Greensworld

The former Greensworld has been reduced to just green again.

Editor's Note: Welcome back to Brazos Buildings & Businesses! I know I did promise a post on Post Oak Mall, which can be seen at this older post here. It also includes an update of another old post to cover stores from 1982 to 1992. Future updates (92-02, 02-12, 12-present) will probably replace existing posts, such as this outmoded post. But enough on that, it's time to talk golf...

In fact, one of the reasons I'm even bringing up this course was because my original plan was to use Post Oak Mall to segue into another series on Highway 6. That was probably too ambitious, but I have one more story along Highway 6 that's worth telling that I have never yet covered on this blog.

One of the College Station's pre-2000s golf courses was located off of Highway 6, with the clubhouse roughly between Douglass Nissan and the now-closed Ninfa's. The actual greens were accessed by a concrete bridge, and at some point, a flood washed out the other side's connection. I remember getting a picture of said bridge a few years ago (it's still behind Hampton Inn) but I can't seem to find it in my "file morgue". The address is a bit of a question, the 1989 phone book suggests 1101 East Bypass as the address, but the early 1990s phone book says 1005 (likely the "real" address).

As Douglass Nissan was built in 1996, that's probably when the golf course closed, despite not actually taking up the golf course land or the club house area. The club house remained into 2005, with Douglass Nissan tearing it down by 2008 and developing it as an expansion in 2012.

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.

Former Red Line Burgers

This car wash is built on the remains of a small hamburger restaurant that despite making an impression on me, didn't even last a decade.
Before continuing on the Harvey Road series (which will be restarted next week), there's a quick stop on Texas Avenue that I've wanted to cover. One of the "College Station of the 1990s" features that I do remember was a small hamburger restaurant across from Parkway Square (which, by the way, is the most popular page on this blog)...Red Line Burgers at 2401 Texas Avenue.

The restaurant has long been a mystery, since I only remember it being boarded up before being wrecked for Shammy Express Car Wash in the early 2000s (which around 2014 renovated into Drew's Car Wash), you can see the pre-Drew's on Google Street View.

Only did a December 2014 visit to the Dallas area spark my memory as I realized a small hamburger stand was almost the exact one I'd seen in my memories. Sadly, the aforementioned Red Line is now a memory itself, having been closed the following year and demolished for a 7-Eleven, but it did last long enough to make it to a Yelp review.

Further looks into the restaurant that predated Shammy/Drew's showed that Red Line built the College Station store around 1993, and was based out of San Antonio. Even by the early 1990s, they were having some trouble keeping stores, this Corpus Christi Caller Times article about a food truck taking the name has a photo of a closed Red Line in Corpus Christi in the early 1990s.

The picture in this post is taken by the author, October 2019.

UPDATE 04-25-2021: New title, mostly.
UPDATE 08-13-2021: This was Dogs & Such (#2) from approximately 1997 to 1999. Explains why I don't remember the neon hamburger on top...

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).