The Original Briarcrest Safeway

The Safeway "Super Store" design as depicted above can still be seen in former Houston Safeway stores, some of which still operate as grocery stores to this day. (The Eagle, 11-12-1977)
Despite a number of local operations like Orr's in the area, Safeway had been a part of the Bryan-College Station scene since 1950 and later opened a store in Townshire. With the downtown Bryan store having been rebuilt and the new College Station being among the latest prototypes in the chain, the outdated Townshire store needed an upgrade as well. Hence, a new store was built to replace it, located at 1805 Briarcrest Drive.

Within ten years, however, Safeway was looking to replace it, but there was trouble on the horizon. Safeway Stores Inc. was in a cash crunch at the time and had just put the 141-store Dallas division on the market¹, and the end result was that it was never able to find a single buyer and ended up being sold to a variety of other operators in the Dallas area (including Tom Thumb and Kroger), though the local stores weren't affected as they were part of the Houston division.²

During construction of the new store catty-corner to this one, the Houston division was sold in a management-led buyout, though it was business as usual for shoppers with Safeway-branded stores and Safeway products. The new store was completed and opened as a Safeway, with 1805 Briarcrest store closing at midnight on October 27, 1988, with the new store opening October 28, 1988 at 7 am.

By the end of 1989, all four Safeway stores in town were operating as AppleTree, and the replacement store at 1760 Briarcrest would ultimately operate long past AppleTree as a chain and would eventually even gain another name before closing for good in 2016.

Meanwhile, 1805 Briarcrest would become home to Brazos Bingo in 1991, which offered food service, likely using Safeway's old facilities. The building appears to have been renovated at this time, changing from what it looked like in 1977 and closer to what it is today. The other half of the building assumed the 3303 East 29th Street address and became Twin City Furniture for a time (the "Broyhill Gallery") in 1994, and eventually briefly became the home of Covenant Family Church (switching it to the 1803 Briarcrest address) for a few years (before moving to 4010 Harvey) before becoming Antioch Community Church, which it has been since.³

While Antioch Community Church and Brazos Bingo have been there for years (at some point in the late 2010s, Antioch Community Church drew up plans to build a new campus near Holleman Drive South and Cain Road, though this was scrapped), the AT&T store in the parking lot was not an original feature, being a new build from 1996.

This opened as AT&T Wireless in 1996 and briefly became Cingular in 2004 before rebranding to AT&T a few years later.⁴

1. As described on Wikipedia this was due to a takeover attempt and subsequent purchase by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. The Dallas division was the first to go, with a few other divisions sold or merged out of existence.
2. The first Bryan store was initially based out of the Dallas store but later switched to the Houston division.
3. As of this writing, Google also shows "Alexandra's Dance School" being inside the building, but they operate from within Antioch's space.
4. This was the result of the M&As involving the telecommunications industry, not a rejection of the Cingular brand. AT&T Wireless was part of the "Ma Bell" AT&T, while Cingular was a joint venture of two of the "Baby Bell" companies, BellSouth and SBC Communications (formerly Southwestern Bell). In 2004, AT&T sold AT&T Wireless to Cingular, but shortly afterwards, SBC Communications purchased both AT&T itself (renaming itself as AT&T) and BellSouth. With everything under the "new" AT&T, the Cingular name was retired in favor of the AT&T name.

Editor's Note: I recently rewrote the page for 1045 Texas Avenue South. There's not a lot of groundbreaking information in there but it does go over the early days of Wings n' Things...not that it makes it clearer. Also check out Pepé Taco in Salinas over at Numbered Exits.

Former Burger Chef

One of the last ads, appearing November 19, 1972 (The Eagle)
As of this writing, I recently rewrote the article for "Pooh's Park, Tinsley's, and Others Replaced by a Shopping Center"with a new name and some new features, and in the process removed the little shopping center with Champion Firearms and Starbucks, planning to update the Texas Avenue page on Carbon-izer (which I've talked about before), which has a few issues I needed to fix anyway. Among adding things I came across the fact that I wanted to add something to this blog rather than the page, Burger Chef.

Burger Chef was once one of the biggest fast food hamburger chains in the nation, second only to McDonald's, and in 1969 they landed at 2301 South Texas Avenue in Bryan. Unfortunately, Burger Chef's corporate parent, General Foods, which bought it that same year, wasn't a great manager of the chain, and this particular location closed around the end of 1972.¹ Burger King had also opened in the Texas Avenue corridor around this time, and it too had a short shelf life (likely stemming from problems with corporate parent Pillsbury), with McDonald's opening in the area in the early 1970s and being VERY successful since.

By 1977 Bryan Alternator Company was in the spot, and operated through 1985. The building was later used by a car dealership next door, but it hasn't been a car dealership since 2005. (Google says "BCS Family Auto Center" is here, but unless it's REALLY recent I can't find proof of it being there).

1. The chain would reach peak locations in 1973, and by 1982 had sold to Imasco, which closed and reopened most of the corporate locations to Hardee's, leaving the franchised locations to die.

Sweetbriar Nursing Home

Help wanted ad from 1999 featuring the last logo of Brazos Valley Geriatric Center
Up to this point, I've never covered anything on Anderson Street despite it being another road important in my youth (tied with Holleman and Southwest Parkway), and among the places on Anderson Street was the nursing home on 1115 Anderson. (If you grew up in the area between the 1970s and the mid-2010s you probably visited here at least once, if only for a school event or volunteer function).

Operating nearly 45 years as a nursing home before its 2019 closure, this opened as Sweetbriar Nursing Home in March 1975, with the common ownership and name of another nursing home in Brenham.¹ In 1979 it became Brazos Valley Geriatric Center, which it would have throughout the 1990s, from there would become Colton Inn Health Center (in 2000), Sheridan of Anderson (2003), and Magnified Health & Rehab in late 2008, and at that point I knew the nursing home as "changing names every few years" as by 2009 it had changed names three times in the last ten years, but it remained as Magnified until its closure by the state in summer 2019².

In 2023 the building was demolished and in March 2026 the first phase of Unlimited Potential opened, with most of the buildings (save for one being offices) being cottages for people who have aged out of the foster care system. (It appears they had a different location elsewhere in town.)

1. Brenham's Sweetbriar opened in 1966 at 401 East Horton Street (now 401 E. Blue Bell Street). The current High Hope Care Center does not seem to be the original building and appears to be a later expansion (though both sides were there in 1981). Another location opened in Navasota in 1968 at 1405 East Washington Avenue (now Navasota Nursing & Rehabilitation).
2. The state's official list can be found here.

Boardwalk Plaza

This picture isn't mine, unfortunately, it's from Loopnet.
Long before H-E-B even considered a full supermarket at Holleman and Texas Avenue, at Park Place and Texas Avenue there was the Long John Silver's, Mazzio's Pizza (later Harvey Washbanger's), and the 1800 Texas Avenue South, with an empty lot behind that, presumably as an expansion for 1800 Texas Avenue. Around 2011 this was finally developed as a new commercial building ("Boardwalk Plaza"). The somewhat sleepy strip center originally featured Systek Computing in suite 100 (moved from the building that Long John Silver's replaced, then moved out in 2019) and Lucky Dog Wash & Grooming in suite 102 (a big "DIY Dog Wash" sign, though there seems to be various groomers that have come and gone from operating inside). In 2020, Systek was replaced by Yummy Buy Asian Market (somewhat odd hours), while suite 104 eventually hosted a restaurant.

As of this writing (September 2026), it currently hosts Nova Eatery, originally hosting Yangtuo Club, then Ten Seconds Noodle House in the early to mid 2020s (a spin-off of one of those businesses in the "Chinatown" area on Bellaire Boulevard in Houston), which I ate at in November 2025 (the College Station location, not Houston).

Unique food experiences in College Station! I would take a visitor to here. (Author's picture, 11/2025)
Editor's Note: If you're an infrequent visitor to this site, don't forget about Remedies that was covered a few days ago with some information on updated posts. And if you're new here, welcome!