Former Cover-2 (Austin, Texas)

From Loopnet, taken in the early 2010s after Hooters closed and the awnings were stripped
This was originally built as a Black-eyed Pea in 1997 but closed in 2001 before it became Hooters (2004 to January 2012, likely closed in late 2011), and from 2012 to September 2025 has been Cover-2.

UPDATE 12-17-2025: Update to revamp post about Cover-2, all other entries previously not covered moved to Carbon-izer.

Davis Street in Conroe (Conroe, Texas)

As we continue to process through Carbon-izer.com's legacy entries, let me introduce Highway 105 to you, once a beloved fixture of Christmas vacation trips as my family passed through it. Based on the Montgomery Co. page on Carbon-izer.com, there's a few items of interest to share. Unlike the Carbon-izer page, it lacks the Home Depot Distribution Center at Porter Road as it has already been covered. It also does not mention the Shell/McDonald's in Lake Conroe (that's for a separate entry). This version does add a few new entries not on Carbon-izer, though...

Wake Church / 3830 West Davis Street
Albertsons (original number unknown but re-numbered as #2734 in the late 1990s) opened here in fall 1996 and was purchased and rebranded as Kroger in spring 2002 when the chain pulled out of the Houston area. The classic Kroger logo disappeared in favor of block lettering a few years later. It closed in 2017 due to a new Kroger Marketplace in Montgomery, probably likely because Kroger already had a Signature store just over a mile away. The space was purchased, renovated, and reopened as Wake Church in 2022. When this space was a supermarket, it also had a gas station in the parking lot that was later demolished.

Tierra Cuscatleca / 402 East Davis Street
This was Tinsley's from 1968 to 1985, Church's 1985 to 1997, and "Taco Loco" 2001-2002. In the late 2000s and early 2010s it was Taqueria & Panaderia San Luis, then Taqueria La Mision, then starting around 2020 Tierra Cuscatleca.

UPDATE 08-22-2025: Split off 904 West Davis Street to this post and updated labels to match.
UPDATE 09-06-2025: Split off Fiesta Mart to this post and updated labels to match.
UPDATE 11-02-2025: Split off James Coney Island to this post.
UPDATE 01-06-2025: Split off Speedy Stop to this post and stripped additional labels.
UPDATE 02-24-2026: Split off The Catch this post.
UPDATE 04-17-2026: Split off 1306 W. Davis Street to this post, stripped [Randalls].

Fiesta Mart #17 (Houston, Texas)

Fiesta at night (2017). This is from Google and "Yelper Lou MC". Not mine, fair use.
As part of the on-going reorganization of some of the stuff I've written for Carbon-izer, I wanted to bring up the former Fiesta Mart at 4200 San Jacinto Street in Houston, Texas.

My fondest memories of the former Fiesta Mart #17 (45k square feet) was in 2014 with its distinctive "marquee" facade that lit up the night, and even in 2014 that felt quaint and a reminder of a different time (though it did open in 1988, there were other places from my past that weren't nearly as old as I thought they were). In any case, this Fiesta closed in July 2020. The closure of Fiesta was met by dismay by the neighborhood but there were several problems, including Fiesta's new ownership remerchandising and modernizing the chain, the large homeless population that milled around the area and intimidated shoppers (sometime in 2019 a fence was erected around the property with a gate that closed nightly), the new H-E-B at McGregor Road, and most importantly--the fact that it was connected to Sears' ownership. The store had opened as a supermarket complement to Sears on land it owned formerly used for parking. When Sears closed the store in the late 2010s and handed it over to Rice, Fiesta was on borrowed time and eventually the lease ran out and was not renewed. With the former Sears becoming the core of the new "Innovation District", the former Fiesta reopened as Greentown Labs, a clean energy business incubator. It should also be noted that since at least 2007 to its closure it had a Church's Chicken inside.


Update: I have been informed that the land was originally Rice's, Sears leased it long-term.

Coles Crossing Shopping Center (Cypress, Texas)

Picture of mine from January 2018.
As of this writing I'm redoing the Northwest Freeway - Outer Belt page, and this was eliminated in the redesign, so most of this is a port straight from that site. Coles Crossing Shopping Center is located at 12312 Barker Cypress Road at the southeast corner of Northwest Freeway and Barker Cypress Road in the Cypress/Houston area.

Of note is the main tenant, Star Furniture & Mattress (opened 2019), which used to be a Randalls from September 2001 to June 2018. It was one of the last new-build Randalls in Houston ever built, especially as Kroger and H-E-B (mostly H-E-B) continue to march onwards, and in June 2018 closed permanently, ending the Randalls legacy on Northwest Freeway (the distribution center and Randalls' other store had already closed by this time). The fact that there is a former original Safeway just two and a half miles away, shuttered (or at least built) around the late 1980s shows how lethargic Safeway was the second time around (and Albertsons, its new owner, isn't any better). The Exxon/Timewise gas station and convenience store opened in September 2018 following the closure of Randalls (12220 Barker Cypress)—this used to be the store's gas station and convenience store, and by October 2022, the Exxon had become a Shell (Shell bought the Timewise chain). You can see the PDF perma-linked (2019/2020 version) here, linked from this page. The picture above is mine from January 2015, when I visited the store (it had the "Lifestyle" renovation inside).

Here's some other pictures of the shopping center surrounding it, which is less visible from 290. (Jan 2015)

IMG_1915.JPG - Looking out at the first row of strips, looking east.
IMG_1916.JPG - Looking straight ahead. I was a bit surprised to see an Aggie gear shop in Houston. While these are a dime a dozen in my neck of the woods, it was a bit of a shock to see one here. Must be those graduated expatriates. (Later I found this closed just a few months later)
IMG_1917.JPG - I think these are directly to the west of Whoop U.
IMG_1918.JPG - Looking west. I didn't mean to take a photo of this woman, so I blurred her face out.
IMG_1920.JPG - Looking east, from the vantage point of the previous picture.

Golden Chick (Kyle, Texas)

Former Sonic on Mangum Road (Houston, Texas)

A paralyzed restaurant in limbo. (Google Street View).
I was surprised to hear that Piper's Cantina actually opened in October 2024, and I removed my old page for it on The Houston Files for an even more updated version here.

Originally, 1815 Mangum Road was home to a Gibraltar Savings (later First Gibraltar) bank (1976-1990) and in 1993 Sonic Drive-In was built on the site, joining a number of other restaurants (both fast food and sit down) on Mangum Road, creating a bit of a "restaurant row" near Northwest Mall, joining (at the time) Red Lobster, Steak & Ale, IHOP, Taco Bell, Long John Silver's, and others.

Around 2014 Sonic bowed out of the location after twenty years in the spot, with Checkers renovating and reopening the site in 2015, adding a connection to Pizza Inn's parking lot next door.

It closed around 2019 (when it was clear Checkers failed in Houston, though as a gas station co-brand it lives on), and reopened as Smokey Cheeks ("BBQ Butt Tex-Mex"), which operated from 2020 to 2021. After Smokey Cheeks closed, it was renovated yet again as Piper's Cantina, though it never opened after some $80,000 worth of restaurant equipment was stolen around late May 2022, and radio silence for over two years.

It's worth noting that there's a bit of a kerfuffle on Google Reviews. To summarize, a post made sometime in mid-2023 by one Shanna Burrell: "No food, no service, no atmosphere. 2 years and still nothing. And after seeing owners response to potential customers, Pipers might want to pipe down or there will never be any of the above." This was responded with: "Let us clarify something for you Shanna. You were not talking to the owners, You were talking to an individual who responded to you. You might want to do some research next time before you decide to blast a small business. You have zero right to review our restaurant as it IS STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION and was vandalized several times causing the lengthy delay. Go pipe down somewhere else." ...which is pretty odd as there's no reports since 2022 and has no signs of opening or any press (like a Facebook page). Despite the exceptionally rude and unprofessional outburst, the restaurant FINALLY opened in October 2024. We'll see how long it lasts...

This is an expanded version of what was previously posted on Carbon-izer.