Post Oak Village

A selection of Post Oak Village tenants from December 2007 including Fantasy Lingerie with a SFW outfit.

Much like covering Cow Hop the other day, it's time to examine another piece of a road that was covered heavily in the past—Harvey Road, this time Post Oak Village. You may remember back when I first posted Post Oak Square, I had mistakenly called it Post Oak Village. This is the real Post Oak Village (at 900 Harvey Road) and something that previously slipped through the cracks when I added a bunch of Harvey Road entries in late 2019. It was later posted on Carbon-izer before the whole Harvey Road section got broomed, so it's being reposted here with updates.

This shopping center opened circa 1984 and until 2012, the east end of the shopping center had a larger footprint to accommodate a larger end anchor. This was later reconfigured to be the same profile as the others in the strip. Originally, the center had about 17 suites numbered 1 (on the Dartmouth side) to 17 (on the mall side) but over the years the spaces have been reconfigured, so it's difficult to gauge the timeline over the years.

This is the current layout of the center, archived from this page at press time. There's unfortunately no tenants listed, but I'll try to list them below.

1. The biggest store, Giddy Up Glamour Boutique, open since 2015. The first store here was flooring chain Color Tile and from 1996 to 2007 was Catherine's, which in turn was replaced with "The Greek Boutique", which moved into the space, with store-within-a-store Old Army Spirit Co. opening soon after. (I'm not sure when The Greek Boutique closed.) Interestingly, GUGB also has the alt. address of 1903 Dartmouth.
2. This was most recently the home of 2014-2017's "Kie Men's Shop".
3. As of 2007 this space was a Sprint store but by the early 2010s it was divided between Cupcakes Couture and Mong Chon Korean Takeout. The latter used to just have a sign with some Korean characters and a red sign that said "Korean Takeout" (Mong Chon Korean Takeout), now it's known as "Mong Chon Grill" above a larger "Taste of Korea" sign. It has been here since 2009. About three or four years after Cupcakes Couture closed (around 2017), Mong Chon expanded.
4A. Fashion Nails & Spa. Despite the leasing plan using 4B, Fashion Nails & Spa uses "4A".
5A. U Paint-It has been here since 2004.
6. Domino's (an entirely new store, requiring redistricting from other stores) opened in early 2020 in what used to be Perrine Winery, which moved to Dowling Road in the mid-2010s. It also absorbs the space of 5B (ScentChips).
7. Edible Arrangements moved from 1505 University Drive East, suite 420, as seen (currently) at this page. The local store closed in 2024, a few years after the chain changed logos (goodbye, Papyrus!)
8. Pro Cleaners is on the sign but Google says its "Pro Eagle Cleaners". (As of 2007 that seems not to be the case, an advertisement just says "Dry Cleaners & Alterations").
9c. As of 2021 this was Eye Candy Salon but in 2022 had become All Star Fadez Barber Shop. (Eye Candy Salon goes back to the early 2010s at least). 9b. ProActive Chiropractic. Formerly home to Names & Numbers, and Aggieland Depot from 2004 to 2009.
9a. Sometime between 2017 and 2021 (not there in June 2017, closed by April 2021) was a Farmers Insurance office (Kathy Giese, main agent). Before that, it was last home to "World Finance Loans & Taxes". It was Fantasy Lingerie in the latter half of the 2000s, though wasn't related to an earlier Fantasy Lingerie in Westgate Center (on Wellborn).
10. There's no "suite 11" as some of the numbers have been reconfigured but it's likely this was the original Suite 11. This served as Tiki Tan from 2007 to 2019, and is currently vacant.
12. Post Oak Florist has been here since 1986, though seems to be calling themselves "Postoak Florist" these days (trying to de-associate from the mall?)
13. Board & Brush Creative Studio, a "DIY Wood Sign Workshop" chain opened a store in College Station in August 2018 (closed sometime in the early-to-mid 2020s). Before that, it was Tres Chic Boutique (store number two), whereever the first one was, roughly from 2012 to January 2018.
14. Yummi Yummi Mongolian Grill & Sushi is the last tenant before suite 17. Has been here since 2015. From 2006-2009 it was Let's Go Dreamin', a baby furniture store. It was nothing in the early 2010s except a temporary "Wicked Wally's" Halloween store.
17. Leslie's Pool Supplies opened in March 2012 after redevelopment of the plaza. Before redevelopment, the last tenant in 17 (though I've also seen 16) was The Exchange, a clothing reseller. Throughout the late 1990s and before its move to Lone Star Pavilion, this was Card & Party Factory.

Finally, I've got some cool news--the Post Oak Mall page on Carbon-izer is now up! You can see it at this this page (not at this blog). It's not 100% comprehensive with every single thing but it's a great page with lots of information.

Former Johnny Carino's

Not too many changes from the original restaurant.
Restaurants, restaurants, restaurants! As of this writing, more than half of the last dozen posts I created involve restaurants directly and on average, more than half of the posts in the entire blog. This is no exception. Today we'll do the former Johnny Carino's on Harvey Road, a long-missing part of the Harvey Road restaurant series.

Johnny Carino's opened its College Station location at 620 Harvey Road in 1999 (a bit of a weird placement, it's located down the street from even 701 Harvey). Part of the fast-growing chain under Fired Up Inc. and even gaining its sister concept Kona Ranch down the street, the restaurant was initially successful but the chain eventually crumbled (at some point it was rebranded to Carino's Italian--the name was reverted but I don't think the signage ever was).

After a long, slow decline of the chain (by the time the restaurant closed, only about 14 existed in Texas of around 40 nationally) with the restaurant chain changing names to Carino's Italian before reverting back (the Carino's Italian signage stayed), the restaurant closed in June 2022. As of this writing in April 2024, the chain is down to 30 locations nationally and just nine in Texas.

New York-based Anchor Bar, which claims to have been the birthplace for buffalo wings and started expanding in 2012, announced over year ago that they would move into the former Italian chain restaurant. Despite some exterior improvements (metal roof instead of terra cotta), it doesn't look like they'll open anytime soon (if ever? We'll let you know), with so many other restaurants long adopting wings as a main menu item (you know, like Wings 'N More), will it succeed? (All pictures taken by author, 2/21/2024).

This part of the restaurant was fully enclosed, but not anymore.

Carino's sign from the road. The lighting tubes inside glowed red and I think there was a green border as well.
UPDATE 09-01-2024: Anchor Bar opened late August 2024.

Plantation Oaks Apartments

For many years, Briarwood Apartments composed half of the former Plantation Oaks. Click on it to see the full resolution!
Back at Harvey Road once again, we're skipping directly from Kona Ranch down to Plantation Oaks (on account of either no information available or already covered). Plantation Oaks was built in 1972--before Post Oak Mall, before anything on Harvey Road worth mentioning, possibly even before what is now Earl Rudder Freeway opened. Plantation Oaks Apartments was initially an enormous apartment complex bisected by Scarlett O'Hara Drive and bounded by Rhett Butler Drive to the west (the theming not subtle), but by 1980, the western half section was sold off with a minor renovation done to turn it into Briarwood Apartments. True to many of the trendier apartments in Houston (or even College Station), it included a nightclub, Zacharias' Green House.

In 2018, the apartment complexes (neither in particularly good shape, judging by reviews) were re-combined under new ownership and renamed as Castlerock Apartments, which only listed a year before becoming The Grand 1501. The picture above is for Briarwood from 1980 (the Plantation Oaks ads from that era aren't nearly as interesting, and a color one from 2005 can't scan properly) and originally appeared on the old City Directories page from Carbon-izer.com, this blog's parent site.

Circle K on Harvey Road

Taken October 2019.
This (603 Harvey Road) was a Diamond Shamrock originally (or within three years of building the station in 1986), and only in the mid-2000s did it become Valero due to a conversion by Diamond Shamrock's new corporate parent, Valero Energy. It recently updated its logo and convenience store (becoming a Circle K instead of Corner Store, as it was under Valero).

Former Kona Ranch Steakhouse

October 2019 picture by author, showing the restaurant's second and more successful tenant, Ozona Grill.
520 Harvey Road originally played host to Kona Ranch Steakhouse¹, originating out of Brinker International, spun off as Kona Restaurant Group, then getting bought as part of Fired Up, Inc., which also purchased Johnny Carino's off of Brinker.

The best description I could find of Kona Ranch was it was somewhat of a theme restaurant (like many chains), "[emphasizing] a Hawaiian cattle ranch theme with grilled and smoked meats, and specialties such as coconut shrimp tempura" but from what I could tell by 2005 the restaurant had totally disappeared so Fired Up could focus on Johnny Carino's, later named Carino's Italian Grill (but I think the name reverted back).

This one was in Oklahoma City (from Loopnet).
The Kona Ranch location in Oklahoma City was the lone restaurant that Brinker launched around 1990 and was the only Kona Ranch when Fired Up acquired it. Fired Up launched its first new location in Texarkana in 1998, followed by a location in Round Rock, and finally its College Station location in the spring of 1999.

Already Kona Ranch was in trouble as the Texarkana location shut down within a year and further attempts at expansion were scrubbed, but at least Johnny Carino's was doing all right and would continue to operate for years afterwards. In December 2002 Kona Ranch in College Station closed (the Round Rock location also closed around that time). In College Station, it was quickly picked up by Ozona Grill & Bar, a branch location of a single Dallas-area location, that based on reviews, appeared to be nothing to write home about, even in its heyday. Ozona was far more successful, but closed in June 2023 after a twenty-year run. It is still vacant.

It was tough digging up a "normal" logo of the dead chain, with only this ad from the Houston Chronicle as part of a group taking the restaurants to Kuwait. Chili's and Carino's continue to operate there, but Kona Ranch does not (if it ever did).

1. Not to be confused with Kona Grill.

UPDATE 06-18-2025: The post has been updated for the demise of both Carino's and Ozona, with previous updates archived. Some of Kona Ranch's history has been streamlined, dead links pruned, and quality-of-life updates.

Harvey Road Sonic

The upscale color scheme once suggested how College Station was becoming something different than it used to be, with Harvey Road on a growth spurt. (Picture by author, October 2019)

Opening in May 1999, the Harvey Road Sonic at 512 Harvey Road is mostly notable for its unusual color scheme of tan and green rather than the typical blue and yellow of the regular Sonic logo, it's still at the end of the day an ordinary Sonic restaurant. 

I've been told that the city originally wanted a McDonald's restaurant in the spot but there was some sort of disagreement that resulted in the restaurant pulling out. I'm not sure on the details there, but it sounds intriguing...      

It may have received some upgrades since 2000, but they weren't listed on Brazos CAD.
UPDATE 09-24-2020: Changed store opening date (and as a result, the tag) of the store as per a source that worked there. Also removed Editor's Note.

Rudy's Barbecue on Harvey Road

Always a popular choice, even on Sunday morning. (Picture by author, October 2019)
Rudy's Barbecue has long been a favorite restaurant of many, from the fatty brisket to its long picnic-style tables with red and white tablecloths and rolls of paper towels. While it has been here a good part of my childhood and all of my adult life, it was not always here. The restaurant at 504 Harvey wasn't even always Rudy's, nor was it even in the same building, it did replace a previous building on the site.

Demolished buildings are often difficult to find information for but in 1982 a plat was filed for "The Christmas Store". Apparently, the full name of the store was called "Cashion Cane: The Christmas Store" but "Christmas Store" is what shows up in my listings. There was talk on TexAgs that the store moved to University Drive sometime later, and indeed, there was "Cashion-Cane" at 404 University Drive East in 1989.

The lettering glows red at night. (Picture by author, October 2019)

Seems that the Christmas Store was originally on a smaller lot until a few years later when it expanded to the west, taking over an adjacent lot that had "Spin 'N Grocery". By 1989, however, 504 Harvey was the home of Sneakers, a bar and nightclub with a sand volleyball court.

By 1998, Sneakers was closed and planning for a new restaurant began. Opening in 2000, Rudy's Country Store and Bar-B-Q replaced the Sneakers building and parking lot. Due to its origins, it often has a small convenience store section and I seem to remember there being a small counter to that effect inside the restaurant, but I could be wrong (even if it existed, it was very small). In the case of College Station's location, Country Store was never even on the signage, as unlike other Rudy's, it lacked a gas station.

UPDATE 02-14-2024: Changed opening date from "sometime around 2001" to "2000".

The Notorious Harvey Road Apartments

From here, we see what was originally Tanglewood South.

I don't write about apartment complexes all that often, when I do it's usually as part of something more interesting, like Mansard House restaurant at Doux Chene Apartments. Later, during the period I ran The Houston Files, there were some quirky apartments I did cover but it's still a rarity.

Following the Harvey Road series (it's across from Fazoli's), I titled this the way I did because it's got some bad press in recent years (if we go by examples in Houston, dense, super-large apartment complexes are never a good idea) and it may not even be the Pearl Apartments in a few years from now. By the year 1984, three apartment complexes were operating along Harvey Road: Travis House (505 Hwy. 30), Tanglewood South Apartments (411 Highway 30), and Courtyard Apartments (600 University Oaks).

By 1998, Tanglewood South was now Kensington Place (401 Harvey Road, same block), with BCAD records indicate that the name had been in place since the early 1990s.

By 2002, the apartments were known as "University Place I & II", likely due to the common ownership around 2000.

Down the street, looking east. Note the Circle K in the distance.

Now, from what I could tell, as late as 2007, Courtyard Apartments (built in 1977, wasn't able to find when Tanglewood South was built) still operated independently, at least, as its own brand, with Campus View operating the rest (it had adopted the name by that time). In 2011, Vesper Campus View LLC, the holding company that owned the other two apartment complexes, bought Courtyard, and it was absorbed into Campus View.

In the last five years, the local media has shown a light on how bad Campus View really is, with hundreds of calls to the police every year, with drug issues, public drunkenness, fighting, shootings, domestic violence, along with multiple maintenance issues. At least under The Marc, the new name adopted in 2016, reviews have been horrible.

This picture illustrates all three complexes, notice the different building designs.

From reading, reviews under another name a few years later with new management, Pearl Apartments, have improved, at least in terms of better management and weeding out the worst residents. But these things can change on a dime (it doesn't help the last time I was in the area, the surrounding blocks were being swarmed with cops due to a shooting in the complex), and without living there it's difficult to judge.

Editor's Note: I wanted to mostly write about this for completionists' sake since it deals with the history of three different apartment complexes. In the next few posts, we'll talk about the restaurants along Harvey Road.

Fazoli's at Harvey Road

Apologies for the lower-res than normal picture, it was taken from Connecting Point's parking lot.
From the parking lot of Connecting Point Church or OfficeMax, depending on what year it is, we come across the Fazoli's restaurant at 400 Harvey Road. Fazoli's is actually one of those chain restaurants that the Houston area doesn't have anymore (or Dallas for that matter), and the College Station location is just one of 15 restaurants as of this writing, scattered across Texas with no more than one per city (except Waco, which has two).

BCAD says that Fazoli's was built in 2001, a few years after the OfficeMax was built. It's been years since I went to Fazoli's, but from what I remember, the food really wasn't worth writing home about. The menu emphasized pasta, but for things like spaghetti and meatballs, you could make that at home fairly easily, and even things like the breadsticks (which were rather salty) have frozen-food equivalents. I don't remember there being anything that I ordered there that's rather difficult to craft at home (like, say, a steak or french fries). That's at least how I remember it, maybe it's changed since then, but this isn't a food review blog, that's what Yelp is for.

This picture and above was taken by the author, October 2019.


UPDATE 06-07-2025: Fazoli's opened June 2001 as seen here. This was definitely during the heyday of Harvey Road as a dining spot, but the same month the road lost another—Chelsea Street Pub closed at Post Oak Mall.

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 June 1997 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.

UPDATE 04-08-2025: The store opened in June 1997. The article has been amended to reflect this. Additionally, the Editor's Note teasing a series on Harvey Road has been removed (no longer current).

Former Circuit City

Picture from April 2019 by author.

The distinctive shape of this building (1003 Harvey) is recognizable as a former Circuit City, which opened in College Station store in August 1995, and much like its other locations in Texas were often deliberately located near (but never in) shopping malls. I maybe went into Circuit City once or twice in this location, but I do remember it as a dimly-lit place with computers on display (typical of Circuit City, and that was their gimmick, for the darker lighting to better show off computers and televisions), and nothing like Best Buy, which was brighter and better organized.

In January 2007, Circuit City moved to a new location at University Drive and Highway 6 (about where Half-Price Books is today) and closed down their location, only for the new location to close down a few years later. ("Bryan-College Station sees boom in businesses" from The Eagle). In early August 2012, Guitar Center opened a store at the location but it retains most of its original architecture.

UPDATE 04-24-2024: A few extremely small updates, like "opened in August 1995" rather than "built 1995".

Post Oak Square, featuring Weingarten

Picture by author, c. 2019. This shopping center's success hasn't always been here.
Like some of my other older posts, this one has gotten numerous rewrites and updates, and initially the original version of the post actually had some wrong information. This was because the supermarket in question only lasted two months. Post Oak Square was built in 1983 as a strip mall companion to Post Oak Mall. The center struggled in its original incarnation because it was built by different developers than the mall and had very few inlets and outlets. An attempt to connect to Post Oak Mall's ring road was also shot down as the mall decided to take advantage of their property rights and put barricades blocking the access road, and eventually posting guards there before the driveway was removed. (A shout-out to Henry Mayo who helped me nail down where Grandy's was, and also gave information about the ring road access).

Post Oak Square had just one main anchor when it opened, an outlet of Weingarten. The intrigue I've had with this plaza goes back some time, as according to the HAIF's DrFood, "Weingarten's in College Station in the shopping center next to Post Oak Mall. The store was very upscale when it opened. They had gourmet food like Central Market does, a coffee bar, and a huge candy/nut bar. They had a bakery that today would rival Central Markets. Being a Weingarten's they had the only Kosher section in the [greater area]. It then became another name when Weingarten's sold out on the verge of bankruptcy."

When it opened in November 1983, Weingarten was on the small side, but relatively upscale
This was because Weingarten opened in November 1983, just a month before parent company Grand Union decided to divest the company. The older Weingarten near downtown Bryan got sold to Safeway but no such luck for this store.

Definitely some resent there. This has to be the shortest-lived supermarket in Texas. After some seemingly conflicting information, the supermarket did reopen under a new name, Mariel's Fine Foods, in May 1984 (a second location of a Conroe-based independent). By November 1984 (when the ad is from) they had rebranded as Mariel's Home Town Foods associated with Schepp's Grocery Co. of Houston. Note that it offered video rental (rare in 1984) and delivery (also rare, and before 2020 had long fallen out of fashion for smaller markets).

The Conroe location operated until 2003 but the College Station location closed in 1985 as Schepp's Grocery and the Home Town Foods co-op collapsed.

As I said before, there was also a Grandy's between the two entrances.

At some point in the 1980s or 1990s, Grandy's as a chain lost the "Country Cookin'" name.
I'm not sure if Grandy's closed for the shopping center redevelopment or just some other reason. (It closed around April 1992), after all, the next twenty years would see the chain lose a lot of locations and even now continues to drop. I've added an article that adds a picture of the restaurant (which is nearly identical to most of its stores in the region, though a green color rather than a red color these days).

From The Eagle, 1991.

Right below the article was an ad for the "Summer Fun" pack. Do fried chicken places even offer any sort of fruit these days?! With a second attempt at a supermarket dead, in the late 1980s and early 1990s it began to transition to a modern power center.

In 1986, Cavender's Boot City was built at 1400 Harvey and a new retail building was built in 1987 close to Harvey Road on the west side of the property. In 1990, Pier 1 Imports was built in front of Cavender's in a new building (making Cavender's impossible to see from the road). Grandy's was closed in 1992 for the biggest redevelopment of the center which demolished a good part of the main building for Toys R Us (opened c. 1993, this was the address for Linen Warehouse from 1984 to 1987), T.J. Maxx (opened 1994), and Hobby Lobby (opened 1993 in Weingarten's former space). As a result, the shopping center finally saw success over the next decade. Hobby Lobby moved out in the early 2000s and of course Toys R Us failed with the chain in 2018 (keeping the original logo until toward the last few years), but the center has done well, all things considered. Going clockwise from the former Pier 1 Imports closest to the mall...

1402 - Mattress SleepCenters - Formerly Pier 1 Imports until the early 2000s when it moved to Texas Avenue Crossing at Texas Avenue and George Bush. This building was built in 1990 but is considered part of the shopping center.
1400 - demolished - Former Cavender's Boot City, moved out around 2006 and NEVER retenanted (it's the blank spot behind Mattress SleepCenters, and nearly impossible to see). Brazos CAD (had to go back in the archives to see) says this was built in 1986.
1306 - Ollie's Bargain Outlet opened in April 2020 following the closure of aforementioned Toys R Us.
1200 - The aforementioned former Weingarten, Hobby Lobby was in the location for much of the 1990s (since 1994) and left for its current location as soon as the center at Texas and Holleman was built (around 2003). After it left, it was divided into two stores (1200 Harvey and 1210 Harvey), which at the time was a store called "The BOUNCE!" and the 99 Cents Store, which was expanding heavily during that time. The BOUNCE! (hereafter referred to "The Bounce") was a bit overlooked, though it had a colorful facade. According to a surviving ad I found, The Bounce was a "locally owned and operated 12,500 square foot party facility featuring your favorite inflatable castles, obstacle courses, huge slides, rock climbing walls and more, all in a safe, climate controlled environment" and featured "four private party rooms with a private jump arena are available" along with "diner seating with drinks, coffee and snacks plus WiFi access."
These things tend hinge their existence on birthday parties, and for whatever reason, it failed within a few years (maybe lasting from 2006 to 2009), and I think that it's the same reason why Putt-Putt and Gattitown declined and ultimately closed.

Burkes Outlet opened in 1200 in 2013 but closed a decade later (being replaced with an O'Reilly Auto Parts in 2024) and 1210 Harvey is still vacant. Tuesday Morning had moved there in 2012 (from their location off of East 29th) but closed it in an early 2023 bankruptcy round with the remaining chain going under a few months later.
1140 - LL Flooring, formerly - This used to be Avenue (with the address of 1200A), opening in 1994 as part of the center re-do, but it eventually closed. LifeWay Christian Stores opened in spring 2014. It may have absorbed two smaller stores at some point in the past. The store announced closing in February 2019 shortly before the remainder of the chain one month later. In 2020 this became Lumber Liquidators (under the name "LL Flooring" as the company had been during this time) but it too, filed for bankruptcy. While the company was spared this wasn't one of the ones that lived through it.
1128 - TJMaxx - Here since 1994 in the corner.
1120 - The current space combined the former 1112 (Wild Birds Unlimited was here from 1997 to 2004) and 1120. It has held GR8 Laundry since November 2019. 1106 - This has been Once Upon a Child since early 2019, which relocated from Brazos Square. From about 1996 to 2010 the space 1108 was Treasures Gift Shop, later home to Q Beauty. Q Beauty later moved to the former Taste of China building.
1104A - Plato's Closet - This opened around 2009 and still remains open.
1102 - Gumby's Pizza - My records say that this was Imperial Chinese Restaurant from 1984 to 1994, related to the later Texas Avenue location but unrelated to the one on the bypass today). Ninfa's opened in January 1995, according to InSite Magazine. When Ninfa's moved in 2008 to a new spot on the bypass, the space was vacant for a few years before Houston-based Wolfies Restaurant (2012 to September 2016).

The 1100 building as of August 2022 features, from east to west, Victoria's Variedades y Tipicos (this was Merle Norman from about 2006 to 2015, suite D), Bea's Alterations (Suite C, home to Merge Boutique before it moved to Century Square), RA Salon Spa (suite B, Edward Jones until the early 2010s), and Al's Formal Wear (from 1987 to its abrupt August 2023 chain-wide closure).

Finally, for a long time it was rumored that Grandy's was torn down for visibility issues: it did not seem to be stop current management from signing a genuine Krispy Kreme Doughnuts store to be built in the parking lot closest to Mattress SleepCenters. Previously, the closest College Station-Bryan had to Krispy Kreme was some products sold in Shell gas stations around 2003 and 2004, which were made in Houston (as it had a small handful of stores at the time). If you want to hear about the Krispy Kreme's first attempt in Houston, I suggest you visit Houston Historic Retail, which is not my site but I recommend it anyway. Krispy Kreme opened in April 2019 at 1312 Harvey Road, but in the early morning hours of May 13, 2025 burned down, an act perprepated by its own franchisee. After the ruins were cleared it became an empty grass pad for lease, though the medians of Harvey Road make access even more difficult.

"Krispy" and "hot" were certainly puns of the day when the place burned down, but certain forum moderators hated it.

UPDATE 06-15-2025: Updates were reset with changes integrated particularly with Krispy Kreme. Coding was fixed, the Grandy's section was expanded, and a few other things.

J.J. Muggs

From The Eagle, 1985.
The advertisement above is for J.J. Muggs, one of the earliest known restaurants along the Harvey Road stretch, and opening at 1704 Kyle Avenue South (later known as George Bush Drive East). The restaurant, which opened around 1984, did not last all that long (the restaurant, a division of Pillsbury's S&A Restaurants, was "abandoned" in 1986, but the restaurant here and a few other locations lasted into 1987) and by 1988 became another restaurant known as Rita's Eaterie and Cantina, which had a few Houston locations built around the same time.

InSite Magazine, December 1989. The ceiling details are still similar today.

In 1992, after Rita's had been closed for some time, it became Garcia's, a local Mexican restaurant that ended up becoming the most well-known of the restaurants (besides Fuddruckers) that previously operated in this location.

The ad above came from a mid-1990s copy of defunct local magazine "etc." Garcia's briefly closed in January 2002 following the explosion of new restaurants in the area, with Rudy's Barbecue, Johnny Carino's, and the restaurants in the new University Drive East corridor among them. It did reopen within a few weeks but it still was not enough to save it, and ended up closing about a little more than a year later. I seem to remember it having decent food, but also had this cow head hanging from the ceiling (one that appeared to be made from papier-mâché, not a real one, obviously) that as the A/C kept going, revealed a blood red neck. That was my most vivid memory of it (I only went once).

The building has expanded a bit since the JJ Muggs days. 1704 George Bush East (Kyle Ave. South)

Fuddruckers moved in the location in 2003. Fuddruckers (as a chain) was bought by Luby's in 2010, but the venerable cafeteria chain soon began having financial troubles. This finally came to a head when the restaurant closed "temporarily" due to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis and the continuing closures of its now-struggling parent company, Luby's. In mid-July 2020 the closure was made permanent. Following the demise of Fuddruckers, Joe's Italian Restaurant would operate in the space from August 2021 to July 2022. In October 2023, iWon Korean BBQ & Hot Pot opened (with major upgrades to the interior).

UPDATE 08-03-2021: Some touch-ups, updated Fuddruckers' arrival to 2003, added new restaurant to the spot, removed [Defunct] (but not [COVID-19]). (Previous updates to the post were made in 2014, 2016, 2019, and 2020).
UPDATE 01-19-2023: Updated to reflect the next chapter of the restaurant space (Joe's Italian has come and gone).
UPDATE 10-10-2023: Updated to add iWon Korean BBQ & Hot Pot.
UPDATE 01-04-2024: Minor fix to links.

Post Oak Mall

Post Oak Mall as how I best remember it, picture by author, 2007
Today, Post Oak Mall is a shadow of its former self, with an increasingly shrinking food court and empty storefronts, or larger storefronts combined, or odds and ends that don't look like they "belong" in a regional mall.

While I have written a more extensive page at Carbon-izer.com, I wanted to cover the overview here.


Post Oak Mall opened February 1982, at a time when Houston malls were flourishing, each with multiple department stores, featuring some combination of the popular department stores in the region at the time: J.C. Penney, Joske's, Foley's, Sears, Montgomery Ward, or Lord & Taylor. The stores at Post Oak Mall opened with Dillard's, which was growing fast but had no Houston stores (they would enter Houston with their purchase of Joske's in 1987), Sears (moved from Townshire), Bealls, a small family-owned specialty department store out of Jacksonville, Texas, and Wilson's, a chain of catalog showrooms out of Baton Rouge.

Unfortunately, the mall has kept poor records itself and there's only newspaper articles and tax records to go on. Additionally, because I lived on the opposite side of town growing up, the mall and other area stores (including Toys R Us at Post Oak Square) were few and far between growing up, but the department store lineage is fairly well-known: Houston-based Foley's opened in 1984 (despite original plans for Joske's to join the mall) with the only two-story store in the mall, and JCPenney (moved from Manor East Mall) in 1985, the latter including some additional stores including Wyatt's Cafeteria (as well as a space for a seventh anchor on the other side). That same year, Service Merchandise acquired and rebranded Wilson's, and that continued until 1999 when Service Merchandise closed (when they closed their first round of stores). This would become a second Dillard's (men's clothing and housewares, while the original store continued to carry women's and children's clothing, though briefly at some point in the late 2000s it carried exclusively women's clothing).

While none of the department stores were as large as their Houston counterparts, with only Foley's exceeding the 100,000 square foot mark, the mall was successful for its time. In 2006, Foley's was rebranded as Macy's through a large rebranding (though the new owners insisted on putting dark lettering on the mall's brown brick), which was unfortunate, as like many other similar department stores across the country, had the lines shoppers liked replaced with cheaper Macy's house brands, and the last vestige of Foley's disappeared in 2011 when the worn parquet flooring was replaced with white tile.

 

 

In the late 2010s, two more changes shook the mall's anchors. The Sears, which was a smaller location at 98,533 square feet, had originally been full-line and featured everything that Sears stores had, including Allstate Insurance (which Sears owned until the early 1990s), the catalog department, a garden shop (likely semi-enclosed, no obvious evidence from the outside), flooring departments, house remodeling departments, the credit department, optical, portrait studio, and most everything else. Due to corporate mismanagement, the store eventually shed departments and features, closing for good in November 2018, its store long having been an emaciated corpse. An appliance repair building was built on the other side of Holleman, though it closed a few years before the main Sears did.

Conn's HomePlus signed for part of the store and opened a 40,000 square foot store by fall of 2020, but it did not fill of Sears' space, though still opens into the mall (occupying half of the Sears' entrance on the inside). The other half was signed as Murdoch's Ranch & Home Supply, and opened in January 2024. Unfortunately, Murdoch's did not open into the mall.

The next anchor shakeup would affect Bealls. Bealls was involved in a merger in the late 1980s that would eventually put it as a subsidiary of Houston-based Stage Stores Inc. (with Palais Royal and Stage as sister stores) and for years had operated in both smaller-market malls (like Post Oak Mall, but also Richland Mall and Parkdale Mall, located in Waco and Beaumont, respectively) as well as even smaller towns (in strip centers). In late 2019 it was announced Stage Stores would close the store and convert the store to Gordmans, shortly before announcing to do the same to the rest of the chain (with the remaining stores like those small-town Bealls being kicked to the curb). In March 2020, it did re-open as Gordmans, which only lasted a few weeks before COVID-19 shut down "non-essential businesses". It was a fatal blow to Stage Stores (which had been struggling), and after the mall reopened a few months later, Stage Stores began a store closing sale as the whole chain went out of business.

Finally, the mall was hit with the closure of Macy's in early 2021. It was clear that the Macy's rebranding of the mid-2000s had failed and Macy's was clearing out the smaller-town markets. Like many of the other Macy's closed around this time, Macy's at Post Oak Mall had turned part of its space into "Backstage at Macy's", a store-within-a-store with some off-price items. This space actually felt like a different store but was poorly merchandised (the signage for the departments in this section didn't match up with what was actually sold, and some merchandise was just on tables). Within a few years, the Macy's building was bought by the city, allegedly for a recreation center owned by the city, but it continues to languish.

Dillard's (the original building) still has many of its wood paneling from the 1980s (especially the backroom areas, which I unfortunately do not have photos of).

Like Sears, Dillard's carried a broader line of merchandise in the early days. When it opened, it even had a photo studio, too.

JCPenney, despite adding a Sephora (which is now a generic salon) at some point in the 2010s, is rather run-down. The catalog pick-up area (despite continuing to have signage outside was converted to a "jcp" services desk before being ripped out for a luggage area. In better days, I remember getting a "Space Jam" basketball here circa 1996 (pretty sure they still had sporting goods departments) but today, it's kind of depressing, with peeling paint, understaffing, and disheveled displays. JCPenney's short-lived attempt to add a heavy appliances section on the heels of Sears' mass closings was put into place here but I never even saw it staffed, just noticeable with large refrigerators and other items.

The actual mall area has been given a few facelifts over the years. The 1994 re-do added new tile (based on this 2012 picture from the mall's website, the old tile was covered up) and some new neon around the skylights. In the late 2000s the skylights were replaced with new windows that let in more natural light rather than slightly tinted (see an example of the older skylights here on my Flickr account, and the mall was renovated completely a few years later (2012), mostly giving the mall new flooring and seating areas, as well as altering the mall entrances.

This post received a major update in December 2019. Also see: Post Oak Mall Stores, 1982-1992 and Post Oak Mall Stores, 1992-2002.

Additional pages of this type coming soon.

Obviously, this is not the mall's official page but this is.

UPDATE 03-01-2021: Updates made regarding the fate of Sears, Bealls, and Macy's.
UPDATE 03-25-2021: Minor changes and error fixing. Mervyn's wasn't in Houston in 1982, for instance.
UPDATE 09-22-2021: Minor fixes regarding JCPenney and Foley's opening. Updated a bit regarding Conn's, Sephora, and added back the "Ghost Anchor" mention. Added the mall's website too.
UPDATE 01-20-2022: Added 1992-2002 stores link as well as adding a few labels to the main post for some of the chain stores it had over the years that are also covered here, mainly Sonic, McDonald's, and Subway.
UPDATE 02-05-2024: Updated to account for Murdoch's and Macy's building.
UPDATE 07-20-2025: Updated to account for new Carbon-izer page.