the old space leftover from demolition.



UPDATE 01-04-2021: After adding Century Square in the fourth edit version to this page in February 2020, the fifth edit to this page includes some tenant changes and other minor fixes.
UPDATE 07-10-2021: Minor updates, but the only thing of note was Integrity Urgent Care (CapRock sold).
UPDATE 12-13-2021: Added Velvet Taco and minor update regarding Poppy, as well as UBS.
UPDATE 04-23-2024: 2024 update for all stores and services at Century Square. Every paragraph was gone through and retouched. Cava, Apricot Lane, Brazos Running Company, Juanita's, and more were all added.
UPDATE 08-17-2024: Mo's Irish Pub closed in June 2024. In August 2024, PopStroke (a miniature golf/sports bar concept owned by Tiger Woods) opened at 255 Ball Street on the site of the Ball Street Apartments (but not using up all the space).
UPDATE 02-16-2025: Red's Ice House opened (well, it opens 2/17) to replace Mo's.
UPDATE 06-12-2025: 2025 update for all stores and services at Century Square. Every paragraph was gone through and retouched with two all-new buildings. [cinema] and [mini-golf], two all-new tags, have been added.
UPDATE 02-06-2026: The vacant Clean Juice has been replaced by 4 Brother NY Bagels. Merge Boutique's space is currently occupied by the leasing office for The Penny, the new apartment building going up at 415 College Main. Also, Trufusion still doesn't appear to be open yet and Lululemon moved next to Coco Shrimp. Dimassi's opened in 2025.

The Lost Buildings of Luther Street and Wellborn Road

At one time, the block where Berkeley House is featured a fine dining establishment in a converted house (from Center Magazine)

This is one of the posts I've had for years on the blog and despite tons of rewrites still may come off as disjointed, and needs a bit of a proper introduction.

Today, the entire block features a large apartment building, Berkeley House (opened fall 2018), a student-oriented complex. It is impossible to take a good photo of it, as it comes up to the street, and I can't take a photo from the other side, as Wellborn has a curb next to it. As a result, Google Street View will have to suffice, though it is currently not updated yet, only showing the old thrift store that was there.

When I was a kid growing up in the mid-1990s, this corner featured a small convenience store that sold Chinese food, perhaps some of the first (Americanized) Chinese food I've ever had (that or Confucius Chinese Cuisine). Later on it became a thrift store but my father had an old 1940s map of the campus and surrounding area that listed the building as "Hrdlicka Café". What was this café, and how did it become a thrift store?

Over the years, through research and other help, these answers and more were revealed.

In 1919, a house at what would be 801 Wellborn Road was built by Ed Hrdlicka ("1" on the map below). Eventually, the house passed on to Ed's daughter Marilyn, and her husband Jack Fugate. In the late 1970s, the house was converted into a restaurant—Fish Richards Half-Century House. Fish Richard's menu featured seafood, lamb, and prime rib along with a selection of wines.

Apparently the reason that Fish Richard's closed was due to a divorce by the couple that owned it (some ads in the final days of Fish Richard's discussed a new future location), but the building burned to the ground in 1988, and the 801 Wellborn address went unused for years, until the construction of Berkeley House.

#2 on the map was 803 Wellborn, and wrecked sometime in the late 1990s, likely around the time of the demise of Piknik Pantry (below). This was the home of Fugate's printing press and laundromat businesses and later home to Fish Richards Bakery, the bakery operation of Fish Richard's, which sold a variety of baked goods all day, every day (except Sunday afternoons). I read somewhere (but lost the source) that this was the original supplier for Subway when it came into town in the early 1980s. Ad can be found here.

#3 on the map was 805 Wellborn. This was the likely site of the eponymous Hrdlicka Café from 1920 to the mid-1940s, a student beer joint, dancing hall, and storefront grocery store. "Uncle Ed" leased the store shortly before his death in the early 1950s and by 1957 it was operated by Ed Krolczyk, who tried to make barbecue from "any kind of meat" and claimed to make a great barbecued raccoon.

By the 1960s it was replaced with a convenience store, the Piknik Pantry with Amoco gas (certainly by 1972), though 1980 phone book says "811 Old College Road", indicating not only a rename later (likely holding over from the days when Wellborn and Old College were one and the same, as Wellborn did not extend to Villa Maria but instead curved to Old College) but a renumbering (or just an error). Piknik Pantry & Chinese Food (it sold Chinese food later, and research even shows that an old Chinese restaurant at 3030 E. 29th, Sing Lee, had the same owner) mets its demise in the late 1990s and was quickly replaced with 2nd Chance Resale Shop, operated by Twin City Mission. Based on Chamber of Commerce newspaper clippings, this probably first opened in late 1997 with Piknik Pantry meeting its demise shortly prior. Sometime in the mid-2010s (2016 I believe) it moved to a new location and in 2017, it was torn down for Berkeley House. According to a comment I received in 2015, it featured an all-you-can-eat buffet on Sundays (back in the '80s) for just four or five dollars. The same comment references the gas pumps as well.

There were two more businesses in that block that I haven't labeled.

At 809 Old College (location unknown) there was Astraptes, an "adult disco" nightclub. There's rumors on forums (where it was misspelled as "Astropates", among others) that this was the closest thing to a gay bar College Station had, and according to Houston LGBT History (link sort-of NSFW), it was, mentioning after closure it reopened in 1983 (if briefly--and it's the only Google result that spells the name correctly).

This one is from the 1980 phone book published by GTE.
There was a fifth business, the Peanut Gallery, at 813 Old College, and that seems to be based on what was there on aerials, that it was the metal building directly next to Piknik Pantry. By the 21st century this was just storage for the resale shop. Today, of course, everything described in this post is long-gone. The thrift store and everything around was leveled in 2017 for the aforementioned Berkeley House apartments. Officially it uses 805 Wellborn but some references use 801 Wellborn, site of the Hrdlicka/Fugate homestead.

UPDATE 03-11-2025: The last big update was done in August 2019 with a new name to the post in April 2020. Later [Death by Fire] was added. However, new research has shown that Fish Richard's closed in January 1986 before burning in 1988. [1910s] and [demolished] have been added.

Ramada Inn / University Tower / Plaza Hotel

University Tower, taken from a car parked catty-corner at what was Diamond Shamrock (Project HOLD)

May 24, 2012, 6:40 AM:
There probably hadn't been that many people on the Polo Fields since the last Bonfire burned, and the busiest intersection in the city, University Drive and Texas Avenue, was closed down. The occasion? The Plaza Hotel at 410 Texas Avenue South was coming down. It was rare to see an implosion in College Station (two years later Kyle Field was imploded, but a large-scale structure implosion hadn't been seen before in College Station, or since).

Thousands showed up to the implosion, crowding the streets, making it there quite early (or in some cases, extremely late). It was a diverse crowd: students that stayed for the summer, families, the old and the young alike. After a ten minute delay, 6:40 AM was the moment the quarter-ton of dynamite in the upper levels detonated and the building crumbled to the ground, with one of the four people imploding it. The mayors of College Station and Bryan, TAMU chancellor John Sharp (can't resist a chance at publicity), and a fourth man, Joe Ferreri. When the building cracked apart, with the elevator shaft separating from the building in the process, people cheered, a massive dust cloud blew toward Bryan, and every car alarm in the public viewing area went off.

It was Joe Ferreri that built the hotel and the tower in the first place. The story goes that Joe Ferreri was a successful restaurateur in town, and Texas A&M president James Earl Rudder himself (long before getting a tower, a high school, a dormitory, and a freeway named after him, but after becoming a World War II hero) approached him with a business proposal.

Rudder explained that he was having trouble recruiting faculty to A&M because professors’ wives thought the town was boring. The solution, Rudder proposed, was a hotel across from campus with an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a banquet hall and a faculty club.

Ferreri wasn't so sure. But the former Navy soldier said he knew he couldn’t say no.

"When a general says, 'Do this or this,' you say, 'Yes, sir,'" Ferreri said.

At the time, College Station had no shopping centers of any type, there was nothing on Texas Avenue past what is now George Bush Drive, some scattered subdivisions east of Texas Avenue, and scattered subdivisions out to what is now Holleman, but that was it. Bryan was somewhat larger but it was comparatively farther away from campus.

I can't nail down an exact opening for the Ramada Inn, but from what I can tell it was 1964 (Brazos CAD still had the page up under the 2011 section).

Imagine seeing this beautiful sight traveling down Texas 6! Doesn't it look nice on a postcard?

At the corner of FM 60 and State Highway 6, College Station's first chain motel (maybe?), Ramada Inn, opened, complete with a tall, lit "Uncle Ben", Ramada's mascot. It delivered on all of Mr. Rudder's wishes, and within a decade new hotels and businesses were opening up and down Texas Avenue.

In the early 1960s (1960-1964, I was unable to nail down an exact date), when the Ramada Inn opened, it was the fanciest thing in town. Replacing eight homes that sat on the property, and outstripping the MSC in class and elegance, the Ramada had both motel-oriented rooms and hotel oriented rooms. It was also the only place to drink in town due to dry laws. Like many fancy hotels, during the 1970s, it held a few small retail tenants besides the restaurant, a travel agency and a hair salon (The Hair of Affairs).

Beefeaters: The restaurant in Ramada in the mid-1970s. What exactly is "heavy beef"?
There was another building that was on the premises that was not demolished when the hotel was built, and to this day is still somewhat of a mystery. You can see a picture here, just on the other side of the UtoteM store. Previously, I had written this was a location of a store called "100,000 Auto Parts" which had the same address of Ramada Inn (410 Texas Avenue, which it had up to its demise) but it turned out it was 410 North Texas Avenue in Bryan, so I don't know. I don't ever remember this being occupied in the 21st century. Brazos CAD says it was built in 1949, under "Units on Univ Dr".

Previously, I had written this was a location of a store called "100,000 Auto Parts" which had the same address of Ramada Inn (410 Texas Avenue, which it had up to its demise) but it turned out it was 410 North Texas Avenue in Bryan, so I don't know. I don't ever remember this being occupied in the 21st century.

When the Ramada was getting consistently full on a nightly basis, it had to expand, so parking was placed behind Meadowland (replacing more homes, of course) and a 17 floor tower was built in 1980-1982 (Brazos CAD says it was built in 1984). The construction involved demolishing the east end of the hotel and enclosing the swimming pool under a huge glass skylight. The top four floors were sold out as loft-style housing to wealthy Aggie alumni, all of which got rich off of the oil boom.

By the time it opened, oil prices were bottoming out, with a recession hitting Houston and College Station, with many restaurants outright closing. Jobs were lost. Banks closed. Real estate plummeted. In 1987, Ferreri declared bankruptcy and lost the hotel. I can't find exactly what happened in the process, but it looks like Ramada Inn either closed it or sold it, but the Ramada name ended up going to an existing hotel further south on Texas Avenue and in fall 1989, the building was reopened as a combination hotel and upscale student dormitory. Gone was the Ramada Inn name, as the company was now in a smaller building further down on Texas Avenue. Rather than Joe Ferreri, control went to California-based financier Leonard M. Ross, who renamed the building. UNIVERSITY TOWER shown from red neon to afar, but it soon fell into disrepair, partially because the hotel part disappeared more and more each year until finally becoming student dorms entirely in early 1994. Meanwhile Ferreri ended up going back to restaurants and opened an Italian restaurant in the former Ira's in the Kmart parking lot.

What was once advertising as an upscale hotel in 1990 (see page 4), the horror stories of students living in the tower are talked about to this day throughout message boards and real life. Tales of no hot water or broken down elevators live on and you'll be hard pressed to find someone who lived in and enjoyed the Tower after maybe the first or second year it opened.

At some point, the dorms were converted back into traditional hotel rooms, Ross eventually converted more of the dorms back into regular rooms (with a gala in the top level suite, Buzz Aldrin as the guest of honor) and renamed the hotel as the Plaza Hotel & Suites (this happened around 2004), which replaced the University Tower brandings with a large "P", but it just looked cheap and ugly. All during this time, Ross simultaneously hawked the site to the city in their quest for a convention center site while letting the hotel go to waste (it's worth noting, for instance, that Ross also owned the fourplexes at Meadowland, which were nasty enough to have the hotel at 104 Texas Avenue seal off its back entrance.

In 2007 (about three years after the Plaza name took over), a kid drowned in the swimming pool. In 2008, the kitchen scored a 47 on health reports due to no hot water, which almost never happens (in the University Tower days, it offered a cafeteria, which I bet was nothing worth talking about). After continued problems (and terrible, terrible hotel reviews) the hotel shut down for good in 2010 and sat abandoned for over a year.

It started to get reports of vandals and trespassers, and eventually the windows on the top level suite were knocked out and had to be patched with plywood. In in late 2011 the hotel was sold off as the holdings of Ross went bankrupt. I don't know if he's sold off his $165 million mansion in Beverly Hills yet, but there you go.

In January, the building was planned to be renovated once more as student housing, with the "design [being] complementary to the Texas A&M campus", but the decision was soon made to demolish it after all. After donating the furniture (probably not the mattresses), recycling any material they could, and letting the police and fire departments use it for training, it was gutted, making the building resemble a parking garage (albeit a tall, narrow one) more than anything.

Soon after posting the original version of this post, reader John E. of Southern Retail sent in some shots of what was left. Thanks!




There's also a great video on YouTube on the history of the building and the backstory of Joe Ferreri. There's great period music too, though I couldn't identify all of it.

After the last of the rubble was cleared away, the area sat as a muddy lot for the remainder of 2012. Of course, if you drive by today, you'll find new, huge structures on the site: Northpoint Crossing. Shorter, denser, and larger than the old Plaza, the former home of the tower has completely changed, along with the old Chevron, UtoteM/smoke shop, and Kettle in the area. As of this writing, the new article on Northpoint Crossing isn't done yet, but it will be covered here.

In a way, I'm a bit sad that the hotel had to go that way. Since the the Rise isn't an attractive building, I kind of wish University Tower had done something in the 1990s instead of letting it deteriorate. Rather than the boxy, "generic 70s hotel" tower (the former Holiday Inn/Days Inn/Heaven on Earth Inn in Houston had the same problem), they could've enclosed the entire building in glass, taken out the Gulf/Chevron on the corner of Texas and University, demolished the last of the original motel that wasn't part of the connected portion, closed off Meadowland Drive and turned the whole thing into a combo dorm/retail center, a la Dobie Center, so we could have something to compete with Austin in the 1990s, plus it would've filled in for any fast food establishments that WEREN'T on Northgate already. The downside to doing so would that it still would've been far away from the rest of Northgate (a long walk down past the University Apartments), which I think was/is also why Northpoint Crossing isn't doing as well as it could. With Century Square now built, that's probably less of an issue, but it's still far away from campus proper.

Extensive update June 2019 after 15 previous updates

UPDATE 10-09-2025: Doing a bit more research, the hotel was Ramada Inn until 1988 when it became "University Inn" then reopened in 1989 as University Tower with hotel and private dorm facilities. Some new labels added.

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 20-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. In 2025 that was filled with the new location of MaretHouse Fitness (see next section) but never even got around to installing new signage before it was locked out in July 2025 for lease non-payment.

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. After their first opening got delayed, Mochinut opened for the first time on March 27, 2024. I was their first customer.

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 in 2020 but later opened by late 2020/early 2021. This moved in early 2025 before closing. 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. It was later Palm Beach Tan (as of 2022), but in August 2024 Half-Baked Goodness, a cookie shop, opened in the space. 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.




Additionally, connected to the parking lot is Copper Creek Condos behind the shopping center at 301 Southwest Parkway (built in 2016, years after the center was built) and Citgo, predating the center by about twenty years.

UPDATE 07-22-2025: Another full update was done, integrating Mochinut and Half-Baked Goodness, the demise of MaretHouse Fitness, and removing Citgo. Some post labels were changed or updated.