SpaceGhost

According to this page the location was: It's a bit broad, but the location could probably be found.

Rax did enter Texas. I believe they had a location in Waco, and probably some up in Dallas. I don't believe they ever reached Houston though.

So with the closing of our only Del Taco location this week, and the apparent abandonment of ambitious plan of opening 40 stores in the Houston area, I got to thinking about the original locations that Del Taco had in Houston. I believe they closed in 1984? I'm not 100% sure on the date though. I know that Goode Co. Taqueria at Kirby and Westpark started life as a Del Taco but am unsure of any other locations, does anyone have a listing?

Yeah it's an interesting store. Let me know when you're going to head over there if you'd be willing I'd be more than happy to tag along and point out things I remember from working there.

Huh I had no idea that street was found. If you check out Historic Aerials the 1953 image shows both streets have been cleaned up, although the one on the left is much wider, possibly from having the concrete removed? By 1957 the left side of the street is fully removed, while the right side is there although it's starting to become overgrown. By 1962 the rest of the left side of Montclair has been added onto Weingarten's/Randall's and the right side of the street is faintly visible. By 1964 it's pretty much gone and what looks to be maybe a car lot? is there.. As for the Weingarten's/Randall's yup that was built first. It was built with the mall in mind though. It had things like a side entrance, and that huge canopy space that exists between it and Walgreens was left so it could be filled in and an entrance fitted allowing direct access to the mall (or so I've been told). Also there's a huge basement under that area that held the offices, staff bathrooms, lockers, and some extra storage until the last remodel when everything was moved above ground. The basement still exists and it still used by the deli for storage, although everything has to be on risers because when it rains it floods, and when management stopped using it they stopped repairing the sump pumps. There's even an extension of the basement towards where the mall would of been hinting that possibly the whole mall was going to have a basement.

I've been working on a 3D model of what Montclair Mall may have looked like was it actually built. It's far from done, but it provides an interesting insight to what could of been. I wonder if this is also why North of Bissonnet Weslayan has a wide median, possibly for support beams from the mall? Well without further to do here it is! I put some labeling on to provide context.

IronTiger may already have them, but I'd like to see the list!

Yup started as Saferway! Also both Brookshire and Brookshire Brothers operate outside of Texas while their headquarters are in Tyler and Lufkin respectively. Brookshires has locations outside of Texas in Louisiana, Arkansas and had locations in Mississippi until they sold out in 2011. Brookshire Brothers operates in Texas and Louisiana. On the West side of the state there's Lowe's Market. They're headquartered in Littlefield, Texas. They've got locations in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado H-E-B also runs a subsidiary called H-E-B Mexico. While they're technically a separate company they're headquartered in Texas and wholly owned by regular H-E-B.

A few things of the top of my head, The Jack in the Box that's at 610 and San Felipe was originally at Westheimer and Mid Lane. The building was one of the old style "tal, small foot printl" JITB restaurants. It was torn down and a furniture store called "Surprises" was built, which later became Bo Concept which recently closed along with everything else in that shopping center on Mid Lane. The Goode Company Taqueria on Kirby was originally a Del Taco. The current Del Taco on Westheimer was previously a KFC. After the KFC closed it became a place called "Window Magic". The building has been the same throughout with Del Taco using a bunch of the original KFC building features like the metal overhang roof, the original front door location, and the original drive thru window placement. The Taco Cabana at 3007 S. Shepherd opened as a Rally's I could of sworn that at one point it was a Taco Cabana but I can't find anything to corroborate that.

Well I would still consider them to be up-scale. A good example would be Veal you know the Art Students working there weren't buying the veal, even if they liked it they would have not been able to afford it. Yet in the article the employee says the stock it because it sells. This was the beginning of the high class "health" food craze. A lady my family knows who's super rich (now lives on a private ranch in the Hill Country) was a big shopper at Whole foods when she lived in West-U. It's a trend that started in California and moved East. And eventually as time passed and health food became more affordable the craze became embraced by upper-middle and middle class folks.

You doubled up on the first link. Here's the top of page 2. Anyways, you gotta take a late 80's point of view into reference here. Most grocery stores at the time had a relatively dressy uniform compared to what we use now. I mean at Walmart all you need is a blue shirt, and khakis. They don't even make you buy a company uniform. Back then most employees would of had on like a smock, dress shirt and dress pants. The managers, may of even had a jacket on especially if the chain was considered up-scale. From what I can gather at the time Whole Foods was considered about as up-scale as it is now. Thor may have been an Avengers reference.. who knows with hipsters though lol. As for the words, they were probably words that the staff used, but no one else. I can ask my granddad if he remembers them as he was getting into Naturopathy at the time and frequented Whole Foods.

Cool, I didn't know the tunnels origins went so far back. Are you writing a paper on the tunnel system?

Ah yes just another normal night in the restaurant industry. I once saw a bum purposely cut himself in 59 Diner to try to bleed on the waitstaff, over a cup of coffee.. By the way was Champs 24 hrs or open late or what? Yeah different joint, the one you're thinking off is called Champps Americana.

Awesome list! By the way the Champs at I-10 and Gessner and was actually on the Southwest side of the intersection. The building was reused as a Jared Jewelry store and extensively remodeled in late 2000. Two other stores were added onto Jared making it into a strip center. The Champs building was torn down during freeway expansion and Jared moved back to the last store position. This article mentions the reuse of the building, and even expands on some of the former tenants of that shopping center.

So who remember's Champs? I was thinking about it during the House of Pies topic, and honestly do remember too much. I remember that they had breakfast, as that's what my family went there for. I also very much remember that they had a model train running around right below the ceiling. The tracks were attached to the wall I think, and it went through intersecting walls via little cut out tunnels. They also had a section with giant curved windows, kinda a greenhouse like area which was fun to sit in when it rained. So does anyone know why champs went bust? I've been able to find a few locations via HAIF but were they limited to Houston, or did they ever make it outside of town? Did they serve anything other than breakfast, or was that a limited thing? Also does anyone have any pictures? Edit: Found a court case from 1988 where Champs is listed as DBA "Maggie's Restaurant" the case is that the employees over served a coworker who was killed driving home drunk, and the family sued Champs. This would of been way before their downfall so I doubt it's related, but has anyone ever heard of Maggie's? I also found an obit for Terry Parsons the obit mentions he was CEO of "Champs Restaurant in Houston and Maggie's grills in Houston and San Antonio." Googling his name with Champs doesn't really bring back much though, so I wonder if he wasn't originally associated with the restaurant? Also found a Chronicle Article from 2001 stating that a group was meeting there. I would assume that the restaurant was still open at this point, but am not sure. It was the location at I-45 and 1960. I even found a commercial!

Anyone know what the Foodarama at 5665 Beechnut was? Seems like it may have been built as a Weingartens but was it ever a Safeway?

Yup definitely was the Antoine one. Which leads to questions about the Southwest Freeway location. Obviously that's not an Al Lapin Jr building design (even the LA House of Pies look like the one on Kirby) so who ran it, and when did it close? I tried checking HCAD but couldn't find it in the database.. I'll ask my parents later as our church at the time was right down Bissonnet. I do remember going to breakfast after church somewhere in the area with a train that ran around right below the ceiling inside the building. Although if I recall correctly that was a Champs off of Gessner..

Did some more digging and checked out House of Pie's website on Archive.org There's absolutely no mention of the Antoine location until 2007. When the homepage says Sorry, Antione location is closed. (misspelling is how it appeared on the website.) This noticed stayed up for about a year. I also found a LoopNet listing stating that they had to close the location due to "Health Issues". A post from here on HAIF in 2006 mentions the location. Finally I found a thread on reddit which references the location on 59 that UtterlyUrban was talking about. They confirm that it was indeed a House of Pies. Also one of the redditors called House of Pies and asked about the third location and that they were told that it was owned by a different person than the two current locations.

Ah okay so the Antoine location would have been opened by the Houston owners and not franchised from the original company. I wonder what happened with the 1960 location. Also by that time it would of been the local company and not the franchise I presume. Yeah I would assume that's what was on the menu. I found a Grease Trap inspection log that lists the House of Pies Antoine trap was last inspected in 2006 does that correlate with when they closed, also does anyone know when they opened? I remember that particular restaurant operating as a "Kettle" right before is became the Scooter Store but I think previous to that it was an IHOP. I could be wrong but I don't remember it ever being a House of Pies.

So I was at The House of Pies on Kirby today, when I noticed they got a new sign to replace giant spinning wooden board that had Seat Yourself, and Wait to be Seated on it. On the back of the new sign they had taped up what looked like an old menu folded inside out. It had pictures of pies on one side and the logo covering them, on the left side it had a list of locations. It have previously said 3 locations but someone had covered it with Sharpie, along with the info for the third location. So does anyone remember where this third location was? Were there any other locations in Houston other than these three, as I know House of Pies was a pretty big chain up until the early 80s. So it's possible that others didn't survive to exist as part of the Houston owned chain.

Ah yes Phar-Mor! One of the reasons we have Department stores with pharmacies now. I had forgotten that Phar-Mor operated down here. I'd only looked into their Midwestern operations. By the time I moved to the area that part of the strip center was abandoned. I know that only part of the strip center was torn down to build HEB. What else was in that strip center? Wasn't there a movie theater or something? Or was Phar-Mor just that big?

My mom LOVED Garden Ridge. She shopped at the one in the old Deauville Fashion Mall in Stafford constantly. We were there so much that one time while she was shopping I went ot the cafe to sit. At the same point a bunch of men in masks ran out of the Sam's Club next door which had just been robbed. It turns out one of my future bosses was actually in Sams when it was being robbed lol. So I'm quite familiar with the chain, and its selection. In my opinion the quality of product selection did go down a bit when the chain emerged from bankruptcy. However since at least the 90's the selection had not really changed. It's mostly a bunch of the same stuff just cheaper quality.

It was fully demolished. The whole lot with the exception of the gas station on the corner of Westheimer and Weslayan, was demolished when Central Market moved in. The west end of the KRIV building lined up with the property line. The building was a little bit wider than the staff parking lot/receiving area of Central Market. The building took up about 3/4th of the property space North to South with the final 1/4th dedicated to a parking lot. While the entrances to the building, signage, and prime offices did face the East the parking lot entrances/exits were on Westheimer. The rest of the lot contained another office building near the Westheimer side, apartments near Weslayan, a Dot Coffee Shop location, and the aforementioned gas station. The original concept was to tear all this down and build a shopping center called "City Center" although the developer couldn't secure any tenants at the price it was asking. Crate and Barrel was looking to move in although they ended up in Highland Village after being offered a cheaper rate. Apparently after sitting on the vacant property for around 2 or so years the developer sold it all to H-E-B. You can read more about the sale of the land and the "proposed" H-E-B here. Best part is all the predictions came true even though they eventually got rid of the valet parking and drive thru.

Walgreens is moving from it's current location at 3900 Westhimer down to the former Safeway caddy corner across Weslayan. I believe that the Walgreens location started as a Sav-On Drugs (May have been something different at the start though) and the new location of course started as a Safeway was sold to Apple Tree and was eventually bought by rice in 1994. The location closed in 2012 and was sold to The Fresh Market which only operated around 7 months. After sitting vacant for some time Walgreens has decided to move in. Unfortunately all of the Safeway look on the interior was lost during The Fresh Market, about half of the original Safeway exterior including the original two sided entrance was lost as well.

Oh cool! Glad you saw it. The sign was not demolished by the Katy Freeway Expansion but rather, when Dixies vacated the building. I don't remember for sure if it was El Tiempo, or the realtor who removed it however.