Riverpointe Shopping Center (Conroe, Texas)

This another post that expands on a Carbon-izer page, this time focusing on Riverpointe Shopping Center. While this won't extensively cover every tenant there it will focus on just two major store spaces and a restaurant in the parking lot.

At 230 South Loop 336 West was a Kmart store (#3648), opening back in November 1989 and later converted to Big Kmart before closing in early 2003.

It remained vacant for a few years until Incredible Pizza Company opened in August 2005. Also known as Conroe's Incredible Pizza Company, it was a part of a franchised chain of pizza buffet and entertainment centers and one of the first stores of that chain in the region. I remember when I was first looking into this years ago, maybe circa 2010-2011, the Incredible Pizza Company website was one of those websites that had audio tracks that loaded automatically, so you'd load up the page and immediately it would start blaring "GO KARTS RUN ON INDOOR TRACKS (INCREDIBLE PIZZA COMPANY), OLD MEMORIES WILL TAKE YOU BACK (INCREDIBLE PIZZA COMPANY)" but thankfully it doesn't do that anymore. IPC doesn't use their entire space; the rest of the former Kmart was used for the Conroe campus of Champion Forest Baptist Church, but now (since 2022) is Pillar Church.

As a complement to the Kmart, there was also Albertsons at 220 South Loop 336 West on the other side of the center. The store (#2723 post-1996 renumbering) operating from 1989 until early 2002, when Albertsons pulled out of the Houston market and sold many of their stores (including this one) to Kroger. Kroger quickly reopened it as one of their own but closed this store in 2017 when they built a much larger Kroger Marketplace a quarter mile away. It remained vacant until 2024 when it was cut into three spaces with Planet Fitness and Dollar Tree taking two of them.

Finally, in the parking lot sits Ni's Chinese Buffet (226 South Loop 336 West). Shoney's was here from 1994 to around 1999 (I don't think there was anything before that). Porkey's Cafe was here from 2000 to 2001; Ni's opened in December 2003 and has been here since.

Various Lockhart Businesses (Lockhart, Texas)

Once again, we're working from Carbon-izer.com to bring you this latest post (also see the the archived version) with only a few changes, most notably removing the previously covered the late Huddle House. It concerns Colorado Street in Lockhart, aka US-183, which was left a business route after US-183/SH-130 went around it in the late 2000s.

Schlotzsky's / 111 North Colorado Street
This Schlotzsky's opened in 2018 at the site of a former Philips 66 gas station. The signage for the restaurant (branded as "Schlotzsky's Austin Eatery") is very gas stationesque.

Walgreens / 200 S. Colorado St.
The Walgreens occupies a full block and opened around 2007 (completely redeveloped).

H-E-B / 403 South Colorado Street
H-E-B (#445) is the only full-line supermarket in the Lockhart area. The relatively modern store at 45,000 square feet was opened in 1997. Prior to this a much smaller H-E-B faced east on the same lot (about 25k square feet, sharing the building with another tenant). While they were closed, they apparently temporarily occupied the space of Super S Foods at 1220 S. Colorado Street.

Dairy Queen / 1125 South Colorado Street
I wrote about the Lockhart Dairy Queen on Two Way Roads back in 2012...the Lockhart Dairy Queen was built in 1987 (though Lockhart had a Dairy Queen for decades prior) and although the restaurant style wasn't unique in and of itself, it was certainly very different from the rest of the Texas Dairy Queen restaurants with red roofs and fairly limited seating. It also had a playground, which for Dairy Queen was quite rare. The inside of the store wasn't particularly interesting but at least was quirky, with a "Medicare Corner" inside, but sometime between August 2010 and July 2011, it went from this to this...in other words, into a generic DQ model that so many restaurants were being built or remodeled into. No playground, no Medicare Corner.

Fresh Donuts / 910 S. Colorado Street
This generic-looking donut shop was built new (as "Fresh Donuts") in 2016.

McDonald's / 1330 South Colorado Street
McDonald's has been here since 1993, and sometime in the late 1990s or early 2000s a Playplace was haphazardly built onto the side. In 2014, the restaurant was demolished and rebuilt without an indoor playground.

Caldwell County Justice Center / 1703 South Colorado Street
This operated as a Walmart discount store (#292) from 1980 to 2012, and it survived long enough to get the modern circa 2009 "Walmart" logo. The renovation to a county government building came a few years later. It also has the county clerk's office.

Walmart / 1904 South Colorado Street
This store opened in May 2012 to replace the aforementioned smaller Walmart.

At the junction of Magnolia Avenue and Pierce Street, US-183 is carried on by Pierce Street east toward I-10 while Highway 80 (which joins at East Austin Street) continues south. There, it ends at Karnes City southeast of San Antonio.

UPDATE 11-16-2025: Split off Family Dollar.

UPDATE 12-24-2025: Split off Whataburger.

UPDATE 04-03-2026: I've made new posts on Kreuz Market, Lockhart Chisholm Trail BBQ, and Plum Creek Plaza, which incorporates two other entries here.

Jewel-Osco in Kenosha (Kenosha, Wisconsin)

Taking a break from the exports from Carbon-izer, this is a quick article about the January 1996 opening of Jewel-Osco in Kenosha, Wisconsin at 7014 Green Bay Road (it's part of a bigger shopping center). It was their first store in Wisconsin after some small, outdated stores left the state decades earlier. Soon after, the company would continue into Milwaukee by purchasing Cub Foods stores.

The new store boasted their bakery producing unique products like kringle (if it's anything like O&H Danish Bakery, whose products are available nationally at Trader Joe's stores every December, then it must have been great) and some regional items available.

Sadly, the store didn't last...while it sailed through Albertsons' troubles, soon after getting the Milwaukee stores as part of the company's break-up, new owner SuperValu closed the Milwaukee/Wisconsin stores (speculated to be part of a pre-arranged agreement with independents in the area), back in 2007. As of this writing, Hobby Lobby occupies half the space today with Jewel-Osco gone once more.