IronTiger

That's a shame. There's something on the open-source mapping site Wikimapia that explains a bit more about Palace Lanes. No idea how true it is.

It was where Marco's later was at Bingle and 290 (north side). It was previously discussed on this site, and was demolished a few years ago for a small strip with Dunkin Donuts and Baskin Robbins.

Sorry about the Walmart snafu...it looks like the current store was built in 1995 (but not on the 1995 aerial, the date was from HCAD), must have moved from the 1980s store. It replaced what looks like what might have been a quarry or cement plant...it had a rail spur.

Yeah, it would have been 1980 since he was born in December 1953, and it's unlikely that he did his stunt in the middle of winter. But according to Wikipedia, he went to L.A. to work at a comedy club called The Comedy Store. Wonder if this event helped precipitate his moving out of Houston and toward California. Certainly so if he was permanently banned, but it was only for two weeks...makes me wonder if he did something else that got him banned permanently.

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).

There was also that one movie from the 1970s where the kid wants to fly in the Astrodome, Brewster McCloud I think?

Yeah, in 1989 (or 1988?), Fiesta opened a large moderately upscale store with a flagship feature of growing vegetables inside the store in a special chamber (with huge lights, a lot of special care to grow them, etc.) and made a lot of press when it first opened both locally and in the industry. The hydroponics were horrifically expensive to maintain, and they would've had to run opening-day numbers weekly to keep it profitable. It wasn't--they had to downscale the store by 1991 and it closed in 1993. At least that's how the papers reported it. I wasn't really there.

Wow! I made the topic almost three years ago, and must have forgotten it after it didn't have any replies....

Sunoco owns Stripes (they bought it a few years back), and they are now selling their entire convenience store division (including Stripes) to 7-Eleven.

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

There was another one that died within the last five years, "Gascard", located at Tacoma and Karbach. It was torn down in 2013 for an expansion of Karbach Brewing Co.'s facilities.

Browsing around on Google Earth and found a strange neighborhood at the southeast corner of Fallbrook Drive and Fairbanks North Houston. In it, there's trailer homes or small homes, as well as a stone yard. Every house (or cluster of trailer homes) has a fence around it. The roads are dirt and aren't even straight. There's no Google Street View. A lot of red flags stand out, but this 'hood doesn't seem to have an official name or anything. A few things to note: - Received a small "expansion" around 2011, this is why some streets are outlined - Only really been around since 2004-2005 [picture removed to save space, it was just from Google Earth]

I was most disappointed last time I went to Memorial City that the skywalk to the hospital wasn't actually connected to the mall.

Reuploaded pictures due to Dropbox removing support for the Public Folder. This also means my all the stuff I scanned from Houston Post's microfilms is down as well, but don't worry, plans are already in the works to restore it.

Might've spoken too soon considering the division office and the distribution center will close. But the stores remain.

Probably not even that, given it is hard to access and Palais Royal is going to be heading out. My guess is that it will become a modern industrial park, which would fit in with the antique mall (remember that it was a former industrial site nestled in industrial before becoming an antique mall...directories indicate it was originally a facility that manufactured fans). If not that, I can see more of an office building/hotel environment going in.

Gotta admit, it was kind of neat and sad the last time when I went there (2013-ish). There was a fountain...there was a Chick-fil-a Express that had closed for the day...there was perhaps the last Sesame Hut in existence...there was a soccer-focused place (I think) that had action figures...nothing like "Wow, this place is a treasure that needs to be memorialized" but to be honest, I'm surprised it lasted this long. The loss of Macy's no doubt damaged its prospects, and the removal of most of its parking lot (making it a pain to get around even the parking lot, one of the sides of the old Macy's has just one lane open up for clearance) for construction made it even harder. Would be surprised if the Macy's WASN'T torn down by the end of the year. -- Also, when they say "renovating the interior" I'm thinking they'll probably turn it into an office building and/or outdoor facing tenants, they aren't saving Palais Royal and the other tenant they mentioned I believe is not quite flush with the interior either.

I'm not too familiar with that variant of the logo, the only ones I know of is the script one and the "Red Dot" logo. Besides, between Weingarten and Kroger it served as two other names (Safeway and AppleTree) if I'm not mistaken.

Since Albertsons took over in January 2015, one new store in Austin was built, another is planned, the Midtown store was renovated, and one of the Katy stores closed.

Looks like the space was 2104 Lyons, Zone One Auto Storage, was a towing company that has since moved to another location. It also looks like the other building on the site is still standing for now.

Hmm, I was wondering if WFM had pulled out. You know they actually closed 9 stores?

It looks like the triangular part of the lot is the same plot of land by the area just south of it, which a house does appear in the late 1970s.

That actually seems the most plausible, considering I've been told that the object in question has been there since the 1970s.

Geez. I didn't realize it was so covered with graffiti and becoming a real eyesore. Didn't seem that long ago when it was just a concrete building that was an eyesore but still reminded one of its grand past. And in better days, courtesy of Arch-ive.org:

It's January 2017 and the center is still standing. A bit of digging reveals that the center opened around 1991 and Office Depot has always been there. The Office Depot's building is older though, it was a Kroger and the rest of the center was built around it.