SpaceGhost

The only mention of J.L. Phillips I found in the Chronicle is attached. It cites him as developing Briargrove.

NewsBank-document.pdf

Would be interesting to see this happen, however Iron Tiger's completely right. Chain Store locations are generally all approved by boards, and only decided on after tons of marker and consumer research has taken place showing this is a compatible area. Also as long as H-E-B owns that property they're not gonna give TJ's a chance at it. Just take a look at the former Fountain View location.

So a picture popped up on reddit claiming to be a Drive-In from Houston in 1957. As with most things on the internet, I have no idea if this is true or not. I need some help identifying if this drive in is actually from Houston. Supposedly the pipes blew A/C into your car.

Anyone recognize it?

So, the Chronicle mentions they pulled out of Houston in October of 85, however no locations are mentioned. The number I keep seeing thrown around is 6. The Gessner location states a build date of 1987, and the Long Point/Blalock location was owned by something called "Casa Bonita" which apparently owned a few properties around town, but none of them had similar styling.

So my advice on finding the locations would be to go find a 1985 Directory and look them up.

A bunch were found in this thread:

http://www.houstonarchitecture.com/haif/topic/29412-lewis-coker/

11 minutes ago, IronTiger said:

@SpaceGhost: I looked in HCAD first, but was fruitless because as it turns out, it wasn't in Harris County. From Fort Bend County Appraisal District, it told me that it changed hands around 2002 (and the "Canopy/Slab" was built, indicating the restaurant change) and was built in 1993. The 2002 date explains why it's so hard to find, as it falls before 2005 (generally, and this may change as the years go on, but addresses prior to 2005 get very hard to find prior to that date).

 

But On The Border WAS correct. I found this Houston Chronicle newspaper bit from 1993.

 

And, an article from November 2002 that comes full circle....

Nice find thank you!

Its crazy that the two Fort Bend Counth locations were both On the Border locations, especially since they were acquired something like 5 years apart!

1 hour ago, ttuchris said:

I believe it was an On The Border.  

Whoops I meant the Stafford location, the Brazos Town Center location was definitely an On the Border originally

Edit: My bad! Looks like you were totally correct!

I know they bought the property next door which was Macaroni Grill to run as a seafood restaurant for a while, but what was the actual Gringo’s location originally?

Edit: I meant Stafford

Crazy.. I wouldn't have been able to predict this!

Also to answer my own question from a few years ago, apparently Fiesta may be moving into the old Kroger.

On 9/28/2017 at 7:55 PM, blue92 said:

Where exactly is Highland Village in Houston? I know where Highland Village is in Dallas, but am confused to where Highland Village is in Houston. Is it on Westheimer east of the railroad tracks that are east of 610?

Yup, from the railroad tracks to about halfway between Weslayan and Drexel.

The shopping center runs directly on Westheimer. The neighborhood runs from Westheimer to W. Alabama between Suffolk and Drexel.

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

I remember that Enron location! It's sign stayed up a bit post bankruptcy, and IIRC the office itself may have stayed open slightly longer than the rest of the company? Not sure though.

I found an interesting article, which is very long but goes into detail about why Greeenspoint failed.

I copied the section directly relevant to this article.

Quote

Another less obvious feature of Greenspoint's landscape is its capacity to host high-tech companies. In addition to its proximity to HL&P's main power pipeline, Greenspoint is home to the convergence of major fiber-optic conduits from Dallas, San Antonio, Austin and New Orleans.

Formerly a retail space, the new Greenspoint Technology Center at Beltway 8 and I-45 is now an Internet/telecommunications switching site and home to tech companies such as Enron Broadband, Splitrock and Level 3 Communications.

"We didn't plan that," says Drake of Greenspoint's underground resources. "But we we're the beneficiary. There's a terrific amount of redundancy here in terms of electrical power and fiber optic cable, which makes this area very attractive to industries that rely on those assets."

As well, the center wasn't fully redeveloped until around 2012 or so. So if you check out Streetview you can see old buildings!

Definitely closed by 2003.

Quote

...at the parking lot of the former Fairfield Market, 15040 Fairfield Village Drive

http://www.chron.com/neighborhood/article/Fairfield-offers-food-fun-40-000-pounds-of-snow-9778945.php

I found mention of it, on a website about a church of all places!

According to the church, the store closed due to a deli fire. They even include some pics! It looks like the church pushed the registers out of the way, built in some rooms and held services there. However you can still see most of the store was left untouched. Really interesting. According to the website they used it from 2010-2014. You can tell the store had definitely been vacant for a while. Check out the Pepsi logo next to the remains of the deli, definitely from the late 90s.

You can check out more here:

http://www.myfathershousecypress.com/about

12 hours ago, IronTiger said:

Ok, given he was 26, it must have been '79, just prior to him moving to L.A. (and before his cocaine addiction)

 

Looks like someone on Reddit has the same idea (which you probably saw).

Wouldn't it have been 1980? Also yeah I saw the post on reddit which is what inspired me. I'm going to go check out the Physical Chronicle Archives soon to see what I can find.

So apparently famous comedian Sam Kinison "crucified" himself across the street from The Comedy Workshop/Comedy Annex. Would anyone know where to find a picture of this?

On 4/7/2017 at 0:03 PM, IronTiger said:

Well, looks like 7-Eleven has a second chance here after all as well as College Station and Central Texas (they bought out Sac-n-Pac a few years ago) after all. Weirdly, I've actually thought about this exact type of merger before but never actually imagined it to come to pass.

 

https://www.dallasnews.com/business/retail/2017/04/06/7-eleven-buys-1110-stores-sunoco-33-billion-deal

I saw this but, my understanding is that they're only buying the Sunoco Convenience Stores. As far as I know we only have Sunoco fuel stations attached to Stripes Convenience stores. So this is unlikely to effect the Houston market as I understand it.

Could be wrong too of course!

According to The Chronicle the original location was 18091 Upper Bay Rd, Houston, TX 77058.

Quote

"It's been really rough around here," said Ames Arlan, owner of Arlan's Market at 18091 Upper Bay Road. "We are certainly ready for a break. Business here declined 10 percent to 12 percent after the Fiesta opened. We are hoping we can regain some of that."

Take from the article "Party's over for NASA Fiesta - Huge, landmark store closing at the end of the year" Published NOVEMBER 4, 1993. The property was listed as for sale on November 22, 1998 in a Chronicle Real Estate Briefing.

Any further info on this? The most recent Streetview from this was taken in April 2016, and the CVS is nearing completion, but the HEB is untouched. Planet Fitness did have a trailer for new members out front though.

On 10/27/2016 at 10:10 AM, Earlydays said:

Used to go to the one on OST in the '60s....Wheel Burgers, Hub Burgers and Spoke Dogs!

I was not around for Chuck Wagon, but this makes me wonder if Wheel Burger at  1073 Silber Rd, Houston, TX 77055  took their name, and burger name from Chuck Wagon... Maybe it was a former location?

Yeah I don't think they've sold any hot dogs in a while.. As for why it never changed hands, I've got no idea. The only thing that I could wager was that maybe this was the front of the building and the change over occurred when the Westpark overpass was being built, and Circle K decided they didn't want to deal with relocating the entrance, windows, pumps (which they kept prior to Ike), etc..

I've tried to find some info on the Afton Oaks store, but I'm coming up empty handed outside of a 1953 build date.

Hey I recognize that hot dog picture!

Yup that was taken at Korner Food Mart just about a year ago!

On 9/7/2016 at 2:37 PM, RudyU said:

Thanks, SpaceGhost! Since my last appearance here, I've managed to obtain a few more professional models from a local model maker. The owner and I became good friends and he was tossing some stuff out. Since I was showing interest in them, he let me take them! I've also made a few of my own that may interest you guys and girls. I will post pictures of them in the very near future!

Sweet! I'm thinking of trying to make some models myself. I want to make them of grocery stores however. Any tips on how you got started/figured it out, or did you just jump in?

2 hours ago, IronTiger said:

What happened to the Circle K stores? I know they pulled out in 1994 but did any become Stop N Go?

 

By the way, speaking of Circle K, one opened at Will Clayton and Wilson in 2015. It appears to be the only one currently in Houston.

So here's what I understand it as. Circle K came to town in 1984 when they bought U-ToteM. They purchased 250 stores, all located in Houston. They then began to expand into the suburbs, until the company as a whole entered financial issues. This was during the recession of the early 90's. Circle K trimmed down to only 68 Houston stores by 1994. Most of the "knock-off" brands such as Super-K, and small chains like Hollywood Food Stores were carved out of the stores dumped during the early 90's. When Circle K made the decision to pull out of Houston all together they sold all remaining 68 Houston stores to Stop-N-Go. Some examples of former stores are 7100 Bellaire Blvd and 5802 Memorial Drive. These stores went through the "Stop-N-Go Progession" that I'll get to in a moment. An interesting note to add to Circle K's departure is that it was timed right after a lawsuit was filed against the company accusing them of firing multiple managers in Houston purely on the basis that they were Vietnamese this made have had something to do with the decision to leave.

So moving on, I'm not too sure on how/when 7-Eleven came to Houston although I'm aware of how they left. They were bought out by a company called National Convenience Stores which owned and operated Stop-N-Go they were originally founded in San Antonio in the 1950's but moved to Houston in the 60's. They already operated around 300 Houston Stop-N-Go locations by 1987, and agreed to purchase all 270 Houston 7-Eleven stores. There were very few closings initially, but they did eventually come with the passage of time and the recession of the early 90's. Again most of these locations that were lost became either independent, or were bought by smaller chains. Eventually in 1995 National Convenience Stores was bought out by Diamond Shamrock. They had no intentions to mess with the brand which was at that point about 400 stores strong, just in the Houston area. Diamond Shamrock would eventually rebrand as Valero, and eventually rebranded the Stop-N-Go locations as "Corner Store" locations. Corner Store's operations expanded further than Stop-N-Go ever did, and in 2013 they were spun off as their own company once again, which Circle K has just purchased.

One last interesting tid-bit I found while researching was that the reason we have/had so many convenience stores in strip malls was that developers who were building during and right before the oil market fell out in the 80's gave free rent to convenience stores to help drive traffic to their strip centers!
 

Quote

A couple of years ago, he said, convenience stores were added to service stations and developers with empty strip centers put convenience stores into vacant space. In 18 months, 200 new stores came into the market, Van Horn said. But he said the service stations made a big mistake by building such small stores because the product mix is limited. The developers gave free rent to the operators in their strip centers, and once the reality of adding rent to costs is felt, those stores are likely to disappear, he predicted.