SpaceGhost

Chances are they got a good deal from CVS to fulfill the rest of their lease. This store closed with a handful of other Houston area locations in 2022, all part of a similar subletting deal. Drugstores have all overbuilt, trying to serve as mini-Walmarts of the suburbs, and now they're having to reverse course, largely because their bottom lines are being undercut by lawsuits and increased operating costs. Some of the other locations have become shoe stores, and there's one in Sugar Land, which will soon reopen as a Dollar General. These are locations that CVS was leasing; the ones that they own, they usually just shut down and let them sit vacant while they sell the property.

Permits make it look like they won't. Fuel Maxx is a newer company about ten years old or so. They started by building stations out in the sticks, waiting for development to come to them. In the first years, they were a sort of knockoff stripes. Open 24/7, included a chain taco shop, and some highway locations did sell diesel. More recently (within the past five or so years), they've switched to building locations in crappy parts of town, on big lots, and then adding a strip center right next door. There's a permit for a washeteria inside the center already. They'll usually have a smoke shop, sometimes a drive-thru daiquiri place.

The roof has been removed, presumably scrapped. Trader Joe's doesn't seem too interested in expanding in Houston. Aldi either, our last store, opened in 2020, and they have not opened a new store in Texas since 2021. A new location is set to open in Texarkana in a couple of months, but they're struggling to gain meaningful market share in the Lone Star State.

The Bellaire Line was one of the first parts of the trolley system abandoned. It didn't even make it to 1930 before it was replaced by a bus due to deteriorating tracks and a refusal by the Westmoreland RR to fix them. My understanding is that the Toonerville nickname was adopted after the trolley was abandoned in favor of bus service. The rails sat rusting until they were pulled up so the roads could be paved.

Update: Traffic lights are up at Suffolk and Westheimer but are not yet active. The median has been completed, and Christmas lights are up on all the palms. Work has started on the parking garage, mostly hanging tarps on the side.

Palais Royal opened at 700 Main and moved to 706 Main in 1927. Both addresses were in the Bankers Morgate Building, now known as the Great Jones Building. The space Palais Royal took over was formerly a music store named Goggans, which had a corner frontage. Palais Royal was off to the side. A jewelry store took over the old Palais Royal space, and Texaco's Offices were upstairs. Although Palais Royal and the former music store, had a small amount of second-story balcony and a large basement. I don't think the music store was big enough to need offices. To facilitate this, each tenant had their own Main Street Address and still uses this practice. The music store moved to be next to Lowe's Movie Theater on McKinney. I believe this was the Goggans building.

Yeah, it was a common misconception to call it "Circus Circus", but those hipper more in-the-know folks knew it was only Circus. The same kind of people who would eat there during lunch, and cruise the Richmond Strip at night. Y'know, yuppies!

I just found a building permit for Elite Health Services, which is a company that provides MRIs, Sleep studies, and other tests.

The site was originally the offices of an Oil Drilling Tool Co that Hughes bought out at some point. It was a relatively unique-looking building, and later a S&L bought it to use for their offices and did so until they went bust. I think they were also heavily investigated so that the first building sat vacant for about ten years while the rest of this area was booming. Bassett bought the property in 2001, I think, and quickly started work on the store. It was the fourth location in Houston and the Sixth in Texas overall. They announced they would demolish and rebuild, which upset many folks because the property was full of huge oak trees. Due to how close the original building was to Edloe and the shape of the new building, none of the original trees were saved. The store's closing was announced in June 2022, among multiple other locations, "in preparation for a potential recession." Bassett said they would replace this store with a new, likely smaller location by the end of 2023, and I'm not in the know if a replacement is on the way.

CVS is slated to become a Dollar Tree. Work was underway last I saw.

No worries, take your time; congratulations on the move and new kiddo! I hope all is going well. I'm glad to see Rosenberg finally stepping up to do something with the theater. Downtown has not regressed to as bad as it was. However, that 2010s renaissance has somewhat dried up. Saving this theater is a great idea, I wonder if they plan to use it as a venue.

Well, this got me intrigued, so I looked up a few permits and have a bit to add to the story. Air Boingo's first permits in Houston were for a lot adjacent to Malibur Grand Prix further North up the Loop. However, it seems this was changed relatively early on, and the permit was reassigned to the Galleria location. The death knell came from the City Council, which outlawed bungee jumping in Houston. As far as I can tell, Air Boingo never officially opened for business, at least here in Houston. The tower was disassembled, moved to South Padre Island, and placed next to an already operating adventure park there. It operated as a separate attraction under the Air Boingo name for years. Here's some great footage of someone taking the plunge in 1993, right after it made the move down there. Interestingly, as seen in the video, two of the arms were removed. I looked online at photos of other Air Boingo towers, and they all only have two arms. At some point in the late 90s, the park got its own much taller bungee jump tower. AirBoingo was absorbed into the park, although still a separate ticket, and reimagined. One arm was lowered to become a "kiddie bungee jump," and the other was removed and replaced with a crane arm and ride vehicle. It was removed in 2017, and it looks like the original company (or a descendant) held onto the tower up until then.

Great find! A&W was here very early. The first records I have on them are from 1923. They didn't stay with the "bar" setup for very long. With the success of Pig Stand, they started moving to a drive-in concept around the 30s and had pretty much migrated to that entirely by the 40s (at least here in Houston). This is actually the first photo I've seen of one of the root beer only shops here, it looks remarkably like a bar. I had envisioned in my head a walk-up stand used in other areas, this is much nicer.

Shambaug's was at 2620 Main and has long been demolished. Shambaug's was the name of the market, which had a butcher, lunch counter, and produce, in addition to a Piggly Wiggly, which mostly had dry groceries all under one roof. It opened September 1927, and was not far off from a modern grocery store. https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/news/openurl?ctx_ver=z39.88-2004&rft_id=info%3Asid/infoweb.newsbank.com&svc_dat=AMNEWS&req_dat=0D1C2A34C3EF45E0&rft_val_format=info%3Aofi/fmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Actx&rft_dat=document_id%3Aimage%2Fv2%3A10EEA3FE61C5B8B0%40EANX-NB-172955D6C4B533DB%402425127-172737998CF1774B%4013-172737998CF1774B%40/hlterms%3A%22Shambaugh%22%20%22Piggly%20Wiggly%22 https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/news/openurl?ctx_ver=z39.88-2004&rft_id=info%3Asid/infoweb.newsbank.com&svc_dat=AMNEWS&req_dat=0D1C2A34C3EF45E0&rft_val_format=info%3Aofi/fmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Actx&rft_dat=document_id%3Aimage%2Fv2%3A14DB39C1C40322B4%40EANX-NB-15C0A700AC9EA333%402425133-15C0A5BE66F2937B%4020-15C0A5BE66F2937B%40/hlterms%3A%222620%20Main%22

That is the original building. It was some of the first commercial properties in the Bellaire Triangle area. It was refronted maybe 15 years ago. It was covered in stucco, I think the brickwork was refreshed.