The Veggie Garden

Advertisement for The Veggie Garden shortly after opening. (The Eagle).
The rapid clip of updates (at least once a week) of 2025 came to a screeching halt after the former Roy Rogers and I figured it was a good place to stop as I had been feeling burnout, in the meantime I continued on with updates when relevant.

One of the "hidden" pages of the site, the Comm. Building Permits College Station in the Late 1980s, mentions a business called "Veggie Garden". While I've long wondered where and what this was, it was the original tenant of 3122 Texas Avenue South, a garden center/specialty food store, with produce, meats, cheeses, gifts, and other plants. It unfortunately had a short life, opening in March 1987, turning into a full restaurant in September 1987 (salad bar and deli, though kept the produce sales) but closing in the fall of 1988. While it would never be a restaurant again, in 1990, it became the new home of Valley Cyclery, before moving in 2001 to 107 Walton, then became the third home of Petal Patch, a long-running local floral shop.

The former "The Veggie Garden" building has gone through tenants over the years. (Picture by author, June 2025).
I haven't talked much about Petal Patch but its relatively recent demise without much press and its long history deserves a mention. It opened as Petal Pushers in late 1975 but renamed to Petal Patch a year later at 707 Texas Avenue (it appears to have been because it was sold to a new owner, Pat Humphries). In 1992 it moved to 1919 Texas Avenue South (while the old location was reopened as another flower shop under the name "A Flower Cottage"). 1919 was where it would remain until until the early 2000s when it moved to this location. Around 2011, it moved out to Bryan where it would be for over a decade before winding down business in the early 2020s (at some point ownership had changed again).

Back at 3122 Texas Avenue South, since around 2012 it has been the home of Ashley & Company. Ashley & Company keeps a low profile these days—it's appointment only (and this seems to have happened before 2020, with the removal of the overhead sign around 2017). For what it's worth, an ad from 2011 (when it was empty) mentions the building had two floors.

Editor's Note: The Century Square article received a big update. Pooh's Park received a smaller one.

Updates to Jones Crossing

From the page linked below. It's been watermarked precisely because of reposting purposes. Something a bit different today—among the casualties in the most recent Carbon-izer rework was the FM 2154 page. It wasn't that well developed anyway, but it also included a fairly comprehensive look at Jones Crossing that I just can't recreate elsewhere. And with several places at Jones Crossing having gone out of business, I would need to cover that, wouldn't I?!

Based on the current analysis the page appears to date from 2021.

- I Heart Mac and Cheese closed both locations in February 2022 (which is mentioned on the Century Square page. The Jones Crossing store reopened in April of that year. The restaurant operated a few months more (it was open in August of that year) but it folded and was replaced with an AT&T store.
- In spring 2023, Urban Bird Hot Chicken opened to replace Zero Degrees.
- Just south of Chick-fil-A (instead of the strip mall depicted), a Taco Bell opened at 1696 Harvey Mitchell Pkwy. South on December 27th, 2024.
- Suite 800 at 11667 FM 2154 opened as Lucky Goat Coffee in May 2025. It is adjacent to a playground, which is owned and operated by the landlord, not the restaurant. At least kids don't have to play next to boarded-up windows now.
- In April 2021, Caprock Health System sold its two Urgent Care centers to Integrity Urgent Care (one of which being at Jones Crossing, the other at Century Square). In November 2024 Caprock went under entirely.

The website for Jones Crossing has gone under as of this writing, so please check back for updates.

Gizmo's Cafe & Bar

Doesn't sound like a bad place, but I like eating outside when the weather's nice, which sadly doesn't happen very often. (from InSite Magazine)
I've been unhappy with the post what was Boyett Street Businesses for a while now (see the archived original version¹), so I've decided to focus on 107 Boyett (one building) and checking on the history of that through Battalion archives. While I'm going to re-examine 103-105 Boyett in the near future (as of this writing--the new post will basically be a cleanup and update), it should be noted that 107 Boyett doesn't really exist...it's the "official" name of this building but no references to it exist only as either Boyett Properties or one (1) reference to a campaign office for George Boyett running as local Justice of the Peace. It has four addresses, including one for Patricia.

109 Boyett opened as sandwich shop New York Sub-Way in 1977 (no relation to the more famous Subway sandwich chain). In 1981 it changed hands to Aggieland Subway (again, no relation to Subway, and may have even been closed for a time). In 1985 it closed and became Gizmo's Cafe & Bar in the 1980s. I received a comment a number of years ago about this place: "I worked at Gizmo's in the late 80's as a server and bartender. It was a great little lunch place with good food. At night, it became the place where all of the Northgate bartenders and servers came to drink, as it was (notably at the time) the only place with a full liquor license on the Northgate strip. Fun times." Gizmo's also used the 111 Boyett space.

In 1990 Gizmo's closed and the space reopened as Spanky's in 1992, which operated until 1994. Paddock opened in 2005 as "Paddock Lane" (name change in the late 2010s). It appears it was vacant for all that time. 111 Boyett was Redbone Jeans in 1977 before disappearing by the end of 1978. It appears that New York Sub-Way took over the spot, and that would be permanent.

For 113 Boyett, first reference was Randy's Liquor in 1978 (#2) which became Coaches Liquor by 1981 (also #2, with "BJ's Package Store" between them in 1980). Later on, it became U.S. Marine Corps recruiters offices by the late 1990s and eventually became Pinky's New School Tattoos by the 2000s. It operated from 2005 to 2008 and was turned into The Tipsy Turtle, which opened in 2009. It may have been Marine recruitment offices from when the liquor store left in the mid-1980s to when the recruitment offices left for the mall in the 2000s.

The most interesting part of these stores is that they are, or were, an example of mixed-use construction. Above Paddock and Tipsy Turtle were some studio apartments, located at 214 Patricia. I'm not sure if these still function as apartments or not (and of course, the noise would be unbearable).

The studio apartments as of circa 2013 (picture by author).

1. As of this post's publication date both are the same. It is for future-proofing purposes.

Former Roy Rogers

Roy Rogers has been gone for a LONG time. (Picture by author, 5/25)
My friend Mike over at Houston Historic Retail has cataloged a bunch of restaurants that tried to make their stand in the Houston area that no longer exist (or at least in the Houston area). Most of these, of course, never made it to the College Station area (or in the case of Wienerschnitzel, never left)—Herfy's Hamburgers, Piccadilly Cafeteria, and Steak N Shake were no-shows in the area. Of course, in Bryan/College Station a number of restaurants have come and gone as well. As B-CS is a small market, most of these had a single location if they came and went. Texadelphia of course counts (their total store count ebbs and flows) and so would Luther's Bar-B-Q (it exited College Station soon after the chain was sold in the mid-1980s—if Luther's stuck around to 2005, we would have had Pappas Bar-B-Q in that space). Beyond that, there's not a lot of good examples, though, as the area isn't big enough to have its own cluster of restaurants try their hand at the area and the chains that have closed (On the Border, Luby's, Red Lobster, Hooters, etc.) have done so as part of larger chain retractions. An early case of this was Roy Rogers, a restaurant chain named after the eponymous Western film star (and today only left with a few dozen locations). It was built when parent owner Marriott was expanding the chain, with the Texas stores owned by franchisee Ram-Hart Systems. The Bryan location at 2706 S. Texas Avenue was one of the stores Ram-Hart Systems opened (opening in 1969)¹ but just a year later, Marriott slammed on the brakes of the chain's expansion due to many locations underperforming (stores like this one, no doubt). In particular, Ram-Hart Systems went bankrupt in 1971 and this was one of the stores it went down with.²

Marriott would eventually sell Roy Rogers (part of divesting their restaurant operations) and today the closest Roy Rogers restaurant to here is in the Washington DC area. There's only one picture of what was once Roy Rogers in Bryan. The picture's a little dark but this is how most Roy Rogers stores of the time looked, and a better picture can be seen here on Reddit (even though that Roy Rogers is in New Jersey, not Bryan). By January 1972, however, less than three years after Roy Rogers opened, a drug store called Discount Apothecary was operating in the space. Within a few years, it had renamed to Ellison Apothecary, eventually becoming Ellison Pharmacy before moving out to East 29th Street around 1998. In 1999, the site was redeveloped as Guaranty Federal Bank (later just Guaranty Bank). With the failure of Guaranty Bank in 2009 (in which it was merged with BBVA Compass), the bank was closed instead of rebranding and reopened as Extraco Bank in April 2011, which it continues to be today.

By the way, the definitive list of "Texas Avenue Restaurants" if you want to explore them all (should be around 60+) can be found here.

1. The Denny's next door opened the same year and fared significantly better. It operates as the Kettle today.
2. The Houston stores got new franchisees, but these eventually closed in the 1980s.