Restaurants of 4527 Lomitas Street (Houston, Texas)

The original 4527 Lomitas Street was this apartment building. (Houston Chronicle, 09/23/1951).
I've updated Carbon-izer.com again. Most of the action in Houston focuses on North Freeway and Gulf Freeway, but Southwest Freeway still received an update.

Among the many restaurants facing Southwest Freeway, we have what is currently a Twin Peaks; however, it doesn't have a Southwest Freeway address and is currently ineligible to be added to that list. Instead, it's Lomitas Drive, a small street functioning as an alley to the nearby restaurants.

4527 Lomitas Street has served as a variety of restaurants (with one exception) over the years. After replacing the circa-1951 apartment building that sat in the lot, the first restaurant to be in the spot was a Cajun restaurant named Gator's (opened 1987), but in 1991 it closed and was replaced by a new location of Pico's Mexican Restaurant (better known as Pico's Mex-Mex). Around 1996-1997 it closed and became Scottsdale's Restaurant in 1998. Scottsdale's retooled in early 2000 as "The Field House Restaurant & Bar" By 2000 Scottsdale's had closed and reopened as The Field House Restaurant & Bar, a more sports bar-style establishment (with some changes, such as discarding the notorious practice of charging for bread...but that only operated for less than two months. El Buen Bife Grill ("Argentine Steak House & Tango Bar") opened in October 2001. This renamed to simply "Argentina Grill" in late 2002 and closing around the end of 2004. Oddly, in the mid-2000s (to the late 2000s) this was Fish Gallery (fish and aquarium supplies—not a restaurant!) before a renovation to Twin Peaks around 2011-2012, which has been here since, and surviving the bankruptcy of parent company FAT Brands, which had acquired it in 2020.

Here's Google Street View, and below are some of the advertisements of the restaurants that called 4527 Lomitas home over the years.

Holiday Inn & Suites Owatanna (Owatanna, Minnesota)

Not the greatest picture. It seems it was supplied by the hotel to Yelp back in 2010 (cropped)
Back a few years ago when we covered the Grand Rios Indoor Water Park Hotel in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, I had linked to an article mentioning another Minnesota hotel that was built a waterpark hotel in 1999, not trying to retrofit one onto a struggling hotel as part of an attempted turnaround attempt. What happened to that hotel?

Well, we know that this waterpark was far more modest than the more elaborate (outdoor) one in the Lake Buena Vista area (even before the partnership with Nickelodeon). It's also very isolated, between a Cabela's (now Bass Pro Shops) and a mostly-failed outlet mall.

Up until 2019 this remained a Holiday Inn & Suites with the waterpark (yes, before COVID) when it closed for a reason I'm not sure of (see article here). Within short order the hotel became Motel 6 and at the time I wrote the post on (I assume the waterpark never opened after COVID) and at the time I wrote about the Brooklyn Park hotel, it was closed. From what I remember reading of some of the reviews was that the waterpark may have been open in some capacity, but not to its full extent.

HotelPlanner.com currently has a description of the hotel when it was a Holiday Inn.

The Holiday Inn Hotel & Suites Owatonna home of the Great Serengeti Indoor Water Park! Come experience the adventure! Our award winning hotel, located just 40 minutes south of Mpls/St Paul and next to Cabela's, features 130 guest rooms and suites, including Kidsuites. We offer amenities for business or pleasure. The Great Serengeti Indoor Water Park features the exciting Kilimanjaro Tube Slide, Python Body Slide, The Relaxing Lazy Zambezi River, Zero Depth Entry activity pool, Water Basketball and relaxing waterfall spa. Our African Serengeti themed water park is decorated with trees, life-size giraffe, hippopotamus kids slide, spraying elephant and a mischievous monkey. The park features Café Zanzibar, our pool side café for snacks, drinks and even dinner. The Lion's Den features a large selection of the latest video games, as well as interactive games for adults and children of all ages. For the business traveler our guest rooms feature a spacious work desk, we offer complimentary high speed wireless internet, and a business center. Our Meeting/Banquet facility features 5 meeting rooms with multiple room combinations for up to 400 people. Events at the Holiday Inn Owatonna feature personalized menu planning with a wide range of food and beverage selections available. We have banquet and meeting specialists, as well as support service, on staff to assist with your event. For shopping, we're located adjacent to Cabela's – MN 2nd largest tourist attraction, and the Medford Outlet Mall is only 2 minutes away featuring several new stores, including Old Navy.

In June 2025 it reopened as DoubleTree by Hilton Owatonna with the waterpark apparently scheduled to reopen in January, from reading elsewhere. Unfortunately, if you go to their website (as of this writing), there's a message that "The swimming pool will be closed January 16, 2026 - September 30, 2026 for maintenance purposes. We apologize for the inconvenience."

Well, I guess that's that. Here's the scan of my 2002 Six Continents directory for this particular hotel (located at 2365 43rd Street NW, Owatonna, Minnesota) during better times.

Cavender's Boot City (San Marcos, Texas)

Picture by author, December 2022
The new update to Carbon-izer is just a few days away, and a huge part of it will be the city directories, with featured updates for Houston in particular with dozens of new entries. But for the Austin area ones, there's not nearly that number. A while back, I redid a page for Austin and Interstate 35 and in the process, cut out the San Marcos entries, including Cavender's Boot City.

While this particular store is an outlot of the Tanger Outlets outlet mall (and here since 2000) the Cavender's Boot City has an even more colorful sign that the Houston 290 one (when that sign has worked, and it's been a bit flaky as of late). I'm not sure on the blue hat but it's definitely one of my favorites and these are cool signs. The picture, even when zoomed in, doesn't do it justice. (4331 S. Interstate 35, San Marcos). Hopefully I'll cover Tanger Outlets a bit more in the future...

Former Super Saver Wholesale Warehouse Club of Memphis (Memphis, Tennessee)

Picture from Loopnet, as a Garden Ridge.
I came across this in Eastern Memphis, it's an At Home (rebranded Garden Ridge) now but sure doesn't look like it started out as such. Indeed it did not. While the Loopnet link above says the building was built in 1972, it actually opened in October 1986 as Super Saver Wholesale Warehouse Club, a new chain launched by Alton Howard after Howard's BranDiscount liquidated (still based out of Monroe, Louisiana). In Memphis, this opened in October 1986, but sadly was short-lived, as the chain was sold to Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in 1987, and in summer 1987 it closed for a new Sam's Wholesale Club, which in turn moved out in 1994 after a failed attempt to own the building instead of just leasing it. Instead it was leased to Garden Ridge, which moved in around 1995 and became At Home in the mid-2010s.

Former Walk-On's (Waco, Texas)

From Loopnet, see link below.
As of this writing (6/25, though will change in about...five days from now), I've got this listed on the Loop 340 page, but today's subject is on 5601 Crosslake Parkway, developed as part of "Legends Crossing", a development of mostly restaurants surrounding what is now the Baylor Scott & White Hospital.

This opened as Walk-On's Bistreaux & Bar (as it was formally known back then) in July 2018 and operated for a few months shy of seven years, closing in May 2025.

As it's a vacant building and on the market, I got a picture from Loopnet in case they decide to take them down in the future. (They also have some pictures of the empty restaurant).

Former CEFCO #47 (Bruceville-Eddy, Texas)

Google Maps Street View c. 2016, cropped
Another gas station today, but this time it's one removed from Carbon-izer (the "Carbon-izer"/"original" posting system is no longer in effect). This entry originally appeared on the "Interstate 35 in Waco" page, though since adding it there were some updates. From what I can tell this opened as CEFCO #47 in 1996 featuring a Texaco gas station (evidence to suggest this was that many Shells in this area were Texaco stations prior to 2003, and an older gas canopy that remained was similar to Texaco's) and had a Subway inside, with the station converting to Shell in 2003 (it was a Shell in 2007). However, the station closed September 2012 (source: a since-dead Foursquare link) and although the convenience store and one of the gas canopies survived, they were demolished between 2019 and 2021. There wasn't any parking in front of the actual building anymore, and the conversion of the frontage roads to one way westbound made access very difficult for local traffic or eastbound travelers.

Obviously this location did not and will not convert to a Casey's. I'll be in the Midwest this summer, though, so hopefully there's some born-and-raised Casey's I can visit and report back on.

7-Eleven at 8124 Forest Lane (Dallas, Texas)

From Google Maps (Alan Calderón), with minor color touch-ups and cropping done.
One of my plans for Carbon-izer circa 2023 was a Dallas page to complement the pages on Bryan-College Station, Houston, Austin, and Waco-Temple-Killeen, and one of the things I was to write about was this particular 7-Eleven, which I had previously made notes about. This gas station started out as a RaceTrac in 1994 (though may not have officially opened until early 1995). However, by the 2010s, nuisance and crime issues led RaceTrac to shut down the store (this happened between April 2015 and August 2015) with the store boarded up a fence erected around the property. So according to this RetailWatchers comment after the nuisance issues shut down the store, neighborhood pressure eventually had RaceTrac do a full renovation and reopening of the location in 2017. Around late 2020/early 2021 the property was sold to 7-Eleven. 7-Eleven never did add permanent signs as the photo above was taken in March 2023. Bad sign—between February and July of 2024 7-Eleven vacated the property, leaving it empty once more, with the gas canopy demolished by February 2026.