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.
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.
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.
