High Point Church (Arlington, Texas)

High Point in better days (c. 2011). This is virtually unchanged from what Johnson & Johnson had.
This was once planned for a full page on Carbon-izer and was stalled for some time due to various issues. Eventually I was able to fix it up for a post here on Numbered Exits. There was a time when Johnson & Johnson (the pharmaceutical giant), in the before times, was not just a successful but admired company, with their front-facing consumer healthcare and OTC medicine brands. As FundingUniverse mentions, this included "the Johnson's baby care line, the Neutrogena skin and hair care line, Tylenol and Motrin pain relievers, o.b. and Stayfree feminine hygiene products, the Reach oral care line, Band-Aid brand adhesive bandages, Imodium A-D diarrhea treatment, Mylanta gastrointestinal products, and Pepcid AC acid controller". Now things have deteriorated to the point where all those consumer product lines got spun off as a new company altogether and didn't keep the name. From what I can tell Surgikos, a longtime division of Johnson & Johnson that produced medical supplies (gloves, medical bandages, etc.), was the original owner of the now-demolished facility at 2500 East Arbrook Boulevard.

They had a number of facilities in Texas with the Arlington facility built sometime between 1970 and 1978, despite this article (and its second page, found here) mentioning it opened in the 1960s. This is because aerial photos show the plant not existing prior to the 1970s (though it may have relocated).

In December 1989, Surgikos became Johnson & Johnson Medical when the parent company reorganized Johnson & Johnson Patient Care Inc. into the company. This added some 20 jobs, though they had laid off over 100 a few months before...but in 2000 just a decade later the entire facility was closed as Johnson & Johnson did more consolidations.

In 2002, it was purchased and reopened as High Point Church under pastor Gary Simons. This is important because news article tell of another church (Highpoint Church) with a campus closed in Arlington, Tennessee over the improprieties of their pastor Andy Savage. In the case of this High Point Church, no scandal, but they did get foreclosed on by their lenders and closed in 2014. It was wrecked a few years later for warehouses, the only remnants being a large pond and drainage area.

Long John Silver's/A&W (Austin, Texas)

Google Maps Street View, notice the bit of blue poking out from the A&W side
Our next post is another Austin Carbon-izer.com post, this time focusing on 1910 West Ben White Boulevard. Fast-food seafood chain Long John Silver's opened here in 1993 (relocating from 4315 S. Manchaca Road, now S. Menchaca Road, though I can't confirm where it might've been, even accounting for ROW demolition). By 2007 it was a Long John Silver's/A&W combo store, but it closed sometime in the second half of 2022. Within two years it had been knocked down and replaced with a Dutch Bros Coffee.

A previous use of the address was found in 1983 with Ace Drugs.

CEFCO Travel Center #55 (Snook, Texas)

Upon hearing that Casey's purchased Fikes Wholesale and by extension, CEFCO, I had to visit one just to say I did before the big changeover (they have already converted three new CEFCO stores into Casey's as a prototype).

From 1997 to 2005, this was a gas station/convenience store called "Twister's" (likely an Exxon) with CEFCO buying it in 2005 and converting it their name (CEFCO #55). CEFCO converted the gas brand to their name between 2018 and 2022. All pictures were taken by author, April '25.

Abandoned Hempstead Shell (Hempstead, Texas)

My picture from April 2018
There are about half a dozen dedicated entries on Carbon-izer.com where I wrote on specific buildings, and I'll be writing about them here as part of a bigger reorganization of the site. The first is The Abandoned Hempstead Shell, a dead gas station just off Highway 290 and Highway 6 since the 1990s. I won't recopy the entire post content here, this is just a link to the page in question.

Holiday Inn SunSpree Resort Galveston (Galveston, Texas)

From the hotel's official website. It hasn't made any structural changes to the hotel despite the loss of the branding. I wanted to expand on this one (another Carbon-izer import). The Holiday Inn SunSpree Resort brand was started around 1994 with conversions of 18 existing Holiday Inn hotels in Mexico, Canada, and the United States and by the mid-2000s had expanded to several more properties, though I don't ever remember staying in one, and the only thing that really seemed to differentiate it from a regular Holiday Inn was the "KidSpree Vacation Club" (children's activities)— for this reason it was probably discontinued and folded into other brands when Holiday Inn did its major brand refresh in 2007.

From a hotel directory, c. 2004. Personal collection. Galveston was one of the later additions to the chain, opening in 2005 at 1702 Seawall Boulevard, keeping its logo and brand several years past the discontinuation of the brand, and becoming Galveston Beach Hotel in 2014 during its renovation into a DoubleTree by Hilton. The new Doubletree By Hilton Hotel - Galveston Beach, officially opened February 2015. The original construction demolished a few Seawall Boulevard businesses, the eastern terminus block of Avenue O 1/2, and the houses along it...but not actually the original 1702 Seawall Boulevard address. The older building that shares the 1702 Seawall Boulevard is currently vacant--this was Salt Water Shop (surf shop and bike rentals) until the mid-2010s, until it moved to the space next door. It looks like it may be used as the hotel for event space.

I couldn't find any good pictures of the hotel when it was a Holiday Inn SunSpree Resort, there's one here and of course Street View.

Additionally, it features 100 rooms and six suites on six floors (per a 2005 hotel directory) and there's a partially enclosed bar (serves some food items), Longboard Pool Bar (formerly Captain Jacks under Holiday Inn) between the pool and the street.

Big's Meat Market (Buda, Texas)

Big's Meat Market sent out a postcard with their menu and other items. I previously mentioned this in a directly imported post but I wanted to revisit this former Arby's, first discussed at Carbon-izer.com, this former Arby's at 270 Old San Antonio Road opened in late 2008 and in mid-2022 it was purchased by Texas Sausage Company and shut down, quickly reopening as Big's Meat Market, on July 1, 2022. Based on the article previously linked there wasn't much of a gap between purchase of the building and the opening of Big's Meat Market. Big's Meat Market permanently closed in late March 2023 following a "sudden and unexpected loss in staffing" (no doubt some sort of drama involving employees leaving en masse). It reopened as El Pollo Rico by the end of the year.

Google Maps Link