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 the last ten years, 303 University Drive has been home to The Backyard, another Eccell/Mojo concept, but the legacy of this Northgate business goes back decades before. From around 1930 to 1979 it was an apartment building (I believe six units) without air conditioning, central heating, or even telephone service, very affordable in that era but eventually run-down as the woman who managed it had run it for 40+ years and was ready to retire.¹

The historic date and land use is backed up by city documents, old directories, and older aerials. One of the old directories refers it as "Varsity Apartments" (though this was not related to another Varsity Apartments on Southgate or "Varsity II" Apartments), so this is still ambiguous.

None of the follow-up businesses did very well. There was briefly Sebastian's in 1982, then Bogie's in 1983 before it closed in June 1984² and in 1985, The Flying Tomato opened, which did promotions like free Frisbees (often branded with sister restaurant Garcia's³, which seemed to be the same chain, only with a different name, with both bearing the "Pizza In A Pan" subtitle). It was the direct follow-up to Bogie's which was vacant at the time. Not long after Flying Tomato opened, CSPD arrested the night crew for drinking too late⁴ and there was a letter to the editor that called them out on that.

Flying Tomato closed in April 1991 and Two Pesos opened in its place in May. Two Pesos was basically a Taco Cabana knockoff (which by that point had arrived in College Station) and by all accounts was cheap and tasty (I believe it was 24 hours like Taco Cabana, as well). 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, which affirmed that Two Pesos copied Taco Cabana's format too closely, and ultimately Two Pesos sold its restaurants to Taco Cabana. Some of them, like College Station's closed outright.

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 open).

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. The Backyard doesn't seem to serve much food these days, it initially had burgers and tacos, then adding more sandwiches, but as of this writing its exclusively alcohol with some shellfish. (For a while, they had a "co-branded" location with the recently-deceased La Bodega).

1. These are from old TexAgs posts that I've since lost track of, since I'm basing this after an older post that's from 2013.
2. Briefly mentioned when The Country Kitchen reopened.
3. No relation to Garcia's there off Harvey Road.
4. The clipper was wrong, they weren't drinking on the roof, they were at a booth on the upper level, and it was the police officer who climbed onto the roof to spy on them.

UPDATE 01-15-2026: Major streamlining and rewrite done after years of patchwork updates. Added [Costa Dallis] and [College Station].

Rosenthal Meat Science Center

This building was erected in 1981 and opened to classes in January 1983. A unique feature of Texas A&M, the Rosenthal Meat Center is a full-service meat processing plant and learning facility, slaughtering (and offering for sale) lamb, beef, pork, and derived sausage products. Unfortunately, I don't have interior pictures, including where the sausage is made (literally).

UPDATE 10-26-13: The loading dock is seen in the final picture (taken after the previous ones)

Alta Vista Christian Academy

The entire Class of '98. (picture from The Eagle)

The time is September 1997. Rock Prairie has just recently or is in the process of extending from the stub where it abruptly dead-ended at Victoria Avenue all the way to Wellborn Road. Using the rural back road of North Graham Road was about to end, and in February 1998, a railroad crossing connecting Gandy Road and Rock Prairie Road was approved. It was this time that Alta Vista opened at 3110 Gandy Road.

The Rock Prairie extension only had a street sign (Wellborn/Rock Prairie Road) and a stop sign (along with a new Exxon station that opened, which included an A&W). Beyond the railroad was a dusty road ending at a yield sign, and that was Gandy Road. Though a dusty, rural road, it included the Diamond T Stables (still with "3270 Gandy", which remained on the sign until it was eventually sold to developers and torn down), some sort of facility that looked like a fish farm or water retention (little ponds in the back), and Alta Vista Christian Academy.

My only experiences of Alta Vista came from exploring the new extension of Rock Prairie after it opened circa 2000-2001. The new extension was fascinating: there was a dip in the railroad crossing (as opposed to the "humps" in the others): this was taken out when they expanded Wellborn Road. In the early days of the crossing (circa 2001, I believe), there was a four-way stop at Old Wellborn, and several country-oriented places along the way: including aforementioned Diamond T Stables, the adjacent Diamond T Storage (now Tex Storage), and of course Alta Vista (a small private school). The new extension went all the way to North Dowling, and then, on the other side, Blue Ridge Drive, which went even further.

Of course, all that began to change as urbanization slowly crept west. Alta Vista struggled for years, even having to be saved from bankruptcy in the early 2000s thanks to donations, but by the mid-2000s, Alta Vista had folded up and disappeared, with no trace remaining. It's now the Williams Gate subdivision.

As an aside, I remember how the old railroad ROW looked in 2001 (now the intersection of Holleman and Rock Prairie): it was a sad, gated-off place that was kind of creepy-looking due to the overgrowth, with the (patchy) I&GN Road going the other way. That was the original ending of Gandy (it curved into I&GN). The rest of the way has the partially-undeveloped Great Oaks Estates, farmland, and another trailer park (substantially less attractive than the ones closer to the old ROW). Today, that intersection is a stoplight with concrete and four lanes in all directions.

UPDATE 01-25-2025: I definitely updated this at some point in the last few years but didn't mark it. The Holleman South/Rock Prairie intersection definitely wasn't four lanes and signalized in 2013.

The Story of 301 Patricia

From The Eagle, so apologies for the quality.

Rarely in this town do buildings vanish without a trace. Sure, Fish Richard's is gone completely, but those are exceptions, not rules. Did you know there was a tiny strip center where the Northgate parking lot is, which is next to the Promenade?

Built in 1970, the building featured a UtoteM convenience store and several smaller spaces, including the new location of The Aggie Club (today known as the 12th Man Foundation). The paper mentions another short-lived store in late 1971, a student couple who owned a store called "The Total Environment" in suite C (selling waterbeds and underground comic books, though it seems to have only lasted for a few months), as well as an ad for Lange Music Company.

A bit blurry, but on the original, you can actually make out the U TOTE M sign!

A view from the early 1990s, looking east toward College Main.

Besides the UtoteM, the tenant history has been a little hard to tell: at one point, the three tenants renumbered. In the early 1980s, there was The Varsity Shop (a), Aggieland Washateria (b), and UtoteM (c), and in 1988, there was The Varsity Shop (a), Burger Boy (b), and "The Deli Shop"¹(c). At some point, however, it appears that Burger Boy moved into the main tenant space with B was Advanced Tutoring Services (in the early 1990s, also owned by Burger Boy's ownership). In the mid-1970s, Planned Parenthood even maintained an office here (before their location at 303 College Main) in the era of UtoteM and Varsity Shop. Additionally, in the mid-1980s (1983/1984 range), there was also Chanello's Pizza, which may have predated the spot where Burger Boy was.

The Varsity Shop, the most stable tenant here, which survived from the mid-1970s to the 1990s. This ad is from the 1970s.
Archives from the magazine InSite indicate that the Varsity Shop closed after spring 1996 because "they could not get any of their beauty operators to return because beauty operators depend on following and there were too many rumors going around" (InSite Magazine), which indicates that they were closed in summer. It also mentions an Indian food store there at one time.²

At some point in the 1990s, the City of College Station bought the building and attempted to evict Burger Boy. The owners of Burger Boy at the time felt like the city was overstepping its boundaries in the eviction of the restaurant, and there wasn't any suitable spot to move to Northgate at the time. It had to stay on Northgate, as a full 90% of its business was delivery via bike. In 1989, Burger Boy had two locations, their original store at 300 North Texas Avenue, with this location being their second (which replaced the store at 1801 South Texas Avenue, but by 1996 it was the only one.³

Ultimately Burger Boy was able to find a new location in Northgate, which the Sopasakis continued to run for the next 13 years. After the Sopasakis retired, the location soon moved and closed in December 2012 (January 2 had the announcement that it would not reopen).

As for the rest of the building, it was flattened in late 1997 or early 1998 for the Northgate Promenade.

Here is one last picture, from The Eagle with George Sopasakis standing in front of his business. Again, apologies for the quality.

1. The Deli Shop moved in shortly after UtoteM closed around 1983-1984. Circle K had bought the chain and did not move forward with the conversion. An ad can be seen here. Another thing I read about The Deli Shop is featuring "Frankie's Fried Chicken".
2. It is entirely possible that it was one of those one-off shops that only lasted for a month without even any records left.
3. Much of the information and photos in this part of the article were derived from a few The Eagle articles: "Local Eatery Seeks New Home" - December 12, 1996, "Business owners express concerns about relocation" - June 11, 1997, and "New Northgate look" - June 12, 1997.

UPDATE 05-14-2025: This post has been updated and renamed from "Battle for the Promenade - 301 Patricia". The tags were updated for this post.

UPDATE 07-28-2025: A store that existed in 1978 was the SonShine Shop, a Christian bookstore. (See the ad here on TAMU's Battalion archives).