Burger King at 7406 Fondren Road

Picture from Google Maps (Ryan Smith, 2016)
This particular Burger King at 7406 Fondren Road operated from 1988 to around early 2024 and demolished within a year or so. I removed this entry from Carbon-izer's Southwest Freeway page a while back (or did it even make it to the Southwest Freeway page?) and that's why it's reappearing on The Houston Files, plus I ate here, back in 1999, with my parents when we were visiting this part of town. I was going to write that there was some sort of Muppets from Space promotion going on at the time but further evidence shows that Wendy's did this promotion, but it was definitely Burger King and definitely this Burger King, because it was in a commercial area closer to the highway, whereas Wendy's was a block or two in the opposite direction and faced houses.

Former Barry's Pizza

In 2001, they only had their original and a short-lived Stafford location.
This used to be on Carbon-izer.com under "Other Houston Roads - Outer Loop", well, as of this writing anyway, as it got eliminated during the rewrite of the page to the new Richmond Avenue page (which will go live within 24 hours of this post going to press, so unless you're subscribed to the blog it's up).

In 1983, Carlos'n Charlies opened at 6003 Richmond Avenue, though perhaps due to issues with the parent company became Carlos'n Lefties Del Norte within a year, likely taking inspiration from the country song. After it closed in 1985, Crocodile (a seafood restaurant) opened in 1987, and was described in a restaurant review as "Bennigan's meets Banana Republic" and "everything about it [was] derivative of one restaurant theme or another" (For a brief time, Crocodile was just a few blocks away from Hippo). By 1990, the restaurant was just the "Pappas Party Room", with the defunct restaurant now being rented out as event space, and in early 1992 became the new home of Barry's Pizza, which had multiple locations in Houston at the time.

By 1997, the restaurant, also known as "Barry's Pizza & Italian Diner" was referred to as the "original" location and by 2019, Barry's Pizza was down to this one location, closing in 2020 (one of Houston's COVID-19 victims). A similar restaurant, Parma Pizza, opened in 2021, but it closed after a relatively short run, and by August 2024 the building was being torn down.

Replacing it was a gas station (Spark) with the address of 3222 Fountain View, featuring "Kare Market" and "Spark Laundry". Pictures can be seen at HoustonArchitecture.com.

Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza at Park 10

This now-defunct hotel got back its Crowne Plaza name, if briefly. (Street View, 2011)
Located at 14703 Park Row, the 19-floor 349-room Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza at Park 10 was one of the first Crowne Plaza hotels in the chain (then known as "Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza", I believe it was the fourth after the third, at 2222 W. Loop South, with the first being in Maryland) opening in February 1984. A 1986 article mentions the restaurants here were "Park Cafe" and "Le Regale". In late 1987, however, it was converted to a large (regular) Holiday Inn, "Holiday Inn Houston West". It still was a nice hotel and advertised the "Holidome" as a feature. In 1995 it was rebranded again to "Holiday Inn Select" (a now-defunct brand angled toward business travelers) and by 2008 was rebranded back to Crowne Plaza, as InterContinental Hotel Group had decided to eliminate Holiday Inn Select as a brand.

In 2012 it switched hotel groups entirely, switching to a Wyndham and closed in 2020 permanently, mirroring so many other large hotels that closed over thirty years prior.

Around 2023 it reopened as Teak, a luxury apartment building.

My 2002 directory for Holiday Inn mentions that the hotel had "Tavern at the Park" (bar), Park Cafe (buffets for weekday lunch and breakfast, Friday seafood buffet, and champagne brunch for Sunday).

Tommie's Restaurant & Club

5850 Highway 6 North

Advertisement from the Houston Post, June 1985. The 5850 Highway 6 address is no longer in use, as it was a different building before being torn down in the early 1990s for a Dairy Queen (which briefly used the address before switching to 5854 Highway 6 North at some point, most recently home to Captain D's). Tommie's Restaurant & Club opened around December 1983-January 1984, but in March 1986, Tommie's became the nightclub "6th Avenue" (focusing more on entertainment than on food) before closing in 1990. 5848 Highway 6 North was also built on the site at some point.

The Commons at Greenspoint

12001-12245 Interstate 45 (North Freeway)

Previously, this content was posted on the Houston Architecture Forums in two posts: "Children's Palace at Greenspoint Commons" and "The Commons at Greenspoint". Built in 1989 right at the time Greenspoint Mall (and the surrounding area) was declining, The Commons at Greenspoint was a modern power center some of the trendy "big box" stores at the time, though many folded by the early 1990s. A listing from the 1990-1991 directory outlined most of the addresses of the stores.

12001 - Media Play (originally built as Phar-Mor)
12009 - Suzannes Shops
12025 - Office Depot
12031 - Sportstown (a chain that went bankrupt in the mid-1990s)
12061 - Highland Superstore (went bankrupt in 1992 and closed all stores by the end of 1993)
12075 - Cloth World (opened 10,000 square foot store in 1990)
12145 - Houston Photolab (this is probably one of the smaller stores)
12159 - Hit or Miss (owned by the parent company of T.J. Maxx, but smaller)
12167 - Sound Warehouse
12175 - Marshalls
12181 - Pier One Imports (stand-alone store close to I-45)
12231 - Marcos Mexican Restaurant
12245 - Children's Palace (see above ad, closed 1992)

Notes from the Chronicle mentioned a few more things:
- Clothestime was here (clothing store), it closed in 1995
- By 1996, Media Play was closed along with other Houston locations ( Almeda Square, Memorial City Mall, Meyer Park Center, Presidio Square and Westchase Center.)
- There was also a store here called Computer City.
- When the center was sold in 1998 to be a telecommunications center, Office Depot was still there.

Greenspoint Technology Center, as it was known from 1999 on, even featured an outpost of Enron and other telecommunications companies but still resembled a strip mall. In 2013, new buildings were built on the parking lot and the property was sealed off from public access.

(Right click to see the image in full size)

UPDATE 06-10-2026: To help integrate this in with Carbon-izer's North Freeway page, the site is now "Digital Realty Houston", a data center.

290 / Beltway 8 Demolition - Wendy's

16055 Northwest Freeway

This is the second of at least three posts on a small collection of fast food restaurants which the author has taken a personal interest in, to be further explored in a future post on the Northwest Freeway site (this link will be updated soon to reflect that). The Wendy's was among the three fast food sites and others on the south side of Highway 290 to be leveled for road widening. According to HCAD, the Wendy's was opened in 1984 and had the "solarium" design as Wendy's had during that time. It is unknown if the tarp was put on the solarium before or after it closed, as the windows made it harder to heat and cool the building (there was no tarp in 2011). The restaurant closed around fall 2012, and was demolished within months of when these pictures were taken in March 2013 by the author. Previously, these photos appeared on Carbon-izer and Brazos Buildings & Businesses.

Street View of Wendy's still in operation

Randalls Distribution Center

Picture taken by author, September 2018
In 1983, Houston-based Randall's Food Markets opened a new facility at the corner of Telge Road and North Berwick Drive (10700 Telge Road). The new plant was easily visible and accessible from Northwest Freeway and as Randalls continued to grow, so did the distribution center. After a small expansion in the early 1990s, a large traditional warehouse to the south and a freezer addition to the north (the old building had just perishables), consolidating from a location at 3350 Rogerdale Road. This came at about the same time as the chain was purchased by California-based Safeway Inc., which continued to operate the Randalls distribution center as one of two Texas facilities (the other was in the Dallas area, purchased from Food Lion) to serve primarily the Austin and Houston areas.

However, as you may know, Safeway's mismanagement caused Randalls to go from a close #2 in grocery market share (around 20%)¹ to an irrelevant, distant number², and unfortunately, despite Albertsons initial attempt to reposition Safeway's "Texas" division to the new "Houston" division (handing off the Tom Thumb stores in the Dallas area to Albertsons' "South" division while taking the Louisiana Albertsons stores), further sales and divesting doomed the division and a year after the "Houston" division was folded into "South", the distribution center closed.

Redeveloped into "Highland Grove Business Park", the iconic water tank with the Randalls logo and large lawn letting the distribution center be clearly seen from the highway was replaced with the new 10704 Telge Road (despite having no Telge Road access). The old 10700 building now holds Gold Star Foods (apparently a distribution facility for K-12 lunch programs) and a distribution center for Restaurant Depot.

The 1999 expansion was severed from the 1983 building and rebadged as 10620 Telge Road (as of this writing, suite 200 holds Sunbelt Marketing, which Google informs me is a plumbing supplies operation). 10600 Telge Road was built in front of that, while two more warehouses were built behind them on an adjacent plot of land.

1. "'Right' store was ripe for picking - Randalls joins trend with deal", Houston Chronicle 7/24/1999
2. Just a year after the Safeway deal closed, Randalls had shrunk to less than 4%. A previous version had linked here, which is a 404 link, and as of press time, Archive.org is not working.

UPDATE 09-20-2026: Rewrote post to conform to modern standards and new tags

290 / Beltway 8 Demolition - McDonald's

16001 Northwest Freeway

This is the first of at least three posts on a small collection of fast food restaurants which the author has taken a personal interest in, to be further explored in a future post on the Northwest Freeway site (this link will be updated soon to reflect that). The McDonald's was among the three fast food sites and others on the south side of Highway 290 to be leveled for road widening.

While technically in Jersey Village, the McDonald's had the address and zip code of Houston, and to reduce confusion, that's what the "labels" of this post represent.

The address of the McDonald's is a bit in question. Normally, addresses on the north side of Northwest Freeway or Hempstead Road (when they parallel) are all even-numbered, as there's nothing on the south side (railroad), and when they are together they share addresses as they are in parallel. When Northwest Freeway is split away from the railroad, they have odd-numbered addresses. The McDonald's and the other stores in the "wedge" approaching Beltway 8 had both. As a result, legally this McDonald's is 16001 Northwest Freeway but also operated as 16002 Hempstead (despite the signage being 16001).

The McDonald's was built in 1980 (as per HCAD's paving records) and was listed as being rebuilt in 2000 (as per HCAD), which is a bit unusual given that the previous restaurant was not very old at the time. It is possible that it was just renovated, and the paint job of white and red was common to what McDonald's was repainting their older restaurants at the time. The paving record also indicates that it was a renovation as opposed to a rebuild; full rebuilds usually involve a new parking lot as well.

In 2012, the McDonald's closed, and stripped most of its iconic roof in the process. By June 2013, the building was demolished. The pictures were taken in March 2013 by the author. Previously, these photos appeared on Carbon-izer and Brazos Buildings & Businesses.

Street View of McDonald's still in operation

Holiday Inn - Greenway Plaza

2712 Southwest Freeway

According to both HCAD and Emporis, this hotel opened in 1984, certainly by May 1984 when this advertisement was published, advertising the hotel's bar/nightclub, The White Rose Cabaret. While the hotel wasn't quite as tall as the Holiday Inn Downtown (no Holiday Inn was), it was probably fancier and would be in better shape (even as the oil downturn hit).

In August 1994, just about two years after a renovation, it was reported that Holiday Inn Greenway Plaza was being sold to Dallas-based Harvey Hotels Corporation (this is all cross-referenced with HCAD), and the Holiday Inn sign was removed, replaced with the Harvey Hotel branding (and it was branded as Harvey Hotel for a while, with references to the hotel being named as such as of May 1995).

Prior to this, the hotel had flipped hands several times back and forth from Greenway Plaza Inn Inc. to other companies, none lasting more than two years (so says HCAD), but keeping the Holiday Inn name. Despite some articles of Harvey Hotel rebranding some acquired Holiday Inn hotels to its own name, Harvey Hotels began a restructuring, and in late 1995, became Bristol Hotel Company. By March 1996 (the earliest reference found), Harvey Hotel had returned to the Holiday Inn branding, but as Holiday Inn Select, a brand of Holiday Inn Worldwide (owned at the time by Bass PLC, not to be confused with the Bass family out of Fort Worth). While research was unable to find when Holiday Inn Select was created, it looks like 1995, and the Houston hotel may have been one of the very first to get rebranded, even under the Harvey Hotels ownership. Meanwhile, Bristol continued to be a major Holiday Inn franchisee, which took control of a number of formerly company-owned locations in 1997 (for some reason, transfer of the title of the title officially to Bristol Lodging was not official until October 1997).

While the Harvey Hotel name did not last long on the hotel, Harvey/Bristol would have Holiday Inn Select for over a decade until Holiday Inn Select Houston - Greenway Plaza Area (as it was known by this time) would remain until ASDN Houston (from what it looks like, only owned that hotel) bought it in 2006. That being true, it meant that the hotel was briefly owned by Holiday Inn's parent company itself, as Bristol was purchased in 2000 by Bass, shortly before Bass sold their flagship brewing business to Interbrew in 2000 (becoming Six Continents, reflecting the holdings of the worldwide hotel company) and spinning off the pubs and restaurants division as Mitchell & Butlers in 2003, becoming InterContinental Hotels Group. Soon after ASDN purchased Holiday Inn Select, IHG announced a redesign of the Holiday Inn name, which included (among other things), discontinuing the Holiday Inn Select and Holiday Inn SunSpree Resort names. The Holiday Inn Select hotels would be phased out for either traditional Holiday Inn hotels or Crowne Plaza, and by the end of 2011, this hotel would become Crowne Plaza Houston River Oaks. (There was one other Holiday Inn Select in the Houston area, at 14703 Park Row, though today it is a Wyndham).

The 2002 Six Continents hotel directory reports that the Holiday Inn Select (which is what the author remembers as the building during his trips to Houston prior to 2010) featured 355 "executive guest rooms" and 36 suites, plus 18 floors, 12,000 square foot of meeting space (up to 500 to 800 people depending on configuration), and a "Restaurant & Bar".

Google Street View from the present to the days when it was Holiday Inn Select

UPDATE 05-25-2026: Minor changes to match with Carbon-izer.

Garden Ridge at Atrium Place

19411 Atrium Place

Known as Garden Ridge for many years, the original Katy "At Home" location opened as a Buyer's Market off-price shopping mall in November 1984 at the same time as a sister location close to North Houston. (As I don't have, or don't have permission to have, a proper facade picture, an ad will have to do, originally from The Houston Post and posted on HAIF)

Like many of the things we will cover, we don't know a whole lot about the Buyer's Market beyond confirmation of existence, except that from a few pictures it looked very much like Garden Ridge/At Home did, except the "store" areas had walls and names, but it, along with another location on I-45, became Garden Ridge Pottery stores soon after the closure of Buyer's Market. Louisiana and Texas Southern Malls & Retail does have information including opening, closing, and what a total failure it was. After the closure of it and the Airtex location, they became Garden Ridge Pottery's second and third Texas location (as it was known at the time) beyond its original location in Schertz, Texas. (I say Texas location because an Oklahoma location was opened in October 1985 but sold in 1987 due to a disconnect from the partnership).

One of the things about Garden Ridge was that all the way until 2015, it lacked access from Katy Freeway! This stems from the fact that originally a railroad ran between the frontage road and the parking lot. The access question was mitigated somewhat with the development of commercial businesses in the mid to late 2000s, but in the 1990s, only Foxlake crossed the railroad, and Atrium Place did not connect with Fry Road (you had to go up to Park Row to work your way back around). With weird ways to get in like this, it's no surprise that Buyer's Market was a miserable failure, and Garden Ridge nearly filed for bankruptcy shortly thereafter (years before the actual filing).

From what I could find, from moving in around 1986 up until 2014, Garden Ridge Pottery (later simply "Garden Ridge") maintained headquarters here. They also had a snack bar inside the original store (nothing too special, from what I heard mostly hot dogs and other similar fare), using the restaurant facilities from Buyer's Market. While snack bars were introduced in other stores in the late 1990s, they all closed during the mid-2000s bankruptcy of Garden Ridge.

As part of the transformation into At Home in 2014, the company moved its headquarters out of the building and toward Plano, leaving a number of back offices vacant and virtually abandoned, able to wonder inside them. I didn't wonder go too deep (didn't want to get in trouble) but the store was so understaffed (the front end area was massive but only a few people there) that no one seemed to mind. Like many stores past their prime, it was both a functional store and an abandoned urban exploration site at the same time.

I'm glad I saw it when I did. Later that year, I got word that it would be closed, with the At Home being "temporarily" closed.

By late 2017, At Home rebuilt with a new store but it was 127,000 vs 269,000 square feet (though during the At Home days, that 69k square feet used for offices was vacant). There was space for an additional retail store next to it.

Better pictures can be found elsewhere, but I only have two pictures of my own, one of an older map in the offices (I tried to take a picture so it could be easily read, despite in the dark, but lightening it up didn't help it out), and one of a sealed mall entrance.

The Forum at Memorial Woods

777 North Post Oak Road

This 1980s retirement home community (the smaller building next to it is a nursing home, completed shortly after the tower) is one of the "landmarks" seen by travelers coming from 290 and going toward 610 South or Interstate 10. Opened in fall 1989, it features 209 apartments and 108 nursing beds. From newspaper articles, the smaller adjacent nursing home was built as a second phase within a few years. It advertised itself as being an upscale building in the middle of everything. Here's an advertisement from those days (I believe from the Houston Post). Right-click to see larger view.

In 1996, it became part of the Marriott Senior Living Services brand and according to the Houston Chronicle, was rebranded to "The Forum at Memorial Woods, A Marriott Senior Living Community". If it ever did change names, it reverted to its original name when Marriott International sold off the Marriott Senior Living Services division, but either Sunrise or Marriott sold it off at some point, as it is not owned by Sunrise.
Above picture is by me, 2018. Advertisement was previously posted by the author at the HAIF.