Westgate Center

Westgate Center as it stood in the early 2010s (from an old lease plan)

Westgate Center was off the index for several years, and actually one of the earliest topics I wanted to discuss but was pushed to the backlog to other projects. It was built in the early 1980s but struggled and by 1993 was at 50% occupancy.

The most recent PDF can be found here and archived here. The 2013 version, offline for many years due to the way Dropbox handled the Public Folder, can be seen here. From north to south, here's the tenant directory best I can assemble it: 4201 - Starting with "Building One", this is currently Kai's Doughnut Company since 2013. I can only go back to 1997 for this one, but it used to be The Cork (sold out in the late 2000s to Whiskey Charlie's, like the Parkway Square location) but Whiskey Charlie's closed within a year and became Sunny Food Mart, which operated for just a few years before closing a few years later.

4207 - From 1985 up until around 2019, this was a carry-out/delivery only Pizza Hut, at one point it simultaneously existed with the Northgate location which co-existed with the University Drive East location (I lived in a place once where Pizza Hut was the usual choice for takeout pizza just on proximity—it's nothing to write home about). Since then, it has been the short-lived Yumori (still closed as of 2025, though listed "temporarily")...and between Yumori and Pizza Hut was HeatUps, microwave meals to go. The 2025 says "Jara Pizza", I don't know what that is. Company? Unborn restaurant? Future restaurant? We'll keep you posted.

4223 - DCI Biologicals has been traditionally here at least since 2010 and at some point became BPL Plasma (Wikipedia indicates that they are in fact the same company). Tiki Tan was at 4243 from 2002 to 2019 but absorbed into BPL Plasma.

4245 - Thrift Station opened in 2024 but I can't easily find what it was before.

4309 - Moving onto Building 2, Fat Shack opened in late 2019. Previous business records per tax records and newspaper archives are Ernie's (a bar, c. 1984-1985), the one-time home of StageCenter Community Theatre (late 1980s), several non-retail tenants following (West Oak Baptist Church, Texas A&M Employment Office Service Center), "Slides Express" (1995), and The Ink Spot (2005-2006). I have not researched any of those in detail yet, so take that with a grain of salt.

4315 - Holick's moved here in 2006, the home of the Corps of Cadets' Senior Boots. It moved here from its long-time Northgate home.

Much of the third building was vacant in 2013, but this picked up in the late 2010s before becoming mostly vacant again.

4321 - Bentley's Barbershop opened around 2021 (or maybe late 2020).

4323 - This was "Couture Closet" in the late 2010s, but that didn't last for very long.

4333 - Buddies Boutique, a smoke shop, opened here in the mid-2010s.

4335 - This was last home to Westgate Nails 'n' Spa, which had its sign still up in 2021. Either it closed around 2021 or it was wiped out in 2020.

4337 - The first tenant here was Taxidermy Plus, and became Graphic Impact in 1993. It may have had something else in the meantime, but a few years after the Northgate location closed, a Blimpie operated here from 2005 to 2008, and Stover Boys Burgers opened later that year (moving from a gas station location). The restaurant was popular and plans for a second location near the intersection of Graham Road and Highway 6 were drawn up but scuttled due to CoCS requirements1 and closed in 2010 amidst problems with Square One Bistro. It was picked up by Burger Boy Cafe, the new slightly-revamped version of Burger Boy which had been sold to Ken Simmons earlier that year. After that, it became home to Eatology Paleo-Zone, which made meals catering to the trendy "Paleo" diet. Originally, back in 2013, I made a quip about how "we'll see what happens when the paleo diet goes out of fashion" after a pretentious quote on the website by the owner (something about paleo not being a diet but a lifestyle, or some such). Eatology stuck around in some form (I don't think it had been open to the public for years) and even in 2021 there was signage for "Eatology Kitchen Studios" on the outside. By 2025 Eatology was finally gone-gone and replaced with Aroma Indian & Nepalese Cuisine. All the while there were parking spaces marked off for Blimpie, though every passing year these chip away.

4341 - Majestic Hair Studio. In 2013 this was "Wes-Gate Hair Salon".

4345 - This was last home to "Pin-Toh Cafe" but looks like it's been absorbed by 4353 as of this writing. For many years (1984-2002) it was Texas Burger but I'm not sure if it was the Texas Burger. The one in Bryan wasn't and I can't find a definitive link between it and the modern company out of Madisonville that made its home further down Wellborn Road (FM 2154) in 2017. This one served egg rolls as a menu option.

4353 - This has served a rotating cast of restaurants and bars that struggle to make it. The first reference I can find to the address is Le Cabaret in July 1984 (a nightclub with jazz and occasional comedy performances). There was another nightclub called "Retro" that announced opening in 1993 (I'm not sure if it opened under that name...and what would qualify as "Retro" in 1993, anyway?). There was "Xtreme" in 1995, before becoming Barracuda Bar around 1996, briefly becoming "The Lighthouse" in late 1996 before reopening as the second incarnation of Barracuda Bar in early 1999. It is listed in a newspaper entertainment guide as having as an "authentic Texas coastline atmosphere"². Barracuda Bar (the first incarnation, looks like) was the one that did build an "upper deck" area (basically loft seating), which was still intact as of Swamp Tails. In 2001 Barracuda Bar gave way to The Salty Dog, a similar establishment that had the exact same description ("authentic Texas coastline atmosphere") as Barracuda Bar did. Circa 2010 it was Garpez Mexicana Food and Cantina. In late 2015/early 2016 Swamp Tails opened. I guess it struggled partly because Razzoo's Cajun Cafe had opened around the same time and it folded within a year or two. By 2017 it was Knight Club, which I remember hearing on the news was considered a "nuisance business" and either closed or moved in 2020 (later reappearing in College Station) with its replacement being Toya's Kitchen (there seems to be photos on Yelp) but it closed in 2021. As of 2025, the current contender is "E11EVEN Bar & Grill" (I think it's pronounced "Eleven") which serves hamburgers and Mexican food (I don't know what that literally sandwich soaked in salsa is) as well as a full bar.

I visited the restaurant building once when it was Swamp Tails (roughly 2015-2016), a Cajun restaurant and I seem to remember it having a second-story "loft" with additional seating that was obviously not built by them (and from a previous tenant).

While Westgate has struggled over the years it's not that hard to see why. Wellborn Road in Bryan isn't the major thoroughfare it is in College Station (no turn lane)³, even narrowing down to one lane going north (due to adding a dedicated left turn for F&B Road), and a lack of a major store has likely contributed to its struggle.

1. Per an interview. Apparently the rule about "no visible HVAC systems" was a bridge that could not be crossed.
2. Insert joke about "decomposing fish" here.
3. Also, one of the few roads in the area that ever had permanent Botts' dots, removed in 2017.

UPDATE 10-14-2025: Major rewrite of the page done.

Fort Shiloh

It would be fair to say that the contrived "fort in the wilderness" theme was played well. (See below for source)

Fort Shiloh was one of the things that I wanted to cover on the blog, even its nascent years, as it was one of the things I remembered from my youth, even if it had closed in the mid-1990s, its large wooden road sign and wooden tipis out front a sign that something had been there in the past (regrettably, I don't have any pictures of either, though the picture on top is from Project HOLD). It is mentioned at The Eagle on this page (with demolition photos!) that the site was originally the clubhouse for the Shiloh Club, which I can find first reference to in 1932, referencing being newly built and two miles southeast of Texas A&M College on Highway 6 (that's Texas Avenue, at the time). In 1976, it moved to 1707 Palasota Drive¹ and in July 1977, Fort Shiloh Steakhouse opened at 2528 Texas Avenue South. The restaurant was to feature steaks, homemade ice cream, and waitstaff in "period costumes" where "you may be served by Daniel Boone or Calamity Jane"² and a Civil War cannon fired off at dinnertime (I'm guessing that didn't last too long). Back when this blog had a comments section on each page³, I did get this about Fort Shiloh:

Back in high school, I washed dishes at the Fort Shiloh Steakhouse. At the time, it was one of the more fancy local restaurants (filet mignon, anyone?). Sorry that a local landmark closes and is replaced by a dozen chain restaurants from Dallas/Houston.

Note that despite the fancy surroundings, it was a dry establishment even though the county was wet. The logo is basically a drawing of what the sign looked like.
In 1987 it was renamed as the "Fort Shiloh Grille" after a "merger" with another Ken Martin venture, The Fajita Grille, a short-lived restaurant at Post Oak Mall⁴ and would ultimately close around 1995 (some references say 1996). After about a decade, the site was cleared entirely and in late 2022/early 2023 work on Aggieland Express Car Wash & Lube finally started, ultimately opening around 2024. It had the same address. 1. I have no idea what happened to this. In 1995, there was the house that's there now (it doesn't look like it was anything else), and while Bridge Meadow Drive wasn't built yet, even by 1995 it was a defunct trailer park.
2. This was removed a while back as it was more trouble than it was worth.
3. Given that Ken Martin got his ideas from restaurant publications as stated in the preceding article, it sounds a lot like The Magic Time Machine restaurant, which opened in San Antonio in 1973.
4. While it isn't covered at the Post Oak Mall page at this site, it is covered at Carbon-izer.com.

UPDATE 10-04-2025: Full and total rewrite done incorporating updates. Replaced [1950s] with [2020s] and [1930s] due to new research.

The Best Little Creamery in Aggieland

During better days. Dairy Sales inside! (Cushing Memorial Archives)
The Meat Center, as discussed the other day, is a most definitely unique place on campus, where you can buy real cuts of meat (lamb, pork, and beef) as well as dried meat products (the jerky is famous, but do try the dried sausage). It's also good in the sense that it wasn't outsourced with the rest of the establishments (A meal plan never could be used at the meats center (and most certainly not today), but a long time ago, there was more than Aggie-butchered meat you could buy. It was also ice cream! The "Dairy Science" building (also dairy sales) was located on Spence Street between modern-day Heep Laboratory Building (not Heep Center, that's different) and the Pavilion. There was also an older "Creamery" (that physically looked a bit like the Pavilion) that was demolished on West Campus in the mid-1980s (right on the other side of the railroad, where Old Main is today...yes, it even remained after the semi-circle of Olsen was built, and all that). That is not the subject of this post.

Cushing Memorial Archives

The dairy manufacturing building (the Main Campus one, at least) was demolished in 1995 for what would eventually be the Central Campus Parking Garage (the facade was where the main entrance off of Spence is). Just a few years prior, the dairy had been featured in Southern Living as part of a small page on Texas A&M with a small picture of the dairy/creamery's inside. While this article is still framed at the Meats Center, it has faced the window for years (thus, becoming quite faded) and the picture was never very large anyway. If you know of any interior pictures of the building featured in this post, please tell us.

It wasn't a spiteful move that the dairy manufacturing building was demolished, though, as a new modern creamery building was built soon after on Discovery Drive, in West Campus. However, the facility was never actually used as a dairy manufacturing plant since another group needed it more and the dairy group lost funding. It's still a bitter issue to this day for many involved. This turned out to be the Electron Beam facility, a food irradiation facility that partnered with a private company called SureBeam. Unfortunately, food irradiation in general never took off because "consumer safety groups" (read: professional scaremongers) convinced the public with the false notion that food irradiation was bad ("it has radiation in the name! oh noes!") and SureBeam paid the price for it (going bankrupt in January 2004). After a second short-lived partnership with another food irradiation company and some internal shakeups that resulted in a lot of the TAMU employees leaving the facility, the electron beam facility was never utilized properly again. Hopefully we can get back to the electron beam facility another time, but the real end point was that A&M didn't have a creamery after the demo, and thus, no homemade ice cream. I don't even know if you can get Blue Bell on campus anymore: I haven't been inside Sbisa proper in at least a year, the two places that served Blue Bell: Common Grounds and Bernie's Café, have both closed.

The thing that burns the most is that LSU does still have a creamery and serves it at campus dining location (and yes, they too have Chartwells doing the dining). Are we going to let LSU make their own ice cream without having our superior version?

The answer is yes for the time being...

Former Fitzwilly's

Courtesy of Project HOLD, a black and white photo. While not nearly as ancient as this suggests, it does represent a time gone by. 803 University.

For most of my life, 303 University Drive was a restaurant named Fitzwilly's, a two-story bar and restaurant with decent burgers and wings. It closed mid-way through my college career, and I was saddened by the loss, not only because it was on my regular rotation but because it had been such a staple on Northgate, in an era where a decade might as well be eternity.

Of course, the building predated Fitzwilly's for years, with the building being built in 1930, hosting apartments. Titled "The Varsity" (a TexAgs mentions it was the "Alamo Apartments", which may or may not be the case). From second-hand stories on TexAgs and comments here, the building was dilapidated (at least in the later years), the manager was the same woman for 44 years, and the building had no air conditioning or central heating. It's worth noting, though a lot of dorms on campus didn't have air conditioning either (Walton Hall didn't get air conditioning until the late 1990s, at least). It also didn't have a phone line, which led it to be excluded from phone books in the 1970s.

The historic date and land use is backed up by city documents.

While the directory I have seen below is from 1939 (and a bit difficult to use since nearly every road name has changed, but the addresses have been renumbered).

Inspiring "Varsity II Apartments" on Wellborn, perhaps?


While I can't readily pull up an aerial from 1939 (they do exist, but not in a format I can readily use), the buildings on Northgate did retain the configuration until at least the early 1960s, and the buildings do align with the directory. In this picture, you can readily see where the Fitzwilly's building was.

This picture was taken directly from the Northgate Chevron post

- The private residence to the southwest (where that Citgo station was) is the private residence listed (two addresses, possibly because of the two buildings).
- The Varsity is the no-telephone building where Fitzwilly's later was.
- The vacancy is where Dry Bean Saloon is now.
- The next building is where the former "Miranda's" portion of modern day Dixie Chicken is. The "main" building (originally Aggie Den) was built later, which created Bottlecap Alley——notice that in this era, "Bottlecap Alley" is enough to fit two rows of cars comfortably. Try fitting one car into Bottlecap Alley today. This is the original "North Gate Cafe" (there was a Northgate Café in modern-day ICON in the 1990s, but they are unrelated)
- and finally, the building to the northeast is the famous Old Army "Charlie's Grocery", which finally disappeared in the 1980s after sub-dividing part of their store out to Texas Aggie Bookstore, which remains today (though in the 1990s had to make that "AggieLand").

In 1979, the building finally was converted into a two-story bar but I've been unable to secure the names of said businesses very easily (a 1985 city directory even listed "Edward Jones", which is at 303 EAST University Drive). Luckily, capn-mac has his own chronology (I've also learned "Bogie's" was there as there as the last bar to inhabit the building before the "renovation" mentioned). From what I have, in 1980, it was Alamo Bar & Grill, which probably (compared to the building layout today) a dump and far more obvious about its former status as a run-down apartment building it was before. There was also "Sebastian's Tavern" as well around 1982-1983, but Bogie's was in the 1983 phone book but not the 1984 one. It's possible that the building sat vacant for a bit before being renovated again (which would make since). The link posted above also mentions said "renovation" to the building, which is probably what made the building it is today: a skylight was added at about this point, and probably the interior was rebuilt to restaurant code. It was in this phase from the late 1980s (1987, perhaps?) that it was the Flying Tomato Pizza (the city directory lists it as "Flying Tomato & Pizza-N-A-Pan"). By other independent sources, they had a hot air balloon that dropped Frisbees and other prizes. I don't know how I came across this, but it wasn't from this location, as by the time my family moved here, Flying Tomato was now Two Pesos.

Proof.

As for Flying Tomato, two comments I received (from "The Twice-Tasted Life" and James Durbin, respectively), mentioned a few things about it, namely the plants in the restaurant.

I remember the Flying Tomato very well. It was "Flying Tomato Pizza in a Pan" featuring square pizza slices in a variety of tasty flavors. I met my first wife there, and she was their "Flying Tomato" in parade marches of the day. They had a pool table or two upstairs and the mezzanine was lines with plants. The company started with a restaurant in Denton near the UNT campus. LOVE your blog, and I'd hate to see it go, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

The atmosphere was very nice when it was The Flying Tomato, with lots of plants, a fireplace if I am recalling correctly, and a big roomy space overall.

Flying Tomato closed in April 1991 and Two Pesos opened in its place in May. Two Pesos was basically a Taco Cabana knockoff (as briefly discussed here), which by all accounts was cheap and tasty. Unfortunately, Two Pesos had copied Taco Cabana a little too closely to the point that a case went all the way to the Supreme Court that affirmed that Two Pesos copied Taco Cabana's format too closely, and ultimately the restaurants ended up selling out to Taco Cabana, though there was already one there at the time, so it closed in 1993.

Two Pesos also had a turn at the building's facade: while we can't see what the building looked like in the days pre-Two Pesos, we do have this picture from a Northgate redevelopment plan...

Not in the Northgate color palette.

In 1994, it became what it would be known as for nearly the next 19 years: Fitzwilly's. Unfortunately, Fitz's, despite having good, cheap food (wings and burgers) fell out of favor with the Northgate crowd. Even when it wasn't crowded, service was slow (and also, food portions shrunk in the last year). It was still liked by an older crowd, but that's not what the Northgate landlords wanted, so the lease wasn't renewed and it went to Eccell Group, which has all but exited the Northgate area these days (Daisy Duke's has been sold, Café Eccell has moved, and La Bodega has closed as well).

While not in the gaudy "cotton candy" colors of Two Pesos, The Backyard seems a bit boring.
The Backyard is the name of the replacement (opened August 2013, Fitzwilly's closed in May of that year), which has a far darker interior than Fitzwilly's, more expensive food, and other changes I didn't particularly like, and due to aforementioned color restrictions, the new owners just painted it the same dark beige tone we've seen everywhere else. I didn't take a picture of the back area of the restaurant--while Fitzwilly's had a few tables and some delightfully dated blinking incandescent lights, the newer facility's back area was significantly rebuilt. If you crave more Fitzwilly's pictures that are in color, you can visit the Yelp page. Since leaving college, I've heard The Backyard has revised its menu to add more sandwiches (the old menu was burgers and tacos).

In 2018, the Backyard, like Café Eccell opened a "co-branded" La Bodega outlet inside.

UPDATE 01-04-2021: Removed previous update notes and added the actual months/years when Fitzwilly's and The Backyard opened. Somehow it wasn't added before.