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.

Days Inn on University Drive East

I realize that taking a picture from the official website of the hotel is a cop-out but on the plus this should last for years after it changes hands in reality, and I don't think I'd get a better shot.
I did want to cover this one as it's part of dismantling the FM 60 page on Carbon-izer, and while I find hotels interesting, there's not a lot to say about this one. 901 University Drive East has been Days Inn by Wyndham College Station University Drive since December 2016. It has been associated with Best Western for most of its existence. From what I can tell it opened in 1983 as The Inn at Chimney Hill (back when Best Western was more an affiliation and not a brand)¹ and while it did have an unbranded in-house restaurant serving Chinese food². In 1986 it was foreclosed on, with the paper³ noting the University Drive East/Tarrow area was hit hardest by the recession. In 1988, the restaurant area was retooled again as Crepe Myrtle Bar (with "fine spirits and authentic country food"). Things didn't change much at the hotel, it was still a Best Western into 2005, though by 2007 it had lost that branding (just The Inn at Chimney Hill) and in January 2008 was rebranded as a Travelodge under then-owner Rossco Holdings (the old Holiday Inn/Forum reopened as such around the same time). By the early 2010s it took the EconoLodge name, by 2015 was branded as "Executive Inn & Suites and as previously mentioned became Days Inn after that.

Just as a side note, the Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant and the Comfort Suites hotel just to the east of this opened in 2005 and 2006, respectively, but since they are the original tenants they won't be covered anytime soon unless there's a really good reason.⁴

1. As a general rule, even up until around the mid-2010s, the "real" name of the hotel was below the Best Western sign.
2. The Chinese restaurant concept was changed by 1984, ads stopped talking about "authentic Chinese food" and starting talking about "now serving Omaha steaks".
3. "Hotel, shopping center posted for foreclosure". 7/29/86, The Eagle.
4. If, say, you wanted a sponsored post that would be pushed to the top of the site for a few weeks and be part of the permanent archive, the line is open. Advertisers, this means you!

Varsity II Apartments

Varsity II shortly after suffering a fire (The Eagle, 8/20/94).
Located at 100 Jersey Street (later 100 George Bush Drive) and built in 1966, Varsity II Apartments¹ was a victim of right of way expansions for the George Bush Drive underpass project, which still has yet to be built. The apartments dropped the name (at least on the front of the building) sometime around the late 2000s and torn down around 2017, but despite their long run there's not a lot I can say about them other than they were just a fixture of Southgate and in the 2000s there was usually some old man at the stoplight impressing passers-by by grabbing the FM marker sign pole and doing horizontal pull-ups.²

The only major story of note I found about the apartment buildings was in August 1994, when 29-year-old Carl Henry Blue bought 50 cents worth of gasoline in a paper cup from the nearby Chevron³ and set his ex-girlfriend, 38-year-old Carmen Richard-Sanders⁴, on fire, with the resulting fire injuring one other person and doing "extensive damage" to the apartment building. It isn't clear to what extent things happened. The building wasn't torn down and only a few units were destroyed, but all the residents had to move out for a few days, mostly in relation to repairing gas furnaces. Richard-Sanders had to be airlifted to Hermann Hospital in Houston, but it was too late; she died of her injuries within 24 hours. Blue, who had already turned himself in when he caught wind of a manhunt, was charged with felony murder, found guilty, and sentenced to death.⁵ It was not the only fire at Varsity II over the years, but certainly the most notable one.

1. The question if there was a Varsity I is inconclusive. A few pre-1966 references have a reference to one being near Marion Pugh Lumber Company and having central air, so it's not 303 University and it's not clear if this was one and the same with Varsity II.
2. Bart Braden was his name and attracted a bit of notoriety including a Battalion article written about him. He passed away in January 2026 during the writing of this article.
3. While the Chevron or ownership was not charged in relation to Blue's crimes, it was (and is) against the law to sell gasoline in an unapproved container like a paper cup. Also, 50 cents in the mid-1990s was a significant amount of gasoline, closer to half a gallon...but the cup was probably not filled up to that much.
4. Initial reports put the victim's name as "Carmen Richardson", likely from a communications error.
5. Carl Blue was executed by lethal injection in February 2013.

Woodstone Shopping Center

They may have been overselling Woodstone, but it was at least unique for its time. (Eagle advertisement, 10/25/1980) There isn't much left on Harvey Road that I haven't covered yet¹ (especially with adding Post Oak Village and Advance Auto Parts last year, and 620 Harvey Road the year before that², but there were a few things left on the now-removed Harvey Road page on Carbon-izer, most notably, Woodstone Center.

Woodstone's history goes back to 1907, and it wasn't even on Harvey Road. That is when Southern Pacific built a train station in Waller, Texas, and operated until it closed around the mid-1960s. That was in the same era of time when the College Station depot shuttered, the Hempstead-to-Giddings line was abandoned³, and the passenger train industry was on a steep decline. But unlike the fate of the College Station depot (which was later demolished) the Giddings depot was saved and transplanted (cut in two and reassembled, with a large expansion to double the size) to its new location at 815 Harvey Road, with the new name of the C&S Transit Co. restaurant, opening in April 1977 with a large menu of pizza, sandwiches, and pasta dishes.

Between October 1977 and February 1978, the restaurant renamed to "The College Station Depot" and by spring had closed, replaced with another restaurant called Beef & Brew (not related to the similar Beef 'n Brew at Southgate, later on), a steakhouse with complimentary drinks and salad. In late 1979 it became C.K. Krumboltz, another steakhouse, owned by Thomas Nolan⁴, and by summer 1980, it had changed hands again, this time back to a reincarnation of Beef & Brew (new ownership, looks like). By fall 1982 it was closed once more and by summer 1983 it was Park Avenue Club & Cafe.⁵ In July 1984, an advertisement for "Malibu Beach" appeared in the Battalion ("We're bringing a little Florida and California to College Station!"), by January 1985 there was an ad in the Battalion for the grand opening of BeZerk (if that's how it was stylized) which mentioned it was "formerly ANX", which means that by 1985 Malibu Beach already came and went. After that, I can't find anything until sometime in 1986 when it became MC² (that's not a footnote, that's the name of the establishment, as in Einstein's work, which had moved from 109 Walton).⁶ In November 1986, a fire at MC² caused extensive exterior damage, which is probably why the current building doesn't resemble an old train station much anymore (it appears to have not been reopened under that name, giving this post a [death by fire] label). In 1987, the building was repaired and reopened as another club, Parthenon, its 11th name in a decade, and briefly Club Fahrenheit in 1990. Despite the numerous names the building had since moving to College Station, in 1990, The Tap opened, and it has been The Tap since.

Moving over to the east side of the complex, 919 Harvey Road was home to Hamburgers by Gourmet, a hamburger restaurant that operated mostly in the Houston area in the 1970s and 1980s (a short-lived "revival", or knockoff, in Nassau Bay notwithstanding). It closed around December 1983 and reopened as Archie's 39¢ Hamburger Place, a restaurant chain founded in Austin a year earlier owned by E.C. "Archie" Archambault of the local Taco Bell restaurants⁷, which he advertised with. Archie's Hamburgers closed around 1988-1989⁹ and in 1990, the third restaurant opened, DoubleDave's Pizzaworks, its fourth local location.⁸

This operated until 2005, and by 2006, it was Shivers ice cream and snow cones (it had a Bryan location as well, though the College Station had relocated from Dominik Drive). It closed in 2009 and was quickly replaced by Carroll's Giant Burger (out of Navasota) though that lasted only a few years before being replaced by How Do You Roll?, a fast-casual sushi restaurant (basically you picked ingredients on a sushi roll, much like Subway or Chipotle) chain. I always wanted to try it but in early 2015 the College Station closed, and within two years the entire chain was gone. There was Eskimo Hut following it from late 2015 to January 2019, and in January 2020, the spot reopened as Tacos La Perlita, which it still is.

The rest of Woodstone isn't that interesting, though. The center is designed so there are some exterior facing tenants and others (primarily offices) face inside. Clockwork Games & Events (traditional games like board games and tabletop games, not video games) has been at 903 Harvey Road suite A since 2012 (after being at 913 Harvey G for a few years). At 913 Harvey Road C, a Subway has been operating since 1983 (the second of its type in the area, and one of the few in the state at the time). 907A held Coffee Station since late 1997 until around 2009, a railroad-themed coffee shop with a cool loft area, which was sold and briefly closed for a redecoration and rename to Mugwalls, though that closed for good in 2016. From 1984 to 2012, there was a Rother's bookstore (later known as Traditions) here as well. There are a number of other tenants and addresses here, on Carbon-izer I have hosted a full layout of the place, from Loopnet.

Finally, there are some additional stores that have come and gone from Woodstone...the stuff mentioned here is by no means a complete list. There was The Unicorn & Which Witch?¹⁰ (come for the mysticism gifts, stay for Misty the cat), The Cookery (opened 1980), Carroll's Baskets and Wicker (opened 1979, not to be confused with Carroll's Giant Burger)¹¹, The Modern Touch, The Dandylion Dress Shop, and many others over the years. - footnotes - 1. West of Earl Rudder Freeway, at least.
2. At the time, the former Johnny Carino's, and later Anchor Bar, which came and went after just over a year.
3. The line went to Austin. Past Giddings, the rail line exists (unlike east of Giddings, where it's completely gone except for a short segment in Brenham), but the line is railbanked with no freight or passenger activity east of Elgin. It has been recently cleaned up with new signage, though!
4. Nolan does not have a label on this site currently, but has owned a number of establishments including The Peanut Gallery and Piknik Pantry, the latter in its pre-Chinese food early days, and Zacharias' Green House.
5. An application was made as "Confetti's" but I'm not sure if it opened under that name.
6. Currently La Gabriella bakery. That page has gotten a huge overhaul recently but it missed the nightclub there.
7. It's unclear if Archambault owned the chain or not. The articles about the restaurant and its other location in College Station at 310 N. Texas Avenue make it seem that way, and all the remaining restaurants became Archie's Hamburgers before disappearing in the early 1990s.
8. The previous three have been covered by this site...Carter Creek, Northgate, and Southgate.
9. Archambault tried a spin-off restaurant next to Pepe's Mexican Cafe which we previously covered. But by 1990 the Hamburger Place restaurants were gone. The Waco one lingered into the 1990s, though.
10. Not to be confused with Which Wich?, the sandwich shop that has since closed both its university and off-campus location.
11. An ad for The Cookery and Carroll's Baskets and Wicker can be seen here.