Defunct Madden Concepts

This picture was taken by the author on a miserable December 2021 day. Editor's Note: This page was originally titled "All Hail the Late, Great, Madden's Street Cuisine" and de-indexed in September 2019. In 2021, the page was rewritten to focus on 404 Jane Street and added to the Index as a full article as "Defunct Madden Concepts".

404 Jane Street is one of the rare "in-fill" commercial buildings in College Station, located off of but not on a main commercial strip, but because that segment of the market is still pretty new it has tended to struggle. There is only one known operating business, Tune Up: The Manly Salon, which opened in January 2017.

The second is/was also HUB Collaborative, a "co-working space" which opened in early 2015 and closed (likely) in 2020, and while the website is defunct, the sign still lights up as of December 2021...so I don't really know. Finally, there was one more restaurant, which has since closed. In May 2015, a new concept started by Peter Madden opened—Mad Taco (suite 400). He sold his restaurant in downtown Bryan, Madden's Street Cuisine to focus on the restaurant, which despite a fairly crowded market in that part of town (Torchy's, Fuego, et. al.) and a near-invisibility from both Texas Avenue and University Drive East did fairly well. A second location opened in south College Station in the next year. In 2020, however, the student market was gutted, and Mad Taco, which already struggled during the winter months, was converted into a new concept, which opened in late 2020 to focus on sandwiches and soups. The restaurant closed around May 1, 2021, and little trace of it remains on the Internet today. The Yelp page has 569 reviews of the restaurant, but only 18 of them are actually of Mad Melt, the pages were merged. While I did manage to get some menu copies from Facebook's cache, someone did take a few photos of the menu on Yelp, as Mad Melt came and went without much bravado, and now the restaurant, which began with so much hope as Mad Taco, is closed.

It was not, however, the first concept that Peter Madden had tried and closed. Before Madden's Casual Gourmet in Bryan was sold (and eventually closed), a food truck was operated by him, known as Madden's Street Cuisine.

The sad fate of the food truck as of 2012, now a second Chef Tai's Mobile Bistro.

Madden's Street Cuisine, which stopped delivering deliciousness around town in summer 2011 is covered here. I ate there and got a repeat customer card (completely useless now) and a menu, both of which are pictured here for your infotainment.

The menu actually was printed on old scratch paper: the other side has some sort of multiple-course "Civil Engineering Staff Appreciation Lunch" with classy things such as "Tomato Bisque garnished with fresh mozzarella, saffron whipped cream and fresh basil chiffonade", but I didn't scan it since it's in poor shape (and only half of the page).

UPDATE 12-14-2021: Just three days shy of this article's 9th year anniversary, this page has been updated as "Defunct Madden Concepts".
UPDATE 04-17-2022: Tacobar is to replace the Mad Tacos/Mad Melts spot, having moved from Southwest Crossing; however, it isn't open yet as of this writing. [Restaurants] was also added to the post.
UPDATE 02-10-2024: Tacobar did in fact open in May 2022.

Former Cooks and Kroger Family Center

Did I mention I have an ad for ammunition sold here?
Most of the modern Kroger "Marketplace" stores in Houston and Dallas (as well as beyond, and including other Kroger brands including King Soopers, Fry's, and Smith's) all come from Fred Meyer, a company based out of the Pacific Northwest Kroger bought in 1998, featuring a full line of merchandise, including clothing, hard goods, jewelry, and of course, food.

Years before Kroger even involved itself with Fred Meyer, Kroger began an experiment to make a true "supercenter" with a full line of products including apparel and sporting goods. Most of the early of the early stores were closed or converted by the early 1970s to traditional Kroger stores but the Houston-area stores were an exception, with Kroger Family Centers going all the way down to the border.

Before we get into the history of this Kroger, the store at 2104 South Texas Avenue opened in 1969 as Cooks Discount Department Store, owned by Cleveland-based Cook United. Due to CU's rather spotty growth across the nation and already distracted with diversification ventures, Cooks closed in the late 1970s and was renovated into Kroger Family Center in 1977. (Cook United would file for bankruptcy in 1984 and cease to exist by 1987).

The Kroger Family Center replaced a smaller store at Manor East Mall with the store opening in 1977. with a wider selection of merchandise.

Store facade as it appeared in 2004, featuring the modified facade

While the "full line" continued into fall 1985 (and long after many of the other Kroger Family Center stores had closed, like Victoria's), it wasn't too long after that the store remodeled to resemble the then-common "greenhouse" facade and the merchandise mix altered to have the basic Kroger "food and drug" mix, much like what the College Station store had.

The strangest fact is that there appears to be a significant gap between the closure of this store and the opening of the next, a Kroger Signature store at 2303 Boonville Road. Usually when a store moves, either both remain open (briefly), it can open next day, or a total closure for two weeks. But from the way it looks, it looks like it was closed for about three months.

The new Kroger opened in April 2006 but no mention was of the older store, because when the news came when the short-lived Bryan Albertsons closed, it was mentioned that the Kroger had closed in late 2005. Combined with the fact that the new Kroger isn't meant to really appeal to the same crowd as the Kroger it replaced, it suggests that the Kroger was a loser store but Kroger still wanted to stay in the area.

A few years after the store closed, it was renovated into "Bryan Square Shopping Center". The "fake greenhouse" was retained for the 99 Cents Only Store but the rest of the facade was remodeled. Other stores added in front of the store were Citi Trends and the Dollar Floor Store. Interestingly, a small building on the south side (at Post Office Street and Cavitt) with some smaller tenants still remains, as well as part of the original Cooks/Kroger facade next to it.

UPDATE 04-21-2024: Sometime between 2022 and 2023 99 Cents Only Store departed (just as well since as of this writing they're closing all their remaining stores, and definitely those in Texas) and A&M Furniture replaced it (relocating from their location at another defunct supermarket. (A previous article overhaul was done in 2020). This update also changed the name ("Kroger Family Center, Bryan" to "Former Cooks and Kroger Family Center")

Confucius Chinese Cuisine

An early 1990s advertisement for one of my favorite defunct eateries
Today a Walgreens, this was the home of one of my family's favorite places to eat in the 1990s, Confucius Chinese Cuisine (2322 Texas Avenue South). In older versions of this page, I provided two links comparing the 1995 aerial to the 2011 aerial. You can see the same thing with Historic Aerials or a copy of Google Earth (just search for the address).

While I sadly do not have a picture for Confucius Chinese Cuisine (and I did look, though buried on Project HOLD you can see the sign, however, I can't find it either), it was housed in a building at the corner of Brentwood and Texas Avenue. I still remember how cool it looked on the inside and out. It had a curved Chinese-style roof, the sign had one word in orange, one in green, and one in red. And those were lit up at night. I don't know what the history of it was. All I know was that it was open in 1989 but the building pre-dating it for a few years courtesy of an even older Chinese restaurant called "Jade Garden".

Inside, to the right you had the restrooms, a mural was toward the front, with what appeared to be a crowd of tiny Buddhas playing, and the décor was mostly red and gold, with the aquarium bubbling in the background (complete with an eel that never became a dish).

It was my family's go-to place for Sunday after-church dinners. The buffet was a single line with some really good egg rolls but I don't know if it was good or if I just thought so because I was young and didn't know what good food tasted like (it was markedly better than the old Chinese buffets in town following its closure, which admittedly isn't saying much). I seem to remember it closing a bit later than it actually did: Brazos CAD lists the Walgreens replacing it was built in 2001, and the deed changed hands from restaurant owner Jimmy Chang in early 2001 (though I do remember it was in spring), indicating it closed then. Referring to Jade Garden (as it was called in 1984, likely not built too long prior to that), it appears based on deed info that it changed names and ownership later. In 1982, the deed was transferred to Kwan and Helen Chui, then to Confucius Chinese Cuisine in 1993 (though the restaurant had that name by the time) until Jimmy Chang in 1995, which indicates that Jade Garden changed names before it changed hands.

I suppose it's better that the restaurant closed instead of selling out to new management: it never saves restaurants, just leaves a "bad taste" in people's memories of how good the food was. Interestingly, throughout the entire restaurant's "career", there was Imperial Chinese Restaurant, which moved there sometime between 1993 and 1995 (it was in the place where Wolfies was, which was Ninfa's by '95) just two doors down at Brazos Square. This one had declined from its early days, but outlasted Confucius Chinese Cuisine. Between them was College Station Pawn (2316 Texas Avenue South). The pawn shop and the empty Confucius Chinese Cuisine were demolished, with the pawn shop moving to a space at Manuel and Texas. After Imperial succumbed, the pawn shop moved back to the place where Imperial was. The restaurant closed within a few years of the Brentwood stoplight being added, too.

UPDATE 11-05-2020: Clarified previous name and date. Previously updated February 2019 to account for more accurate closing date, revisions in writing, and cutting out Brazos Square info.

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...

At Park Place and Texas Avenue

An unexciting strip mall. (Photo by author, 4/20)
Before the current strip center here was built around 2005, the site at 1808 Texas Avenue South was originally Long John Silver's No. 5347 (may have originally gone by the chain's old name "Long John Silver's Seafood Shoppe") in 1980, and shut down around 2004 when it was discovered it was a front for a drug operation (unfortunately, The Eagle's archives don't really exist online).

The strip center today has a Verizon store (changed logos after the parent company did), "Cash Store" (payday loans--and apparently that IS its legal name), and Naked Fish sushi restaurant. Naked Fish remains open despite less-than-excellent health scores and originally the home of Doc Green's.

Doc Green's, a soup/salad/sandwich chain out of the Atlanta area, 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 died a similar death.

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.

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. 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.

UPDATE 04-23-2024: After being last updated in April 2020 with a photo, I went back through the post and updated it.

Sunset Gardens

Welcome to Sunset Gardens!

3020 South Texas Avenue

Quick, what's between Sonic and Wings N More on Texas Avenue? A bunch of things, actually, including the old location of Petal Patch, a Domino's Pizza, lawyers offices, a fitness place, a pool store, and a burned-out greenhouse/garden store that has been more or less untouched since the late 1980s.

Yes, this is Sunset Gardens. Considered an unclaimed property since 1992, Sunset Gardens was destroyed in a fire in March 1988 by reasons unknown, and supposedly, according to MyBCS, due to the fertilizer contamination, would require lots of cleanup dollars invested if that area was to be ever utilized again.

I have no idea what Sunset Gardens looked like before its devastating fire: seems that there's no readily accessible satellite imagery from those days. However, I do have this ad, which given the original October 1985 publication date, indicates it first opened in 1983. Notice the logo: you can still see in the modern pictures, three decades after it opened. I took a trip out there in spring 2012 to take pictures.

Something MAY be happening out there, I took a trip in late 2017 to see that the site had been cleared, and the sign knocked down. I tried to pull out the iron(?) "sunset" logo but it was bolted in from the other side. Additionally, the fire date is sourced from the fire department yearbook.



Same area, different view


The sign, relatively untouched, even with some of a labelscar attached, in a similar font to the "Parkway Square" font near the Kroger. Unfortunately, it's been marred by the anti-bevel crowd, which is a stupid issue I care little about.


Looking out.


A bit of foundation visible.


This structure was saved, except for the burned puncture.

UPDATE: Added opening date, and the ad based upon which this was derived.
UPDATE 6/17/18: Added fire date and site update. A duplicate picture was also removed.

Ira's

Sounds good to me, especially in a time of sub-par and small grocery stores. From the early 1980s.
Built as a gourmet foods store, this building later served as the buffet Taste of China, which is what most remember it by. At some point, the building changed addresses from 1704 Valley View to 2702 Texas, but here are the various incarnations of the building.

#1: Ira's
First alluded to a comment on this blog, Ira's was a two-level gourmet foods store that sold (among other things) wine, chocolate, and baked goods, built sometime around 1983-1984. It's unknown to when Ira's went out of business exactly (sometime in the mid 1980s, likely during the oil crash).

#2: Ferreri's Italian
Owned by former hotelier Joe Ferreri after he lost nearly everything he had after the oil bust caused him to lose his beloved Ramada Inn. Probably the red, white, and green striping was added to the building at this point. I just don't have a lot of information on Ferreri's, though, nor do I know if it was any good or not (Olive Garden was just at Holleman and Texas at this point). In early 1997 it closed when he retired. After that it became the "Burton Creek Pub & Brewery".

#3: Burton Creek Pub & Brewery
Discounting the fact that Burton Creek is in Bryan and the closest creek is Bee Creek (and Carter Creek Parkway is next to Burton Creek...don't ask), Burton Creek Pub didn't last too long, circa 1996 to 1998. The place sold cigars and homemade beer, with décor including a "walk-in humidor, leather sofas, [and] bear skin rugs". Somewhere I remember reading...it was either on MyBCS or the HAIF, that Taste of China, for years just hid the leftover brewing equipment and never used it. I don't know if they served real food otherwise, though.

#4: Taste of China
Finally, it became Taste of China, which was your average (forgettable) Chinese food place (though we picked up food a few times here before, but all I can remember is greasy noodles and such), though unfortunately, it's one of the "better" buffets (a very relative term), and that was in 2005 (I have no idea what it's like now nor am willing to find out). In summer 2014, it received a repaint (all yellow, but a different shade than the nearby AutoZone) and in spring 2015 closed with little fanfare. Previously, the restaurant kept the old exterior from Ferreri's, featuring Italian flag striping.

#5
In 2016, it became Q Beauty Supply (without fanfare) and C2 Education Centers (suite 200).

Updated July 2014 with new ad and some other stuff, then again in 2015 after it closed. In 2016 this post updated again, and I'll probably change the name and photo soon. Slight update in 2017 to account for formatting. Finally changed names again in 2019 with new header.

Fajita Rita's, The Building of Which Eventually Burned Down

One of the phone books I have shows it has simply "Fajita Rita", then was reverted later.

Located on 4501 Texas Avenue South, Fajita Rita's opened in a building near the intersection of Rosemary and Texas Avenue in 1984 (some sources say 1983, but a 1984 The Eagle mentions their grand opening was in November 1984), right on the College Station-Bryan border (but on the Bryan side). It wasn't the first restaurant in the spot. First, Chelsea Street Pub was here in the late 1970s and early 1980s (it later reopened in the mall), but by 1983 it was a place called Rebels Restaurant & Bar (sounded like "student food", the phone book mentions it had steaks, burgers, nachos, happy hour), then briefly a Fari's Restaurant & Bar. (It's important to note that sometime in the early 1980s, the address changed from 4425 to 4501).

Fajita Rita's did well but faltered in the 1990s as more chains and restaurants began popping up. Fajita Rita's closed sometime in the early 2000s (2003, likely) and was replaced with Fredricko's (unrelated to the similarly-named Northgate establishment, unless the newspaper botched the name). It soon became a restaurant called "Las Fuentes" for a few years (and it's entirely possible I'm missing one more), then ultimately Las Lomas Mexican Grill. Las Lomas did last for a while: it did offer more of the same from FR (margaritas, decent but average Mexican food), but the building started to fall into disrepair. Its popularity was never very high, and apparently never even turned on its roadside sign for most of its existence from 2008 to its closure in late 2011. A few months later, in February 2012, lightning struck an air conditioning unit and burned the restaurant to the ground in a spectacular fire. That same night, the YMCA Building flooded (it was quite a storm). What was left of the building (Las Lomas, not YMCA) was razed a few months later.

In 2014, a new somewhat non-descript building was built on the site, and in 2016 gained both First Watch (the first in Texas, and a very popular breakfast spot) and a second Hungry Howie's (first one in ten years since Southwest Crossing. One thing remains from the Fajita Rita's days...the signage predates the building.

UPDATE 10-27-2020: Hungry Howie's closed earlier this year (2020) with reports that First Watch will expand into their former spot.

Ramada Aggieland Inn

This paint job was never used for an operational hotel.
Opening in summer 1974 as the Aggieland Inn (named after a long-defunct hotel on campus, which had long been functionally replaced by the MSC and gone for many years), this hotel was initially successful with its restaurant ("Whistle Stop") but in the mid-1980s renamed to Aggieland Hotel. After (or around the time) Ramada pulled its name from a bankrupt hotel down the road, the it was renamed Ramada Aggieland Hotel, then Ramada Inn (which it was for years), then simply "Ramada" (due to rebranding). In 2010, the owners of the Ramada name, Wyndham Worldwide, built a new Ramada near the corner of University Drive East and Earl Rudder Freeway, and the name of this hotel changed to Aggieland Inn.

Football program, 1988-1989

Even before losing the name, the Ramada had been going on a downhill trend for years, there's a story about how the restaurant (by this time, having long dropped the Whistle Stop name and advertising outside of hotel guests) accidentally(?) gave food poisoning to the Longhorn football team circa '99, and other minor stories of what happened there. Moving the Ramada to the highway was surely planned a few years before, and in late 2007, an ambitious plan was announced to turn the Ramada into upscale student housing. The late AbouTown Press covered this in December 2007, which you can see the scans of below (click for higher resolution).




As Aggieland Inn, as it was in the 1970s and 1980s, the hotel got miserable reviews. The hotel shut down in September 2011 (KBTX's link was down, this was before I learned to archive links) just prior to football season. In 2013, it got a repaint and was rumored to reopen for the fall, but it never did. Here's a Google Maps 45° view of the hotel before the repaint.

The restaurant/lobby/banquet hall building is about the size of the hotel itself.
In addition to the new photo at the top of the page, in April 2015, I made a visit to snap some more pictures. However, there were lots of No Trespassing signs in the area, and I wasn't going to get arrested for some semi-defunct blog I was just updating, so here's one more shot of the hotel (I didn't get too close to the lobby part, unfortunately).

It almost looks decent...

The redevelopment around 2015-2016 essentially split the property into two parts. The hotel itself got a big renovation inside and out, with the pool out front demolished for a new lobby, and the peaked roof removed for a new hotel, TRYP by Wyndham. The hotel (with a new address of 1508 Texas Avenue S.) eventually opened in November 2017.

The lobby and restaurant space of the old Aggieland Inn was gutted and became a strip mall.

Picture from August 2019.
Suite 100 was Urban Bricks Pizza Co., which opened May 2017, closed in early 2019, reopened later that year, and closed for good in February 2020. Wayback Burgers opened September 2016 but closed December 2018. The others are Fancy Nails & Spa (Ste. 300), Ye Star Chinese Buffet (Ste. 400), and SignatureCare Emergency Center. The privately owned emergency room opened first in 2016. Ye Star and Fancy Nails I believe opened in 2017.

UPDATE 03-12-2022: As of March 2022, the hotel is now known as "Aggieland Boutique Hotel" (who knows if TRYP quietly closed for a time). Also, Suite 200, the former Wayback Burgers, reopened in early 2021 as "Smokerz Paradize".
UPDATE 02-17-2023: I typically don't do minor strip mall updates, but Dave's Hot Chicken opened in December 2022 in the former Urban Bricks space.

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 Blockbuster, which moved down from 1800 Texas Avenue South. It also featured a location of Rhino Video Games (also owned by the Blockbuster at the time, though I don't think they had 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. There were some other smaller stores (not listed here, but the typical nail salons and cash stores) and a Batteries Plus, which eventually became Batteries+Bulbs in a corporate rebranding in the late 2000s. After Blockbuster failed in the early 2010s, the location became MattressFirm.


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

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. Rather than remodel, Kmart merely changed their logo in the early 1990s (supposedly they did expand into the Piggly Wiggly space, but I can't confirm 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), and the closure of Piggly Wiggly (that is, if the "expansion into Piggly Wiggly" didn't actually took place), 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 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, YES!Less went out of business (along with the rest of Fleming, really) but quickly reopened under California-based Grocery Outlet (branded as "Grocery Outlet Bargains Only". Save-a-Lot bought Grocery Outlet and reopened it 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 2021 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.