SpaceGhost
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Posts posted by SpaceGhost
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On 1/9/2024 at 6:14 PM, hindesky said:
It'a good size property with entrances on the Gulf feeder, Telephone Rd. and Munger St. I wonder if they will provide diesel for 18 wheelers.
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.
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The roof has been removed, presumably scrapped.
On 10/30/2023 at 8:08 AM, samagon said:I would have thought this would have been a great Aldi's, or Trader Joe's location.
I guess we don't have enough super sized gas stations in the area though.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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On 11/12/2023 at 3:57 PM, cdenker said:
did people call is "Circus Circus" back in the early days? I'm guessing people called it that because of "Circus Circus" in Vegas, or perhaps because there were two "Circus" signs in the front (left and right side), so people might see that and start calling it "Circus Circus". In any case, everyone I know including me has always called it "Circus Circus", and I was surprised when I learned the names is only "Circus".
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!
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I just found a building permit for Elite Health Services, which is a company that provides MRIs, Sleep studies, and other tests.
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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.
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On 10/8/2023 at 11:56 AM, Sanjorade said:
The 24 hour fitness was crap. Should replace w/ a nicer gym tbh.
The CVS was in no man’s land.
Whole Foods is too expensive for the neighborhood. Should be a Trader Joe’s or small Target.
CVS is slated to become a Dollar Tree. Work was underway last I saw.
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On 10/16/2023 at 10:07 AM, ChannelTwoNews said:
Not so far... but I've had an additional kid and moved homes since then, so that's why I haven't had as much time to check tapes as in the past.
Every so often, I get a few moments to digitize something though. Keep hope alive!
Also of interest, an item tied to the Cole Theater is in the Parks Bond that will be voted on in November.
Cole Theatre
Assessment study, waterproof and decontaminate building. Also, provide preliminary design/schematic.
Rosenberg
$1,015,000.00
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Went back to get some photos up close of the building, and some of the infrastructure for the new traffic lights. I didn't intend to take these at night, but they all came out pretty good. The photo of the info screen in the middle is to show the progress on the median, would you believe, palm trees are going down the middle!
One of the things you might be able to make out in the first few photos was that water got into the building during its half constructed state. When the dew point was right those enormous windows would fog up on the inside, and the water would drip throughout the building.
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Glass has been completely removed.
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Update: Looks like a stoplight is being installed at Suffolk and Westheimer. Bases for light posts, and a raised platform for the signal box have been built. Starbucks is still vacant, and Lululemon has had a little bit of work done. Some of the exterior glass along the ground level was removed. The median is being prepped for landscaping.
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3 hours ago, mkultra25 said:
Wow, I had no idea this was ever anything but a convenience store. When I was in junior high/high school, I had a friend and fellow classmate that lived nearby in Shepherd Park Plaza, and we'd frequently drop by that Stop N Go whenever I was hanging out at his house.
Any idea of a rough timeframe that King Olaf's occupied it?
Yes, I'm actually working on a page to add onto the blog eventually. In the meantime though, It was King Olafs from 1969-1972. It was the first location to open, and the second to close. It was briefly a Village Pizza Inn, and a Stop N Go by 1973. There's almost nothing online about King Olafs except for a matchbook on eBay. A good comparison of how it looked prior to the C-Store conversion is the Webster location. https://goo.gl/maps/zYKrxrsvF7dWcrsy5
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8 hours ago, IntheKnowHouston said:
I had no idea. Thanks for sharing.
I take it Olaf's Roast Beef Sandwiches was similar to Arby's back then?Of course! The research I have would support the comparison to Arby's. Not an exact clone either though, they were "Danish Themed".
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Originally a fast food restaurant named King Olaf's Roast Beef. Owned by National Convenience Stores, it only operated for about 3 years. It was one of three locations, and was the only one NCS chose to keep, converting to a Stop n Go.
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There are lots of references to the building from 1938, specifically naming Kenneth Franzheim, who at the same time was commissioned to design Lamar HS. You can draw some similarities between the designs of the two buildings. According to this article the building was planned to be next to the existing Taylor School, facing Smith Street, so about where the parking garage across from the old library is.
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On 3/11/2023 at 9:22 PM, cowboybud said:
The founder of Ron's Krispy Fried Chicken was a KFC franchisee, and he's still in the food business.
I've tried their deli salads before, they're all pretty good!
I know Ron was involved with KFC, but I think only outside of Houston. Inside of the city limits, the Hartzog family owned the rights within town and sold them at their "Hart's" restaurant chain. I'm pretty sure the Rosenberg Ron's did sell KFC before The Colonel decided to stop licensing the food and building restaurants. In the end I believe Ron's mostly became Church's locations.
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Weiner's started off as a local dry goods concern in downtown Houston in the 20s. They grew and morphed into a relatively small department store by the 40s, when compared to something like Foley's. Their downtown store was even smaller than Palais Royal. That being said, outside of their downtown store, they had many shopping center locations similar in size and scope to Palais Royal, but cheaper. They expanded to have over 100 locations throughout Texas, and later into Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Back in Houston, as time wore on, their locations began to deteriorate, and as demographics shifted Weiner's was somewhat forced to become a discounter. They filed bankruptcy multiple times, but could not recover from Allison. I believe their warehouse flooded, along with many of their local stores which were situated in shopping centers along the bayous. Many of the store leases were purchased Factory 2-U, which eventually converted them into Fallas Paredes before closing the final stores in August 2022.
As for one in the TMC area, I'm sure there's a closer location, but the one I remember on that side of town is S. Loop and Wayside. https://goo.gl/maps/saYerRvRo3azCjbN6
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There was a DQ next to the Gerlands/TG&Y on S.Post Oaks near the intersection with W. Orem. It's still standing as a place named "Second Seafood" https://goo.gl/maps/ihtB4AdQ54xCDxoV6 DQ seems to have closed in the mid 80s.
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Dollar Tree At 1000 Elgin St.
in Midtown
Posted
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.