Showing posts with label churches and other houses of worship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label churches and other houses of worship. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

The Sandstone Center

Initially this was out in the sticks, now it's just north of the Costco. (Ad from 1989 phone book)
This site rarely covers churches, and when it happens it's usually an extenuating circumstance, like it wasn't always a church. This is one such instance. Sandstone Psychiatry (at 4201 Highway 6 South, though the ad says differently) opened in the mid-to-late 1980s with inpatient and outpatient care. It was a hospital/long-term care in some form and even featured a swimming pool. In the early 1990s, The Sandstone Center changed hands to become the Desert Hills Center (a similar facility), but at some point in the 1990s closed. In the late 1990s, the space in front of the former clinic was purchased by Christ United Methodist Church and a new facility was built (likely around 1999, the old address according to a 1998 phone book revealed that the church body existed but had no permanent space, listed as 4719 Shoal Creek Drive). By 2004, a second building was built as the main building while the old Sandstone building was used as auxiliary classroom space. In 2008, a third building was built between them, while integrating the parking lots better and adding another entrance off of Highway 6. The three buildings were connected with covered walkways. This would remain the configuration for the next decade. By the late 2010s, new roads were developed around the church. The main south entrance was removed for the construction of a segment of Pebble Creek Parkway, which was (presumably) to extend to the main road off of Highway 40. A few spaces in the back were removed for access to the Lakeway Drive extension. A driveway built on the north side of the property was developed as Carroll Fancher Way. Within a year of the expansion, the orphaned segment of Pebble Creek Parkway was renamed as Corporate Parkway, and Lakeway Drive's extension (including the segment of Lakeway that had opened in 2010) as Midtown Drive.
The old drive-up of Sandstone/the church following the 2020s renovation.

Around 2021-2022, the "Sandstone" building was completely renovated, removing the pool and expanding the building to integrate with the 2008 building, as well as removing the concrete beneath the concrete drive-up. All during this time, it was renamed as Christ Church (disconnect from the Methodist church over theology). The circa '99 building does not connect to the main combined building and still retains its covered walkways.
(Former?) Desert Hills, 1995
Two buildings as of 2004.
Three buildings as of 2011.
Two buildings as of 2022.

Sunday, October 13, 2019

Connecting Point Church / Former OfficeMax


Reusing the big box.


To break out of the recent hiatus, I had to think of a splashy new idea, and not just some random photo of a small commercial building (it would have been quite easy to just post a photo of the Southwest Parkway Wendy's and call it a day). I had started writing on the Westinghouse plant/The Science Park/Providence Park but I still didn't have photos for it.

Rather, I was walking around today in the Harvey Road area, and it hit me. Why don't I make a series on Harvey Road? Not on the road itself, although I've done that in the past, but rather some of the things along it. Previous posts on Harvey Road as of this writing include Former Circuit City, Post Oak Square, and the building which is now Fuddruckers.

The first building is one at 410 Harvey Road, which opened around 1997 (possibly 1998—very difficult as I only have some construction-related documents and nothing on grand openings) as an OfficeMax superstore, with all of OfficeMax's "store-within-a-store" features at the time, like FurnitureMax (office furniture) and CopyMax (print-for-pay services). The new OfficeMax also included space for a small fast food restaurant in front of it (later developed as Fazoli's), and a new access road, a stubbed-out George Bush Drive East road that ended before crossing Wolf Pen Creek.

I never went to OfficeMax all that often, probably collectively less than a half a dozen times before it closed in early 2012 and moved to a smaller location at Central Station and later closed. Within a few years, the building began hosting Connecting Point Church, which later renovated the building (not much, really) and put up permanent signage on the building.

The church's foyer area and entrance to the coffee shop.


As the church is fairly small, there are two sub-tenants inside, both of which connect to the church foyer proper, The Brew Coffeehouse, open from 7am to midnight daily (except for Friday and Saturday, when it closes at 11), and Aggieland Pregnancy Outreach.

The back corridor with the restrooms hasn't changed much since the OfficeMax days.


Editor's Note: Next post will be a short post on Fazoli's, and about six other landmarks on Harvey Road will be covered by this series before the new Post Oak Mall post, and then I'll segue into/tease the next series, which will be the new idea for posts going forward, rather than a random grab bag of what I've collected recently. All pictures in this post were taken by the author, October 2019.

Monday, July 22, 2013

The Grapevine

A bit off the beaten path, but the fence wasn't here when it was a restaurant.

201 Live Oak Street

To clear up a few rumors that still float around even today, the Grapevine, a defunct restaurant near the intersection of Texas Avenue and University, was not and was never at Saber Inn down the street (EDIT 6/12/2018: actually, that may have been right all along--more later). It was, however, not located at its current place, from 1974 to 1980 it was at 315 Texas Avenue, a long-gone address that was shared with Senter-Piece Flowers.

In 1980, the current restaurant was built and owned by Patsy Perry (Zabel), running up until 2001 when Patsy (now Patsy Zabel) retired retired after nearly three decades [archive]. The restaurant briefly reopened under new owners (as mentioned in the KBTX article) and it did in fact open (in the original 2013 version of this article there was a Battalion article from 2004 entitled "Fresh from the Grapevine", but they removed it and I can't get an archived replacement article), if briefly, probably gone by mid-2005, if that.


Normally we would just put up an ad (as seen above) but today, we're presenting (and this is something I've worked out) real recipes from The Grapevine. The dressing, the potatoes, and the cheesecake have all been released on a Facebook group, and they're here now. (Yes, I got permission and yes, the link does in fact work!)

I also acquired a partial menu from late 2000 (with the last price increases in place--a typical entree held a cost of about $8.50) but I decided against putting it up except on request.

This blog reports it was "Lighthouse Christian Church" for a while after the closing of the Grapevine. The blog talked about said baked potatoes in great length, which I have reproduced here. I was going to leave a comment, but comments are closed on that post. Their loss, I suppose. I don't know how long Lighthouse was there, the blog was published in June 2007, but June 2007 happened to be when the current tenant, the Rohr Chabad Jewish Center, opened its doors for the first time.

Updated July 2017 with new photo taken this month, clarification of when the current restaurant opened, redoing links, further details on chronology, and integrating the October 2013 update.