Original Location of McCoy's

From The Eagle (2000), source described below.
Pretty much every post in the last twelve months has been a restaurant of some sort and the last three, seafood restaurant, University Drive East restaurant, seafood restaurant ON University Drive...it's put me in a mood to find something that is not, in fact, a restaurant, but something I could work with. An idea came up to do Texas Hall of Fame, but to cover that would be covering Rudder's Landing, which would have, you guessed it, restaurants. The challenge was no restaurants, nothing on Texas Avenue (there's been a LOT of that).

After thinking about it for a few minutes, I came up with an answer. The original McCoy's Building Supply location! Now, it still exists at Boonville Road where it has been since the mid-1990s or so, but the location just south of Briarcrest is what I remember from the early days. Open from 1983 to mid-1996 when it moved (probably one of my earliest "closed store" memories, after Kmart and Winn-Dixie, but before Piknik Pantry with its Chinese food.

In 1997, Office Furniture USA opened. This new and used office furniture store was initially part of local company Engineering and Office Supply. In 2000, this was purchased by Wilton's OfficeWorks. I'm not sure what the original sign said, there were articles from 1997 about it being called Office Furniture USA but in 2000 a new sign was installed that would be the main facade for the next thirteen years. Apparently, part of the lumberyard area McCoy's used to use is/was subleased as RV and boat storage but I can't confirm that.

The current address is 141 N. Earl Rudder Freeway, the pre-1999 address was 3220 S. East Bypass.

Rockfish Seafood Grill

Regrettably we'll have to go with Street View on this one today, and the replacement building at that.
Having added both new and retroactively a new tag for posts, "Death by Fire" covering the likes of Sunset Gardens, Olive Garden, Krispy Kreme, and a few others, there's another addition to that, Rockfish Seafood Grill. Rockfish technically didn't close because of fire, but it did burn down.

In any case, Rockfish Seafood Grill opened in December 2001 at 1611 University Drive East as the tenth restaurant in the Dallas-based chain. There wasn't an official review for the restaurant, only a blurb about its opening, though a now-defunct website gave a review as an advertisement. (That would be a good strategy for this site....if The Eagle wasn't virtually defunct). In the summer of 2005, Rockfish closed and was quickly sold to the franchisee of Cheddar's Casual Cafe next door to open as Fish Daddy's Grill House, a new seafood concept owned by the corporate parent of Cheddar's, which had two other locations.

During renovations, the building caught fire and was instead torn down to the foundation and rebuilt, opening sometime around spring 2006. Since then, Fish Daddy's disconnected from the Cheddar's chain (probably around the time they were bought by Darden); the Austin location became "FD's Grill House" and Tulsa's location has a substantially different menu than the College Station location.

Editor's Note: In addition to the newer articles, several older articles have gotten significant updates. Check out Ardan Catalog Showroom / Rolling Thunder / Gattiland / Thunder Elite / Planet Fitness, Putt-Putt Golf & Games, and Former Taco Cabana.

Long John Silver's in Bryan

Long John Silver's, before it walked the plank. (September 2024, photo by author).
Bryan's Long John Silver's was closed and demolished in late 2024 following its condemnation, despite some new permits being filed. Based on the fact the signage remains up but empty (no "temporarily closed"), no fencing, and no work on a replacement restaurant (foundation, etc.) I'm going to assume it's done for permanently...but I can't know for sure until it becomes a clearly abandoned lot. If it turns out to be rebuilt, then an update will be added later.

The original plan was to release this post on "International Talk Like a Pirate Day", or rather September 19th, 2024. Sadly, I was out traveling and was not able to actually post it as planned. I'll still keep the pirate-speak (with help from Monkeyness) because it would've stayed up past "TLAPD" anyway. With that being said...

Long John Silver's Seafood Shoppe opened in January 1978 at 3224 S. Texas Avenue (the College Station location came later) 'n the nautical-themed galley operated fer o'er 40 years at that location. By the time these pictures were taken, the buildin' was in rough shape; the signage had nah been touched in decades 'n thar appeared t' be a large hole in the side o' the buildin' which was boarded up. At some point the "Seafood Shoppe" name had been dropped as well.

Aye, like the College Station location thar be drug busts at this galley, with one incident involvin' PCP but the restaurant continued for more than another decade.

"Avast," said county officials sometime in 2024, "the buildin' be in bad shape," 'n indeed a new filin' fer a new building was posted so this location will soon be torn down 'n rebuilt. The drive-through remained open, though.

Here be a few more pictures, including both simultaneously being condemned and open for business. Yar.

UPDATE 01-24-2025: The restaurant is indeed being rebuilt.

Changing Faces at University Town Center

This picture is by author, June 2015. It looked nicer in person! Another post, just coming so soon after yesterday? It's all to help fill in "a post for every day", that soon there will be over 365 posts and a post lines up with every day in the calendar (I missed my opportunity for 2/29 last year, but that's a special occasion).

I've written about some of this initially in some capacity on Carbon-izer (in fact, some of this is taken from that page) and wanted to discuss some of what has gone on at "University Town Center", the circa 2006 development near Tarrow Street East and University Drive East. Already we've discussed the old Abuelo's Mexican Food Embassy (now Casa Mangiare); now it's time to look at the next building at the "Fountain Plaza", 830 University Drive East, which is now fully vacant. Sôlt occupied suite 400 and takes up half of the space. It opened as Veritas Wine & Bistro in January 2007 and adopted its current name in 2020 after a closure and menu revamp (same ownership) before permanently closing in November 2024 following the end of the lease. The other half of the building has been vacant for a longer time. This last operated as Boneheads, a restaurant that specialized in grilled fish, Piri-Piri Chicken, and rice. It was good but never seemed busy and operated from November 2013 to summer 2016. They had other locations in Georgia, but the last one closed in January 2019. Boneheads itself occupied two older sites, a Ben & Jerry's (suite 200) that operated from January 2007 to November 2011, and It's a Grind (ste. 100), a coffeeshop at suite 100 that operated during the same timeframe.

(I know this was a short post. Be on the lookout for more in the future. Also check out other posts, some of which are updated. The gas station at Highway 6 and 21 is no longer a 7-Eleven, for instance, and University Inn reopened as Cosmic Suites). We'll be going through the entire site to add stuff to, stay tuned!