10225 Katy Fwy.

[IronTiger]

This building is near Memorial City Mall and is a strip center with two tenants, Office Depot and Sports Authority. Sports Authority went out of business last year, and when Sports Authority moved in around 2005 (maybe 2004) it was Service Merchandise (which either closed in 1999 or 2002). Office Depot has been there since at least 1988 (as per the Houston Post--and given that Office Depot was founded two years prior in Florida, it hadn't been there for very long), and the Service Merchandise was there since 1985 at least since it converted Wilson's, a catalog showroom out of Baton Rouge.

 

However, the building was there since 1973 and HCAD lists it as a "discount warehouse store" in terms of the building type. It's possible when it was converted from Wilson's, Service Merchandise downscaled (Wilson's had a lot of lines that Service Merchandise didn't sell, it was said that more than half of the inventory Wilson's sold wasn't compatible with Service Merchandise's model), but the building is around 80,000 square feet, which seems right for a discount grocery warehouse store or something similar. Was there anything here pre-dating Wilson's, or did Service Merchandise sub-lease the space to Office Depot, which also seems plausible?

[SpaceGhost]

Hmm, I wonder if it would have been an old discount chain eg: Fedmart, Gibsons... etc.

[IronTiger]

11 hours ago, SpaceGhost said:

Hmm, I wonder if it would have been an old discount chain eg: Fedmart, Gibsons... etc.

Globe (later FedMart) was just on the other side at the southwest corner of Gessner and Katy Freeway. Sage was at the southwest of Beltway 8 and I-10.

 

I don't think Gibson's ever operated in Houston. It is too bad the Houston 1970s papers are not easily online, I'm sure it has answers.

 

[Ross]

Oshmans moved there in 2003 or so https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/stories/2003/11/10/newscolumn3.html

[IronTiger]

5 hours ago, Ross said:

Oshmans moved there in 2003 or so https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/stories/2003/11/10/newscolumn3.html

An "expected" move may have been delayed. I found a reference in the Chronicle about Continental closing 3 ticketing offices in Houston, and one of them was explicitly "Oshman's on Gessner" and this was September 2004. By May 2005, the Oshman's store on Gessner had been leveled. According to the Chronicle, it was announced that all nine Oshman's sporting goods stores in Houston (likely all SuperSports by this point) will be rebranded as The Sports Authority.

 

Lane says the relocation is a wise move for Oshman's. He says the company's 80,000-square-foot store is too large, outdated and inefficient.

The move is expected to take place by the middle of next year [(which be 2004, since the article was published in 2003)].

Once a Houston-based, publicly traded company, Oshman's Sporting Goods Inc. was purchased in 2001 by Denver-based Gart Sports Inc. in an $84 million cash-and-stock deal.

 

So opening in "2004 or 2005" seems definitely likely, especially if they waited until after the Christmas season to move. Regardless, since Wilson's was there prior to Service Merchandise and we know of the merchandise incompatibility problem, that's the theory I'm running with, but it still begs the question if they opened as early as the early 1970s.

[IronTiger]

I did some looking in newspaper archives. It was a Wilson's in the 1970s.