Sure it kind of looks nice but it's a bit of a failure. (Picture by author, 1/20)
In order to talk about Northpoint Crossing (not to be confused with
Northpoint Business Park, we need to talk about what stood at that corner before it. That would be the "Plaza Hotel", which would be the most obvious answer (though not a wrong one), but to really answer the question, we at least should look at least need to look at the whole block Northpoint Crossing currently occupies.
Below is a layout of how everything looked in 2019, bounded by Hensel Street (CoCS) to the north, Texas Avenue South to the east, University Drive to the south, and the late Hensel Drive (TAMU) to the west.
Starting from the southwest corner, there's Northpoint Crossing of course and its buildings, then working our way up Texas Avenue, there's the current
Hampton Inn, Home2 Suites by Hilton (covered on the
big Texas Avenue page), the old
Applebee's (soon to redevelop into a new Hampton Inn),
Knights Inn, and finally at the southwest corner of Meadowland and Hensel Street, some old fourplexes that were holdouts from the demolition of this block in the early 2010s.
Now, let's take a look at what the block
used to look like (2011). I annotated this one a while back.
At the southwest corner (marked as #4) is, or rather, was, a Kettle. Kettle #86 (1403 University) opened in 1979 and predated all the rest of the Kettle restaurants in town (at its peak we had FIVE Kettle restaurants! There aren't even five Kettle restaurants anymore). While it was clearly built as a Kettle, previous references for the address include a private house (as of 1970) and "Pool Country" swimming pools (as of 1974), suggesting it was a conversion. The "original 1403" held McLaughlin's of Corpus Christi (beauty salon, had a second location off of
Patricia Street), and apparently, for a very short time,
Heroes Clothing Company was here before moving to 1502 Texas Avenue South in 1976. Kettle operated here for years, finally closing at the end of 2003. The yellow P A N C A K E S signage (not unlike Waffle House's signage) remained up until its demolition several years later).
Pancake House...? (Google Street View)
Kettle sold the property in 2004 to Leonard Ross (Rossco), which like other properties he owned just deteriorated until it was sold to the Northpoint Crossing developers in 2011.
The white-roofed building (not the brown-roofed building behind it), 1405 University Drive, opened in 1966 as UtoteM (#811), part of UtoteM of Austin (as the other stores locally were...Houston was its own division, having nearly half of the chain there as of 1967).
1 In 1984, it was rebranded as Circle K but closed in fall 1985 along with the
location at 105 Walton. You can see a glimpse of it as a UtoteM in the Plaza Hotel video from KBTX around
25 seconds in. Around 1988 it reopened as Thermal Shield Applications (it might've moved from a different location) offering car windshield tinting (and later cell phones and vehicle security alarms), though in 1989 they moved to 3213 S. College Avenue. In early 1991 it became home to Sterling Automotive, which specialized in Subaru repairs, and apparently even reopened as the now
second location of Thermal Shield Applications in 1993.
2 Thermal Shield Applications seems to have folded entirely in 1996, though this particular location was sold and reopened as
AC-Protech in fall 1996, but within a year had become a location of
Just Smokes, which was already shut down by May 1998.
Fountain drinks?! You told it was just smokes! (The Battalion, 09/05/1997)
By late 1998 it had become Aggieland Tattoo, which changed hands to Ink Dreams in 2005
3 and closed in the late 2000s, becoming Oasis Pipes and Tobacco, which was evicted in 2011 or 2012, moving to
Eastgate. I'm not sure of the purpose or address of the building behind it, it had four units of some sort (office? residential?) and I can't remember the address.
#2 on the map is another mystery. Brazos CAD said this building was built in 1949, under "Units on Univ Dr", and I'm not sure of its purpose. It seems that this was 1501 University Drive, and it was home to U.S. Black Belt Academy in the late 1980s (you can see the picture of this building in the video linked above near UtoteM). This also seems to be the home of 1503 University Drive. Years ago, I said that this was a location of 100,000 Auto Parts, citing the same address of Ramada Inn, but retracting it due to it being 410 North Texas Avenue in Bryan. However, I was
still right despite there being another 100,000 Auto Parts (which later evolved into a Carquest location) on University Drive East.
What are you?!
Of course, the rear of the building that appears to be attached and appears to be apartments of some sort makes this building even more complicated. I can't figure it out. Maybe more research another day is needed.
Next up is the Ramada Inn (later University Tower, later Plaza Hotel) which has its own
sub-article here (this was located at 410 Texas Avenue South).
Piper's Gulf (#1 on the map) opened at 420 Texas Avenue South around 1973, offering gas (Gulf brand) and an auto garage and became Chevron in 1989 when Chevron largely retired the brand in this part of the country. The station officially changed hands in January 1999 as it became "University Chevron" (still Chevron, of course) but shut down in 2005 and was demolished afterward. You can see a picture of it on the hotel sub-article or this
blurry video shot (not even a direct rip) from
The Louisiana and Texas Retail Blogspot.
Going back around past the Ramada Inn and past the other hotels, we come to 100 Texas Avenue South (marked as #7 on the map) and built as Dutch Kettle, opening in spring of 1962 as a 24-hour diner (
link). Dutch Kettle is not to be confused with the Kettle restaurants as described above
4 and a few examples of former Dutch Kettle restaurants exist...or at least existed. There was one, for example in
Houston that outlasted the College Station's building by about a decade at 8301 Gulf Freeway, though it had been heavily modified at some point in the past (note the dual chimneys).
5 Galveston's restaurant seemed to be the last one in this location and closed in 2012 (
2011 Street View).
Not mine, originally from a Brazos County history book
With its history intertwined with Kettle, it looks like Dutch Kettle might make for a good subject of its own. A 1963 article mentions its pies to go ("made fresh daily the Dutch Kettle Way in our own Commissary") which
tends to heavily imply they had some sort of operation based out of Houston. In 1968, shortly after opening
the (non-Dutch) Kettle at 1601 South Texas Avenue the diner became "Pick Wick Coffee Shop" before reverting to the Dutch Kettle name, where it operated until sometime around January 1975, liquidating everything shortly afterward (even selling its oval sign frame). In fall 1976 it became the first Schlotzsky's restaurants outside of the Austin area
6 and it closed in 1997 (by this time, Schlotzsky's Deli was a fast-growing chain), before being replaced with Dalin's Donuts in 2001. A few years later, this was replaced with Snowflake Donuts, which quietly closed sometime in 2006.
Street View of the restaurant shortly before demolition
Marked as #6 on the map, a number of fourplexes existed on Meadowland, and at least at one time were marketed together (they had a swimming pool) with ownership common to Plaza Hotel (Rossco). Today, only two exist, now as independent properties, 1402-1404 Northpoint Lane (1402 being closest to Northpoint), but even as late as 2017 they were known as 149 and 151 Meadowland. A few older houses existed on Meadowland (likely cheap rentals) like 125 and 127 Meadowland (
Street View shot) existed up until around 2012 as well.
After the Plaza Hotel was imploded and the rest of the site was cleared, Northpoint Crossing was built on the site, spread across six buildings.
The 425 buildings (closest to Texas Avenue) and 424 buildings were the only two buildings to ever ground level retail. As of August 2025, a few of the Texas Avenue storefronts have retail with suite 100 (closest to the north side), 300, and 500 (no even numbers), with those being taken by
4.0 Cuts, Aggieland Barber & Beauty Supply, and Modern Barber & Beauty Institute, respectively, and these three are the only ones to really make it. World of Beer still has signage up, but the
hip chain closed in late 2023 (after opening in September 2015). Others didn't fare much better.
Over in the 424 building, Toastie's Sub Shops out of Austin opening in spring 2015 in suite 1700 but closed a year later (coincidentally,
around the same time an Austin location was locked out for lack of lease payment, and by January 2017, the Toastie's chain as a chain, was, well, toast. In June 2018 it became
Smallcakes Cupcakery & Creamery. In January 2021 this closed and was replaced by Smoosh Cookies, which opened in
November 2022 but within a few years that was gone too (which was even shorter-lived than the
Jones Crossing location).
Suite 1700 had Minuti Coffee opening in 2016 but it struggled and did not reopen after closing in December 2019, re-emerging a year later
two miles east of its old location and got much better business. This was later replaced with Möge Tee which has also since disappeared.
Finally, another tenant in the 424 building but at Northpoint Lane and a road what we can only assume is also "Northpoint Crossing" a Gateway Newstands convenience store opened 2017 but closed in 2020 when its parent company exited the United States.
The Clubhouse is for residents only, standard for student apartment complexes. (Picture by author, 1/20)
In November 2024 the City approved a request for some unused ground floor space to be converted into 29 more units, functionally ending any new retail at Northpoint Crossing.
So what caused the issues at Northpoint Crossing as far as retail went, especially as the pre-redevelopment tenants did okay?
1. Access. Under the old system, there was a left turn into Meadowland, allowing one to get in and out of Kettle or whatever was at 1405 University relatively easy. Poor Chevron couldn't benefit from that...even the Exxon at the northeast side of the street has alternate ways to get in and out.
2. Nobody likes mixed-use. You can see this in Houston, too. Mixed-use is a hard sell here, in addition to substantially worse parking situations (which tends to deter customers) you also have much higher rent. These things aren't easy to maintain on foot traffic.
3. Poor integration with Century Square. This one isn't Northpoint Crossing's fault, they included a "stub" road (Northpoint Way) to integrate with Century Square, but instead they put up a parking garage of their own for their own customers. Which makes sense, they don't want you to park in Century Square's garage for Northpoint's tenants (and the same would likely be true in reverse).
With Northpoint Crossing being an unremarkable collection of apartment buildings to replace a large hotel, it really begs the question...is it an improvement? Maybe, but that was only because the hotel itself had such a bad reputation. At times like these I wonder if it just could've gotten a major exterior re-do as part of a renovation.
1. UtoteM was based out of Houston, though in 1967, they merged with Omaha-based Fairmont Foods, with UtoteM being a division of Fairmont. Fairmont moved its headquarters to Houston in 1975, though Fairmont's operations in the Midwest like their Kitty Clover potato chips and dairy operations (as well as some other functions) remained in Omaha. Ultimately, Fairmont was reorganized as UtoteM Inc. when the combined company was sold to American Financial in 1980 before its new parent company offloaded it to Circle K a few years later.
2. A 1995 directory lists this as still being Sterling Automotive.
3. How exactly I don't know, tax records suggest it was seamless. It may have rebranded at a different time.
4. Well, sort of. See footnote 5.
5. The tax data with this Dutch Kettle is associated with Kettle restaurants in Austin and Houston, and further digging reveals that some of the other restaurants were originally Dutch Kettle restaurants were as well, suggesting that the later Houston-based Kettle went their own way.
6. I say "Austin area" because there is a San Marcos location that predates it, though in that time there was a LOT of empty space between Austin and San Marcos.
UPDATE 08-09-2026: Major retool of the entire article. Differences include moving the "modern" development to the bottom of the page, adding mention of other Northpoint Crossing tenants that weren't listed, expanding on "Units on Univ Dr", expanding on 1405 University Drive, and new tags.
