Albertsons at Kings Crossing (Houston, Texas)

The former Albertson/H-E-B, sitting empty. (Picture by Mike A., 2024).
The following article is a split from the original The Grocery Heart of Kings Crossing article at Houston Historic Retail (I traded with another article I wrote on H-E-B Pantry in the Heights). As of this writing the original post is still there. The photos however, aren't mine—they're from Mike of HHR.

The first grocery store to be built at the intersection of Kingwood Drive and West Lake Houston Parkway was Holiday Foods, which anchored the Kings Crossing shopping center. It opened in April 1985 as a 45,000-square-foot store. Holiday Foods was a new chain, having been split off from the Minimax co-op and Fleming less than a year prior (see HHR's page on Minimax). There aren't any pictures of what the Kingwood Holiday Foods looked like; however, based on aerial photos of the shape of the store, it almost certainly looked like their Santa Fe store spread over a larger footprint.

Holiday Foods would operate for the next decade (even as a massive Randalls opened in 1992 across the intersection) and outlived all the other locations of the small chain. In February 1995, Frank and Sam Glass, the owners of the store, announced that they would switch to being IGA-affiliated. (I assume the ad announcing as such was supposed to be Wednesday, March 1. By the end of April, however, the store was liquidating the last of its fixtures. What likely happened was that despite Holiday Foods cutting ties with Minimax, they didn't cut ties with Fleming, who owned the store itself, and thus when Holiday Foods tried to go with IGA, Fleming reacted. Over the next two years, the building would sit vacant, and Albertsons, who was looking to expand in the area, purchased it.

Albertsons assigned its stores numbers, by this point its pre-existing Houston-area stores had gotten the 27xx numbering, and while its numbering suggests it should've opened in 1997, it wasn't opened until a few years later. The new Albertsons wasn't in the original Holiday Foods; it was demolished, along with the Eckerd next door, to allow for a much larger, fancier supermarket on the site of the old store, and opened the modern 60,000 square foot store in January 2001. Just about 15 months later, Albertsons announced it was pulling out of the Houston market with its stores to be sold or closed. The Kingwood store was one of four stores to be purchased by H-E-B and reopened later that year.¹

H-E-B was building its own full-size stores in Houston around this time with some unfortunately tacky designs with the former Albertsons looking much nicer, and in my opinion, the Kingwood store was the best looking of all of them (by extension, the entire H-E-B chain). In 2016, H-E-B relocated to the northeast side of the intersection where Kings Crossings Apartments used to be (more on that later), building a far larger store that they owned rather than sharing a shopping center with other tenants.

Looking at the other tenants, they're a fairly standard mix of typical strip tenants. The center itself² received a facelift in 2022 the rest of the center received a facelift, mostly changing the ridged concrete facades (like what Kmart used to have) to stucco and some new construction (it also changed an old leasing requirement about only using all-white signage). Going down the list as of 2024 from the former Albertsons / H-E-B we have Trek Bicycle (4311, formerly the home of Sylvan Learning prior to 2019), Hallmark Gold Crown (4313), Domino's (4319), PostNet (4321), the new location of Sylvan Learning (4323), Hunan Garden Express (4325), Ann's Teahouse (4327)⁴, The Flying Biscuit Cafe (4329), Parry's Pizzeria & Taphouse (4331)⁵, Pet Ranch (4411), Club Champion (4417), Yonutz (4421), S&A Nails (4423), H&R Block (4425), Subway (4427), Lynn Tailoring (4429), Next Level Urgent Care - Kingwood (4435), and Walgreens (4445). The Walgreens opened in 2000 to functionally replace the old Eckerd; the original tenant was a Crafts Etc. store.

But what of the former Albertsons? In April 2026, a Sprouts Farmers Market opened as part of an expansion in Houston (a few years after closing some locations in the Houston area that weren't working). It uses the address but not all the space.

While I don't have any pictures of the center, there are a few other pictures of the former Albertsons/H-E-B specifically. (H-E-B tore out much of Albertsons' decor).

1. The only store of this type to remain as an H-E-B is at Kempwood and Gessner with their Clear Lake store closing in 2021 for a modern store and their Pasadena store being converted to Mi Tienda.
2. The best I can find is this one that touts the redevelopment of the center, likely created around 2022, when the center received a facelift renovation, here and archived here on Carbon-izer.) It doesn't help that the former Randalls center is also apparently called "Kings Crossing" (archive), but this seems to be entirely different ownership).
3. The PDF previously linked indicates that there was to be a tailor between the former Albertsons and Trek Bicycle but it didn't seem to be there in reality, there's no door for it.
4. This part of the strip center was one of the sections reconfigured. Previously this address was used for Famous Footwear, which faced south.
5. The original 4331, Hunan Garden, was located in the demolished section. It closed in 2021 (not 2025, look at the bottom of the article).

UPDATE 09-02-2026: In addition to adding the store's number under Albertsons (#2752), a recent filing shows that Crunch Fitness will occupy the remainder of the space.

Shell Express (Navasota, Texas)

Dithered for style reasons and to cover up Google Street View's inadequacies
As previously discussed, this is another "breakup" post, this time tackling this page. The main subject in question of this post is a Shell gas station at 9323 Highway 90.

Opened around 1999 (as Texaco, changed in 2003) with a Popeyes and Domino's Pizza inside the store, and advertising both on the store (a "sign split" with Popeyes, and Domino's located mid-way down), the Popeyes sign has since been removed from the roadside signage (but still exists--likely because they didn't want to change it to the newer "Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen" signage) while the Domino's closed in summer 2012 (I knew someone that worked there--a combination of Pizza Hut being next door and in the area for decades and their location in a back of a gas station was hard to deal with in a small town like Navasota). Next door is the Pizza Hut in question, having moved to 9305 Highway 90 around 2001 from an older location closer to downtown. Next to it is Sonic Drive-In (9249 Highway 90), which also moved from an older location around 1999 (previously at 814 S. LaSalle Street, which is no more—I can't tell what it was afterward, this blurry 2007 view seems to indicate "Market Square" or something like that.

Meanwhile, the Domino's was replaced with Sum-Yum Chinese Food in 2016, but it closed in October 2024 (archive).

Former Starbucks (St. George, Louisiana)

Picture sourced from Loopnet
Closed fast food restaurants is something I was always familiar with, by 2008 I could recognize the corpse of, say, a Wendy's, but a closed Starbucks was unheard of. That was the case of the Starbucks Coffee at 9837 Bluebonnet Boulevard which I came across in December 2008 (it had closed a month before). It was only operational for a little over a year, but luckily Starbucks Everywhere got a photo of it (which has proved helpful in research). By 2013 it had reopened as Dunkin' Donuts, but that failed within five years, and in spring 2019 it became Poké City (poke bowls). However, that appears to have been another COVID-19 victim. By early 2022 it became a Domino's, with the drive-through lane now used as a pick-up lane.