Before Sabi Boutique

520 University Drive East in its original form. Later on, bigger windows were added.
Haven't really posted a "real" post in a while, and recently it's the first time I've been skipping months since 2023 (when I wasn't in the area at the time). I guess I just lost interest. You can only do so much if you're not making any money off of something. But I haven't abandoned this blog, just switched focus to places like Houston (and those entries don't typically have photos). I had also wanted to continue the "post on days I didn't already have posts on" project but another opportunity won't come until August 5th.

When working on an updated version of my FM 60 page for Carbon-izer (Version 5.2 here until August 1st, Version 6.0 here after August 1st) I came across 520 University Drive East and decided that there was enough information on it and that it was an interesting enough subject to do a full post on it.

The current tenant at 502 University Drive East, Sabi Boutique, opened in spring 2019 shortly after opening a second location at Century Square (this one replaced the Holleman Drive East location).

Originally, this was an office building that was first the home of a podiatrist (feet) by Dr. J.P. Beal, DPM, and soon became the home of the local Protective Life Insurance Company. (A 1974 directory lists the aformentioned Dr. Jacob B. Beal Jr. and Protective Life Insurance Company, as well as Farmers Insurance Company and Charles E. Thomas & Associates, which was the official name of the Protective agency). In 1982, Shellenberger's moved in as a second location from Townshire Center. In 1993 (by this time the Townshire location was gone) it was renamed as "The Suit Club at Shellenberger's" (advertising only—it only had "The Suit Club" on the sign outside) until closure in 2008. This 2008 article sheds a bit more light on the subject, The Suit Club wasn't exclusive to the area, it was a co-op with other independent menswear stores, though by 2008 this one was the only one left.

By January 2009, there were "two stores under one roof", Lew's Mens Wear, a store that replaced The Suit Club after it liquidated (there was a gap of about a month) and Sprout, a clothing store that was a spin-off of Old Bryan Marketplace.

Next from what I can tell, Harley's of Tyler purchased Lew's and converted it to their name in 2012, booting out Sprout in the process. This closed in December 2018.

I do have one more announcement to make: I will be permanently removing the post on T.G.I. Friday's (seen here, originally posted February 8, 2025). Like many of the posts from a decade ago, it doesn't really meet the same quality standards and without even a good picture, can't really be grandfathered in. (The only way it could remotely work is if I went by and grabbed a picture as the existing Willie's, which is kind of missing the point, or sullying the quality of my site with a Google Street View image...and I'm already annoyed with how poor quality the Rockfish Seafood Grill article is. In any case, effectively we're trading Sabi Boutique with Carbon-izer in exchange for T.G.I. Friday's. It was not a decision I took lightly, I don't really remove posts anymore.

The Texas Avenue Page - Place Categories

This page, much like this one is the landing page for everything on Carbon-izer's large Texas Avenue page covers as this blog currently won't.

This page is not on the Index.

Tags currently on this post:
production facilities,bars and nightclubs,banks,hotels and motels,restaurants,redevelopment,shopping center,retail,barber,car dealership,car wash,churches and other houses of worship,liquor store,demolished,school

If you're looking for new posts, there are miscellaneous updates...

The Texas Avenue Page - The Brands

For years, there's been a "Carbon-izer.com" button at the top, and I've decided that to better serve this site I should integrate those a bit better. What I've essentially done is created a whole webpage for everything on Texas Avenue that does NOT have a blog post, and for most of it, never will. The Texas Avenue page, as of this writing, will be updated by the end of the month (yes, it does have some rough edges), but also serves as a landing page for all the other categories that fit into it. I verified everything below to go in...couldn't find [bars and nightclubs] though...and more will likely be added.

This page is not on the Index.

Because of the limitations of Blogger, this particular post just covers brands. More pages to cover soon.

Tags currently on this post:
Exxon,UtoteM,Circle K,AutoZone,Church's Chicken,Dairy Queen,Texaco,McDonald's,Whataburger,Starbucks Coffee,Sonic,Taco Bell,O'Reilly Auto Parts,Dollar General,Shell,7-Eleven,Conoco,CVS,Enco,Max Food Mart

404 University Center

This was taken in 2014, the rest are all mine.
Well, it happened again, the rate of posts was completely unsustainable for the last three months (certainly not worth the effort I put into them) and I crashed out. (See Editor's Note). Today we're doing 404 University Center, with the last of the pictures I used from the summer 2014 set. The rest of the photos are below.

The center was built in 1980 and this article mentions that there were additional warehouses behind the center that were intended for tenants but I'm not sure if that's still the case now.

The problem is, without a main anchor, the center is just a bunch of little smaller tenants that have moved in and out over the years. Some of the first tenants included Conway's (moved from Downtown Bryan)¹, The Loading Zone restaurant, Italian restaurant Cenare (which operated up until March 2019), Harold's (at suite A), and Kelly's Toylane (moving from Townshire), DeAngelos (a gourmet food store with wines, meats, and cheeses, similar to Ira's).

It would be difficult to go over the full history of this center when places entered and exited, but Cashion-Cane (aka Cashion-Cane/The Christmas Store) moved here in the late 1980s from 504 Harvey Road. If it was originally a year-round Christmas store it wasn't by the late 1980s, and while it had a big seasonal influence it was mostly the "gift" department featuring silver, bridal china, stationary, and collectibles (see clipping). This occupied suite D before disappearing sometime around the mid-1990s. Suite A is currently (as of 2026 and since 2011) Thorn Music Center. In the late 1990s they opened Scott & White Pharmacy here, a S&W-owned pharmacy (not much in the way of other non-medical items) before moving it to 1100 Earl Rudder Freeway next to their clinic.² By 2000 it was already the home of Wiggles & Wags, a dog grooming boutique which later moved to Bryan.

There was a TCBY location from at least 1991 to 2005. There are other defunct tenants I dug up in trying to find stuff, there was a storefront for McCaw Cablevision in the mid-1980s³ and a locally-owned sandwich shop called Deb's Deli (owned by one Debbie Sherman), and numerous others. Current tenants (as of January 2026) include Attitude Dance Boutique (since around 2018), Chef Cao's, Anytime Fitness (replaced Cenare)⁴, Century 21 offices, Myra's Custom Framing (since 1991, though I believe it replaced a different framing shop), and a few others. In the future I may end up adding some smaller tenants that have come and gone over the years. Let me know (email) if you want to see more...though I may end up adding a few anyway.

1. Their old address was 103 N. Main Street, for future reference.
2. This closed around the late 2010s.
3. McCaw sold its cable business in 1987 (ultimately, it fell to Suddenlink/Optimum) in order to focus on the burgeoning cellular phone industry. AT&T ("Ma Bell") purchased a third of the company in 1992 with the rest of the company being acquired in 1994 in a huge merger, ultimately forming the foundation for the modern AT&T Mobility we know today.
4. I had somehow conflated it with 24-Hour Gyms of Texas, which existed at 700 University Drive East.

Editor's Note: Burn-out affected me hard as to why there wasn't any posts recently, especially as to how things were going—it was ALWAYS something along a major road, maybe something I covered in the past, or a gas station, or a restaurant. There was a poor feedback loop (rather discouraging for a highly local site like this—I don't expect a lot of money (but I would appreciate it) but I rarely even get nice letters from people.

More recently, I've been writing reviews about Nintendo Power issues in order. Some issues got full, multi-page features, but some just had a paragraph, if that. It got me thinking...when I removed the Texas Avenue in Bryan page I had intended to re-add everything at one time...but what am I going to do about those other ones? Do you really want to wait for a feature on Dollar General? (Rhetorical question). While I haven't incorporated the new version of Carbon-izer just yet, I intend to add stuff that I likely won't cover on this site. To help integrate this into the site while working on the next big project to show up here (yes I have an idea for it), I may end up making "hidden" posts to account for the "city directory" pages and make them easily searchable; for example, when I redo Earl Rudder Freeway, I'll add [McDonald's], [cinema], [restaurants], [churches and other houses of worship], and [Target], just as an example.