Olive Garden's Original Location

In real life Italy, unlimited breadsticks are not a thing.
Besides marketing its food products in all the area grocery stores, General Mills brought two restaurants to the Bryan-College Station through its General Mills Restaurant Group subsidiary, Red Lobster in 1983 and Olive Garden a decade later. (The other two significant concepts at the time, Good Earth, and China Coast, never made it to the area, though the latter briefly saw Waco and Houston).

Neither my articles on Hastings or H-E-B Pantry mention Olive Garden, which sat at the corner of Texas Avenue and Holleman Drive from 1993 to 2004. The old Olive Garden met its fate when it burned down in a fire, and what was left of the building was declared a total loss.

In January or February 2005, a new Olive Garden opened at University Drive East and Earl Rudder Freeway, and by October 2005, two new buildings rose at the former Olive Garden site, a Chase bank (replacing the 2000 Texas Avenue South address), and a second building (2002 Texas Avenue South) holding Jimmy John's and Men's Wearhouse (Google Street View link). The Jimmy John's closed in late summer 2019 for reasons unknown but by that time, a Jimmy John's was operating at Rock Prairie Crossing and near Texas and University Drive East. Of course, Jimmy John's at the latter location has a somewhat interesting backstory, and that will be covered soon enough...

The ad is from the mid-1990s, before it introduced its newer logo (dropping "The" and adding what appeared to be a bunch of grapes to the logo) around 1999 (replaced in 2014 but still seen on many restaurants).

Former Taco Villa

Let's taco 'bout this vacant building.
The former RadioShack at 614 East Villa Maria Road goes back over 40 years. In June 1977, the building first opened as a Taco Villa restaurant (notice the picture) and remained as such for nearly a decade following.

One directory edition from the mid-1980s lists it as a Del Taco, which was odd as while the Texas franchisee of Del Taco did buy Taco Villa but indications were that the owner at the time (a subsidiary of W.R. Grace) wanted to convert the Del Taco restaurants it owned to Taco Villa (to avoid licensing fees), not the other way around.

In 1988, W.R. Grace liquidated Del Taco and Taco Villa, with the restaurant closing with the Houston stores, including this one (indications that Taco Villa did live on, and today operates stores in West Texas and New Mexico, though I'm not 100% sure they are the same chain).

By the early 1990s, it became a Quick as a Flash (likely a facade re-do/repaint happened around this time) and in 1999, it was still a Quick as a Flash location (the directory for that year lists "Back in a Flash", which was a similarly-named operation focused on film processing located inside the AppleTree stores and the College Station Kroger). The directory error also lends credence to the fact that the restaurant was never branded as Del Taco.

At some point, like the sister store in College Station it went under the Ritz Camera name, though it was probably a Ritz Portrait Studio like the other store. I'm not sure when it closed, probably early 2000s.

The back of the store still has some original stucco, giving clues to what the original Taco Villa looked like.
RadioShack, the last known tenant, moved in after the redevelopment of Sul-Mar Center at Villa Maria and Briarcrest around 2006-2007, where it had been previously been homed there since 1971 (originally opened as "Allied Radio Shack", a short-lived branding of the chain when parent company Tandy Corporation owned Allied Electronics). In 2015, Tandy Corporation (renamed RadioShack Corp. in 2000 to focus on its core business) went bankrupt and most of the corporate-owned stores closed. The corporate stores that weren't closed were converted to Sprint/RadioShack co-branded stores under new company General Wireless. Unfortunately, the partnership with Sprint dissolved with the bankruptcy of General Wireless two years later, closing the Sprint/RadioShack stores (including this one). The closure of this meant that RadioShack officially exited the Bryan-College Station market, and today, the closest brick-and-mortar RadioShack store is in Brenham (which is a franchised store).

All pictures here are by the author, March 2020.

UPDATE 02-04-21: A revisit to the area shows that this has now reopened as Fred Loya Insurance. Two tags ([Series: Closed & Closing] and [defunct]) have been removed.

Dixie Chicken

Wish I could get the picture from BEFORE the barrier was put in, but it is what it is. (Picture taken 4/20 by author).

Other than the big "Northgate post" written several years back (and then eventually removed as part of website upgrades), I never saw fit to really cover Dixie Chicken on Northgate all that much. It was never a place with nostalgic value, never went to it as a kid (for obvious reasons!), and it never changed either, which would give it the allure of documenting it for future generations.

The Dixie Chicken started in 1974 when Don Ganter bought a pool hall that had only been around for a few years (estimated to be built in the late 1960s) called the Aggie Den (at 307 University). From some forum threads, you could buy or sell old issues of Playboy, view vintage pornography on (based on how it was described) microfiche, smoke (a no-brainer, everyone smoked inside back in the day), and play pool. The walls were covered with half-naked pictures of movie stars. Don Ganter converted the pool hall to a bar and changed the appearance to, as ESPN writer Scott Eden once wrote, "a honky-tonk as dreamed up by the Disney people who designed Frontierland".

The bar expanded in the early 1980s by adding a kitchen to serve food, and eventually, combining a building next door. This building was even older (from the mid-1950s), with the last tenant being Miranda's, a fern bar. This too was converted to the Dixie Chicken's décor, the exterior entrance covered up and the only major remnant of being it was a painting not covered up by wood (near the snake cage).

Miranda's is visible; source unknown

309 University had its own history. The earliest I can find (1963) shows it as being a location of Loupot's Trading Post, long before it moved into its iconic location at the corner of College Main and University. It was vacant in 1972 (shortly before Dixie Chicken's opening) and as of 1978, it was Farkelberry's Domino and Pool Parlor. There may be a few others I may be missing.

Editor's Note: Future posts in the [Series: University Drive] will skip around somewhat, so next cycle's post will not be about Duddley's Draw, and instead go further down University. Also, as per the last article, a number of entries were upgraded with new photos, tenants, and advertisements. These details will be revealed in future installments.

Former Mechanics Unlimited

There hasn't been much activity here in years.
Mechanics Unlimited was the last known business at 102 Lincoln, which was briefly covered on what was originally called "Mobil & Mechanics", a post published back in 2014. As of this writing, this post has been removed from the Index to be rewritten and updated.

102 Lincoln was likely built in the 1940s (according to what I can find, the city estimates it was built in the 1940s, and it was definitely in the 1960 aerial) and sits on a tiny lot. Known as "Murphy's Garage" in old listings, the building hasn't changed much in at least six years. When I photographed the building in 2014, you could see the the maroon-painted plywood that boarded up the garage doors, as well as some of the maroon paint that was once on the bricks. If I recall, these had been painted maroon after Mechanics Unlimited (which was painted on the outside of the facade) closed (which I recall closing in the early 2000s, though can find little proof of it except in this 1990s-era listing).

Looking inside, there's remnants from Stratta Auto Repair next door.

The pictures seen that aren't linked are the ones taken in June 2020.