1501 Texas Avenue

It appears that the doors out front were sealed later.
Built in 1980 as a bank office building, today this building houses offices for Texas A&M University. A 1998 directory lists it having the Texas A&M Foundation and offices for "United Bank College Station". I'm also told this had a branch of Aggieland Credit Union before that branch moved to Southwest Parkway around that time. Picture was taken in February 2019 as I had no previous picture for it before.

Southgate Village Apartments

Here's an Eagle ad from December 1971, subsidized even back then.
Originally part of the Luther Street and Wellborn Road article to undergo major changes as of this writing (accounting for the huge new apartment building replacing the entire block), the Southgate Village Apartments were built in 1970 and is a HUD subsidized apartment (even going into foreclosure in early 2012).

Street View image, 134 Luther Street

Shiraz Shish Kabob

Picture taken January 2017, I had been holding onto this for over two years!
When I added this post in February 2019 (which itself got transplanted to a new post following a reorganization of the website at that time), I didn't have the resources I do now. This restaurant started out as a rather typical (for the time) Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant as what those restaurants looked like at the time. (It also had the address of 100 Dominik Drive before changing to 110 Dominik Drive a few years later, which it still is today. In late 1986 it closed and moved to Park Place Plaza where it still business as KFC (after a few remodels) and is currently engaged in an ongoing war with the Popeyes catty-corner to it.

In 1987, Quick as a Flash, a photo studio, moved here from Post Oak Mall. Ritz Camera eventually bought it to become "Ritz Portrait Studio" or "Ritz One Hour Photo" (not to be confused with the main Ritz Camera store, which later moved in across the street) and it eventually closed in the mid-2000s. For a very brief time in 2007, this was "The Pump". One of the old comments erroneously referred to it as "The Filling Station" but described it as such:

It specialized in fried everything. They were quite good if you could exist on fried everything. Chicken, chicken fried steak, fried livers and gizzards. They also baked beautifully decorated Christmas cookies. Interesting place.

By fall of 2008, the restaurant was being renovated into its current tenant, Shiraz Shish Kabob, which opened in December of that year. While the heavy lifting was done by The Pump in restoring the building back to restaurant use (I'm guessing that when it became a portrait studio, connections required for food service were simply covered up rather than removed entirely), Shiraz added a fountain to the main dining area for ambience (though it made the restaurant a bit humid). I'm guessing that when it became a portrait studio, connections required for food service were simply covered up rather than removed entirely.

UPDATE 02-27-2023: Complete rewrite done.

Café Eccell's Former Domain

Taken by me, on the last day Café Eccell was legally operating on the city's lease, January 14th, 2014

A few years ago, I showed you the former Luby's, which as of this writing isn't updated yet (when it is, I'll do a quick update on this page to remove that disclaimer), which is where Eccell is located today.

For a number of years, though, Café Eccell was located at the corner of Church Avenue and Wellborn, 101 Church Avenue. The building of Café Eccell, as plain and kind of ugly as it was, used to house the city's first city hall and jail back in the 1940s (built 1947). The city hall moved out in 1970 when a new building was built, and I'm not sure of what it was used for later (the police station was also in Northgate during those days, though not that building). The city held onto the lease and in 1989, it reopened as a restaurant, Café Eccell, which featured a classier, "adult" atmosphere and food that the rest of Northgate lacked, and still tends to lack today.

The first incarnation of Café Eccell closed permanently in March 2014 a few months after its lease ran out (why the city never locked them out is unknown). The restaurant opened in 1989, and after changing of hands to the Dallis family completely around 1991, the restaurant continued for many years. The food was also plagued by inconsistency in its latter days as well as the drama involving the Dallis brothers (a.k.a. Eccell Group), the developers, and the community as a whole.

A few months later the building was wrecked for The Domain at Northgate apartment building, which is only four stories, occupies the whole block, and includes retail opportunities, though only one is currently open (4.0 Cuts Barber Salon, opened spring 2016). The building itself was ready in time for the fall 2015 move-in season, and for a time had a leasing office in the former Cycles Etc. on University Drive. A second tenant, Dat Dog, opened in September 2018. It was an odd choice, considering the chain had no other locations outside of New Orleans, not even in Baton Rouge. The restaurant closed in October 2019, citing parking issues.

Of course, the Domain was not the first development to try to redevelop CE, it was to house "Gameday Centers College Station" circa 2004, a large multi-story tower (about 7-8 stories). Gameday Centers was largely doomed to begin with: the company was building luxury condos for big-money donors to stay in on game weekends, but the asking price of $500,000 a condo was too much* (it would be a better value to buy a house in the Traditions subdivision, which is what many have done), negotiations with the city broke down, and rather than a first phase done by August 2007 and completion by December 2008*, it was canned. The center would've had 10,000 square feet of restaurant and retail space and had even signed a 10-year lease with Café Eccell as part of the agreement*.

*Unfortunately, since this page was originally published, one of the links I had for this page has gone dead and I have been unable to relocate it, as the Batt link is dead and Archive.org does not have it. Likewise the links for the other links seem to be lost.