Orr's Minimax

Orr's had a sign, of course, but this one was far more prominent. For many years, it was blue and read "LAUNDRY".
Waldon Orr's follow-up to Orr's Food Center in downtown Bryan was Orr's Minimax¹ in the Ridgecrest neighborhood of Bryan at 3516 South Texas Avenue in late 1953 (at around 15,000 square feet) and in the 1960s an expansion was done to 22,000 square feet (if it was the biggest supermarket in Bryan at the time, it was soon to be broken by Weingarten within a year). It was also next to the Ridgecrest Washatorium, which opened around that same time as part of the building...though it looks like it shared the building with Orr's as it moved to a new portion of the building in 1958 (3502 S. Texas).

The Tim Horton's is the former Mr. Hamburger, looks like the renovation was faster than thought. Unfortunately it's not open yet. Like its downtown counterpart, Orr's was taken over by Piggly Wiggly in 1971 and closed in 1985. By 1986 it wound up in the hands of Malone & Hyde, which owned the master franchise for Piggly Wiggly.² It was growing its chain of Auto Shack automotive parts stores and even though by 1987 it had officially spun off Auto Shack, it must've had some ownership in it as Auto Shack announced its opening with the idea of it hitched to Piggly Wiggly. The Bryan store was both in smaller markets than what Auto Shack was used to opening in, and even was a bit larger than the average Auto Shack store. In February 1988 Auto Shack opened, though in 1989 adopted a new name after losing a legal battle with Tandy Corporation (of Radio Shack), which sued for trademark infringement...AutoZone. While AutoZone continued to thrive as a company, around 1996, AutoZone moved to 1640 S. Texas Avenue, and the space was taken by Aaron's rent-to-own a few years later. Aaron's didn't use all the space of Orr's/Piggly Wiggly (I'm not sure if AutoZone did); Dollar General shared it at 3518 but they left a decade later (replaced briefly by Awards & More; now vacant).

Now we get back to Ridgecrest Laundry, which continued to exist into the late 1990s (outlasting both Piggly Wiggly and AutoZone) all the way into the early 2000s.

The reason I bring up the laundry is it had a large 1950s-style sign on Texas Avenue that still stuck around after the laundromat closed, until a storm destroyed it at some point in the 2000s. It was rebuilt as a sign for RIMCO (its new tenant) in 2006, which at the time was owned by Aaron's (later sold and rebranded as Rent-a-Tire in 2015). I can't find when the laundry sign was destroyed but I want to say sometime around 2004 or 2005. It was in the papers but I wasn't able to find it.

1. Minimax was a franchised grocery operation and when Orr's Minimax joined the franchise it was still growing. Not too long after leaving Minimax, the Minimax franchise would go into decline.
2. As previously mentioned, see Wikipedia for the ownership changes of Piggly Wiggly over the years. In particular, Malone & Hyde was purchased by Fleming, which also owned Minimax. Go figure.

UPDATE 11/10/2025: Retroactively added the pictures (taken by me, November 2025). Also I didn't mention this because I couldn't tell, but Rent-A-Tire did at some point close, so if the sign gets knocked over again, who will host it?

Rent-A-Tire status: definitely closed.

College Station's Kmart / College Station Shopping Plaza

The former store as it stood c. late 2010


The shopping center at the northwest corner of Harvey Mitchell Parkway and Texas Avenue has a long and storied history. This post originally went up in June 1, 2010 and has been added and edited to over the years, with the most recent update from 2026.

The seeds of Kmart's demise and disappearance from this country have been fairly well documented and discussed these days, and while College Station got one during its meteoric rise in the 1960s and 1970s, it also was one of the victims in the first major closing round.

Kmart #7013 opened at 2700 Texas Avenue South on May 18, 1974, not long after the opening of FM 2818, the "West Loop". Unusually for Texas Avenue, it was not located on the road directly, instead on the frontage roads that curved into FM 2818. While it was one of the smallest store designs, the store also featured an adjacent grocery store as well, Lewis & Coker.¹

The stores did have an interior connection, but not for very long, as the whole Kmart Foods program was already on its way out at the time of the store opening. The Kmart was typical of stores of that era: a white slanted roof and ridged concrete. Lewis & Coker would close this store in the late 1970s with Piggly Wiggly taking over in 1977. The changeover was similar to the gutting of AppleTree years later, quickly go through and change prices in around 48 hours. The store was only about 19,000 square feet (of selling space) and was the only local Piggly Wiggly to have a bakery. In summer 1985 Piggly Wiggly closed (the two Bryan locations would go soon after) and in 1988 Kmart found a new neighbor across the street that would ultimately contribute to the store's closure (and would do irreparable damage to the chain as a whole)...Wal-Mart. Kmart expanded into the old Piggly Wiggly space and did change to the 1990s logo soon after but didn't do anything beyond that.


Kmart advertising in a 1976 Texas A&M-Texas Tech basketball program

In February 1995, Kmart closed as part of a round of closings announced in 1994. It wasn't surprising since the expansion never even added automatic doors, Wal-Mart already began an expansion and remodel, and a Target opened up the road in 1992. Target remained popular and the renovated Wal-Mart got a new shade of blue that Wal-Mart loved so much in the 1990s and even had a McDonald's inside, and of course, both still kept up with renovations and operate today.


Kmart, shortly after closing. Ferreri's Italian is in the upper right.

The closure of Kmart left nearly 83,000 square feet open. By the end of the year, however, Tractor Supply Co. moved in the far left part of the store (or the southern part, for those thinking geographically) and remodeled the interior and exterior (the exterior being the metal siding TSC is known for) but only for that part of the store. The TSC took over the garden center part of the store and was rebadged as 2704 Texas Avenue, as most of the former Kmart was still vacant.

In 1996, Big Lots opened in the center of the former store (taking the main facade) and Dollar General (cutting into the ridged '70s concrete Kmart was known for) opened in the remaining space. Big Lots took the 2700 address and I believe Dollar General did too (though I'd have to look at my phone books to confirm that). Dollar General only lasted a few years before giving way to Goodwill (though it ran a store at Longmire and Harvey Mitchell for a few years as well), and around 2001, a discount grocery store concept called "YES!Less" featuring a rather obnoxious-looking anthropomorphic exclamation mark filled in the vacant Kmart Foods/Lewis & Coker/Piggly Wiggly (and ironically, this was operated by Fleming Cos., which was Kmart's main food provider at the time). The former Kmart and its adjoining stores were finally full. There's not a lot of pictures of Yes!Less out there, but you can see a picture at my Waco - Valley Mills page at Carbon-izer.

In 2003, Fleming went bankrupt and everything went on the sale block including YES!Less. The leases of YES!Less were acquired by and reopened under California-based Grocery Outlet. The media reported them as being called "Grocery Outlet Bargains Only" which was their logo at the time. Unfortunately, Grocery Outlet had a hard time turning around the wildly outdated stores that YES!Less had left behind. Save-a-Lot bought much of Grocery Outlet's Texas stores in fall 2004 and reopened them AGAIN if ever so briefly, and I'm sure it was gone by spring 2005. Meanwhile, Big Lots closed around 2005 during a round of closures, and despite the continued operations of Goodwill and Tractor Supply Company, it once again started to look like it had been a decade prior when Kmart closed.

In 2006, the entire shopping center was given a major exterior facelift (though was never able to get rid of the Kmart concrete ridges), three new tenants were signed on, and it was renamed as "College Station Shopping Plaza". BCS Asian Market (also known as BCS Food Market) came around this time to the old Grocery Outlet (with 2704 Texas Avenue #4 as the address), a stand-alone AutoZone was built in the parking lot next to Taste of China (2706 Texas Avenue), and U-Rent-It (2704 Texas Avenue #5) built on the side of the building and using cinderblocks instead. The parking lot lights are also original. The big change was that the stores were ALL renumbered as 2704 (this probably means Goodwill, now 2704 #3, was changed, since Goodwill opened while Big Lots was still extant).

U-Rent-It closed in 2008, and was eventually replaced in 2010 by "The Everything Backyard Store", which renamed to Champion Pools & Patios² before relocating in 2012 to the College Station Business Center just west of the center until it eventually disappeared. It was renovated in 2015 for Impact Church, and became CSL Plasma in 2016.

Big Lots remained vacant, however. but returned to College Station in 2009 when it occupied an old Goody's further north. In spring 2014, it was finally filled with Vista College (training in things like HVAC, so no Blinn competition here). Vista College also replaced a rusting roadside sign that used to be where the Kmart sign was.



The 2006 redo effectively deleted the 2700 address for years until a new building (archived from this page) was built next to AutoZone around late 2017, which was labeled 2700, but remained vacant for years afterwards. Vista College Vista College abruptly closed in 2021, and is still vacant...but in March, the "new" 2700 was filled with Fiiz Drinks, opened March 2026.

UPDATE 03-15-2026: Rewrite to incorporate update from September 2025 and to add Fiiz Drinks, as well as adding footnotes like in newer posts. Previous updates from 2021 through 2025 archived. Before this revision, a paragraph at the top stated "This post originally went up in June 1, 2010 and has been added and edited to over the years and last received a rewrite in 2014 before the current rewrite in 2021.".
1. Just a year or so earlier, it would've been branded as "Kmart Foods". These "Kmart Foods" stores weren't owned by Kmart, but rather a regional grocer. Lewis & Coker operated the Houston-area stores, but this wasn't the case in the rest of the nation. Allied Supermarkets I know operated the Michigan-area stores, and at least one Kmart Foods in the northern part of the state was operated by Winn-Dixie. This was a common practice in discounters at the time. Target Foods in Houston in the 1970s was operated by Weingarten, and Rice did the food department for Globe.
2. This was the same business, but their Facebook page which indicated as such has long since disappeared.