Hearne Wal-Mart (Hearne, Texas)

From The Eagle (1991), source linked below.
Before it even reached 300 stores, Wal-Mart was mostly opening small stores in smaller markets, and Hearne, Texas, was no exception with store #291 at 1201 W. Brown Street, opening in September 1980.

Most of these stores are still open or replaced with Supercenter stores that share the same store number, Hearne, though, is an exception. In late 1990 it announced its closure—its short tenure making the New York Times (archive).

New York Times posits the oft-repeated theory that the larger store #322 in Bryan (located at 3113 South Texas Avenue and opened in 1982) had something to do with its closure, though that was over 20 miles away. It doesn't make much sense; after all, store 1150 at 1815 Brothers Blvd. co-exists with store #273 in Navasota, which is closer (a straight-shot of 20 miles, hardly any stoplights) and has co-existed since day one. Even when #1150 became a Supercenter, #273 never changed much.

But what really happened? In October 1990, there was a Ku Klux Klan rally in Hearne where a Klan higher-up, Michael D. Lowe, accused the Wal-Mart of closing because of theft, including shoplifting by employees. Wal-Mart denied all accusations. It wasn't in response to the demographics of shoplifters but a spokesman for Wal-Mart was quoted as saying, "To the best of my knowledge employee theft is no more a problem at that store than in any other store in any other company. The reason the store is being closed is because it is unprofitable. Period." The mayor (and serving municipal judge) had heard less than 15 theft cases over the last few years but conceded that "if there is a problem at Wal-Mart, it is occurring within the store."

The Wal-Mart closure left bitterness either way, with the store apparently never having turned a profit.

Eventually, Hearne was able to buy back the building from Wal-Mart and after a renovation that expanded the building, the store became the new home of Hearne High School, first opening for the fall 2004 school year and been around ever since. However, that article in the previous link does apparently confirm what was long-suspected...that it was employee theft after all. With that, we are left with two choices on what actually happened. The most likely scenario is that Wal-Mart lied through their teeth on what the closure was (after all, it's not like corporations are bound to tell the truth about everything and they'd also deny that their store had anything to do with the demise of downtown). The second, far less likely scenario is that Michael Lowe made up the "employee shoplifting" accusation and that's what the 2004 article ran with (which would look way worse for everyone involved).

Karolyi's Gym (Houston, Texas)

Per Google Street View (c. 2017), the building's current use is a warehouse but I can't imagine it looked that much different in its gymnasium days (if it all). The warehouse-like building at 17203 Bamwood Road, just off FM 1960 West, has a bit of an interesting history. In 1980, a gymnastics center at 17203 Bamwood was built, known as "Gym-an-i Gymnastics Center". In the early 1980s, recently defected Olympics team trainer Béla Károlyi invested in the gym and ended up buying it in 1982 (renaming it as "Karolyi's Gym") and spurring the creation of many similar facilities in the area. In 1996, the Bamwood facility was purchased by James Holmes of College Station and renamed Acrofit Gymnastics (more on Acrofit Gymnastics can be seen at Brazos Buildings & Businesses). Károlyi continued to operate Karolyi Ranch until it was shut down as part of the USA Gymnastics sex abuse scandal (Karolyi passed away in 2024).

This facility continued to operate as Acrofit until around 2000 when Acrofit opened a new facility at 2103 Anders Lane in Kemah. I'm not sure if both locations co-existed at the same time (probably not) but this location was gone by 2004 (which was when the College Station location closed).

High Energy Lighting Inc. was later here and which has since renamed Famous Stages, Inc. and is in use as their warehouse (their showroom is elsewhere in town).

This is an updated version of what originally appeared on Carbon-izer.

Bennigan's and Chili's at Beltway 8 and Katy Freeway (Houston, Texas)

I'm redoing the Katy Freeway page and one of the things that needs to be covered is the locations of Chili's and Bennigan's. I do not have any pictures of my own but the former Bennigan's (originally built in 1985 as #5451) can be seen at this page.

Anyway, Bennigan's originally opened at 1030 West Belt Drive North (1030 W. Sam Houston Pkwy. N.) with Chili's joining in 1992 at 1040 W. Sam Houston Parkway North, as it was known by then. For a period of over ten years the restaurants co-existed before Bennigan's closed in 2004 and torn down in 2005 (the rest of the Houston Bennigan's closed a few years after that). Chili's hung for a number of years afterward, but closed in 2014.

Houston-based Niko Niko's opened in 2016 and while the website has a dedicated page and paragraph for the "history" of that location it doesn't even tell when it was opened.

Fuego's First Waco Location (Woodway, Texas)

Fuego's big announcement in the Waco papers! (source)
As I continue to re-do the City pages in association with Carbon-izer, we come to 9110 Jordan Lane, one of the commercial buildings on the old Woodway High School site (demolished around 2004, but spent a long time almost entirely empty save for Walgreens). To this day only about 60% of the space has been reclaimed.

9110 Jordan Lane was built as a privately owned 24 hour emergency room (Premier ER & Urgent Care) which was all the rage during that time (though Waco's first), but also included a leasable space, which was originally a location of Fuego Tortilla Grill, a Mexican-inspired eatery serving a menu of almost exclusively tacos, all with varied ingredients.

I used to love Fuego Tortilla Grill as the first location was in College Station (it's not like I hate it now, it's just prices have risen and the quality/selection has decreased, isn't that always the case...maybe I've been to the College Station once after COVID...and once at the San Marcos location) and in January 2015, their first location in Waco (third location overall) opened.

Waco would soon get a second location at 1524 South Jack Kultgen Expressway by the end of the year and both Fuego restaurants operated for about a year before the Woodway location closed in August 2016 to focus on the other Waco location (which was better located). In September 2017, Fuego's vacant space was replaced with Brown House Cafe.