Walmart / 4412 North Freeway
This Walmart (#4526, opened October 2010) anchors Northline Commons, a sprawling strip center where Northline Mall used to be. In its heyday, it had Joske's and Montgomery Ward. The latter closed when the chain went bankrupt in early 2001, and the former closed in the late 1980s (notably, it was not converted into Dillard's as the rest of the chain was and instead served as a clearance center of sorts for merchandise Dillard's wasn't going to carry). More on Northline Mall will hopefully be explored, or at least linked to, in a future update.

Fiesta Mart / 4711 Airline Drive
This has an Airline Drive address but it's basically parallel to North Freeway and connected to North Freeway so it will be covered here anyway. In 1973 Gemco opened a 105,000 square feet store here and its peak the chain had five Houston locations before its parent company Lucky Stores announced in December 1983 that they would all close as well as a Beaumont store that opened in 1975. The normal Eagle Discount Centers, Lucky's main grocery operation in Houston, closed a few years later. In 1984, Fiesta Mart opened store #11 in the former Gemco and has been operating since.

EZPAWN / 4714 North Freeway
EZPAWN has been here since 1994 though it was a Sizzler restaurant from 1980 to 1990.

Ventana Gardens Apartments / 5135 North Freeway
One of the first references for this apartment complex comes back in 1965 with the name of "Northline Manor Apartments", which it kept at least up to the mid-1970s with the purchase of the apartments (later references to "Northline Manor" by the 1980s referred to a nursing home elsewhere in the area). It is not known when it adopted its current name.

Gallery Furniture / 6006 North Freeway
The formal opening of Statewide Homes, a lot full of model homes, was in November 1967 and by the late 1970s it was selling furniture…but by 1980 it was closed, reopening in 1981 under the new name of Gallery Model Home Furniture, owned by Jim McIngvale, a then-newcomer to Houston. It appears that by the 1980s the model houses were renovated into a single building, with the "Mattress Mack" persona born when McIngvale, taking over a commercial and shrieking that Gallery Furniture will "save you money!" and a star was born. In 2000, the store was completely rebuilt with a new 190,000 square foot warehouse and showroom. The same year a (substantially smaller) Gallery Furniture store opened closer to the Galleria, the rear building storage was burned down in a spectacular arson fire in the summer of 2009. In 2010, the store reopened.

Cash America Pawn / 8223 North Freeway
This is about where North Shepherd merges in with North Freeway and continues the numbering system. In the early 1980s, this pawn shop was a Wolfe Nursery (listed as "Wolfe Garden-Land"). The pawn shop still uses the main building.

8711 North Freeway
Facing north towards Little York, this was most recently, from early 2009 to early 2014, Más Club. Más Club was a one-off food-oriented Sam's Club spin-off aimed at Hispanic audiences and had its own membership card ("Sam" spelled backwards is "Mas", see?). Walmart still uses the building for warehouse space. A more extensive write-up on Más Club, including why the building was shaped oddly (it was built as a location of HD Supply which never opened), can be seen here at Houston Historic Retail.

The lot where the former Más Club sits was developed two pieces. The first was the old 8935 North Freeway (aka 8935 N. Shepherd) at Little York and North Freeway. Facing North Freeway, this operated from 1971 to 1983 as a Safeway. In 1983, it was converted to Drugs for Less, a deep-discount drugstore concept owned by Safeway before it was closed in 1986. It was later absorbed by 8711 to the south, Archer AMC/Jeep, which operated from 1971 to 2004.

10241 North Freeway
This location used to be a Builder's Square, a home improvement store operated by Kmart. It was developed as part of a larger power center with other Kmart concepts at the time (including a regular Kmart). In 1999, the store closed just shy of its 8th anniversary. The conversion to Fry's Electronics in 2000, its better-known successor, involved rebuilding the garden center as retail space, with the expansions taking it to just shy of a 140,000 square feet space. Sadly, in early 2021, it closed with the rest of the Fry's Electronics chain. Some photos and thoughts of this Fry's can be seen at the Fry's Electronics page on this website. In 2024, demolition began for a new Joe V's Smart Shop (the building was totally wrecked).

Express Inn / 9025 North Freeway
This tortured motel has gone under several names. In 1982 (when it opened) it was a Travelodge, in mid-1990 had become "Houston North End" and in 1991 had become a Days Inn. From what I can tell, based on the evidence I have, it looks like it closed in 2006 but reopened in spring 2007 with "brand new rooms", before closing by February 2008.

Between 2008 and 2011 the hotel had already reopened as a Super 8 (which made the sign much smaller), then switched to Knights Inn, and by January 2015, had closed again. By late 2016, it had reopened as "Select Inn & Suites". In March 2021, the hotel was branded as "Express Inn - Gulf Bank".

Walmart / 10411 North Freeway
According to an article in the Houston Chronicle, this store opened in spring '89 (May 1989, as it turns out) as a 120k square feet Wal-Mart.

Aldine Ninth Grade School / 10650 North Freeway
This AISD campus opened in fall 1998 with six other new campuses (three pre-K centers, another 9th grade campus, an elementary school, and a magnet school).

I remember seeing this way back when I was in high school myself (a bit more than a decade after the opening of Aldine NGS) and thought it was brilliant to segregate the freshmen since we were having capacity issues at the time with more incoming ninth-graders than ever...though in this school's case it does share some facilities with the actual high school.

10718 North Freeway
The most recent tenant here, China Border, seems to have shut down between 2021 and 2022. Steak & Ale was here from 1975 to 1998 (approximately), with China Border taking over soon after.

Mambo Seafood / 10810 North Freeway
This was Champ's restaurant (#3) since 1977, and has been Mambo Seafood since early 2002. I'm not sure when Champ's shut down but it was sometime in the late 1990s or early 2000s. Indications are it wasn't vacant for that long. Also nearby was a theme restaurant in the late 1970s and early 1980s at 10822 North Freeway called "Bobby McGee's Conglomeration". The space was at the end of the strip center behind it and was until recently a CiCi's Pizza.

Monk JCB / 11211 North Freeway
In January 1967, Field Inn opened as the first location of a new motel chain that was intended to go nationwide much like other motel chains starting to take off at this time. By October, Field Inn North (aka Field Inn #1) was a "motor inn" with full services (including a "private air-conditioned bus" for large events), with banquet and meeting rooms, as well as a club and restaurant. Unusually for these types of developments, a third of the property was apartments owned and operated by the hotel (with a notably different architectural style). The apartment portion (completed later that year) featured a washateria on the premises and a children's playground and in 1967 had the name of Aldine Field Apartments. By January 1976 the hotel was flying under the banner of Rodeway Inn (Rodeway Inn Greensgate) with the name later that year Greenspoint Inn (and Greenspoint Apartments, also known as Greenspoint International Apts.). The actual Greenspoint Mall was a mile to the north and the area was a trendy spot for new apartment construction.

By 1985, the hotel portion was Best Western - Greenspoint Inn (aka Best Western Greenspoint) and kept the name into the name into the mid-1990s. By the late 1990s, the hotel was known as the Greenspoint Plaza Inn. By this time, the motel's best years was behind it. The club was leased as a swingers' club at the hotel operated from 1999 to 2003 as Club Connections. Around the time Club Connections closed, the entire property closed and was demolished circa 2004. For many years the property was dormant, but with Gillespie Road (which ran just south of the property) getting upgraded and connecting in with the new Pinto Business Park behind the property. In late 2019, Monk JCB, a construction equipment dealership, began groundbreaking, and in December 2021 it opened, bringing the 11211 North Freeway address back into service. The back half of the property remains vacant (some of the hotel buildings and all of the apartment buildings), but it will be probably be redeveloped soon enough.

Behind the 11211 North Freeway address is 300 1/2 Gillespie Road, which was developed in 2015 as a Harris County MUD "Water Repressurization Plant".

Golf Cars of Houston Superstore / 11219 North Fwy.
This building has seen multiple tenants over the years. It was built in 1979 as a location of Fun City Toys (later branded as Lionel Playworld Fun City before going out of business in 1982 with the rest of the Houston locations) and in spring 1986 became a Federated electronics store by spring 1986 before being liquidated at the end of 1989. In late 1991, Best Buy opened, one of four new stores in the Houston area when the chain entered the city. Best Buy vacated around the mid-2000s (still open in early 2005) and was replaced by its current tenant in the year 2008.

Ostioneria Michoacan / 11402 North Fwy.
This former Exxon spot (approx. 1975-2001) was redeveloped into a restaurant space in 2004 (Mexican-style seafood. The building and parking lot are brand-new but there's something Exxon-shaped about the sign...

Digital Realty Houston / 12001-12245 North Freeway
Data center (fenced in, no public access) redeveloped from a former power center known as The Commons at Greenspoint, holding such tenants like Children's Palace and Phar-Mor. More information can be seen at my old blog, The Houston Files.

Greenspoint Mall / 12300 North Freeway
There's not much left of Greenspoint Mall these days, but it was one of the biggest and arguably best malls of Houston even into the 1990s. There's a dedicated page that has been created and seen here, which features the original 32-page opening guide of the mall with its original stores and original department stores (Foley's and Sears, by 1980 Montgomery Ward, JCPenney, Joske's, and Lord & Taylor would also join).

Monte Carlo Inn / 12500 North Fwy.
This opened as "The Point Hotel" in 1982 (180 units according to a 1982 posting, though my Days Inn directory says 170 units) and was a Comfort Inn by 1985. Between February 1994 and November 1995 it became a Days Inn. Between 2008 and 2011 (probably closer to the latter) the hotel became a Knights Inn, which involved moving the signage (still Days Inn-shaped) closer to the highway...originally, it was about 200 feet back from the frontage road. Between October 2019 and February 2020, however, the hotel became the "Monte Carlo Inn" (probably closer to the latter as a February 2020 article mentions Knights Inn), and all visible traces of Days Inn disappeared.

Sunoco / 14834 North Freeway
This was built as a Mobil truck stop in 2000, and by 2007 it was a Texaco. In 2011, the gas station was briefly closed as the convenience store renovated into a Stripes with a Laredo Taco Company, with the Sunoco brand replacing Texaco around 2014-2015. Around that time the diesel pumps behind the store were rebuilt to be parallel to the store's back.

As of November 2022, the convenience store is still branded as Stripes despite being a 7-Eleven in all but name. Just about a block away was Buyer's Market (431 Airtex Drive), an enclosed outlet mall built in the early 1980s. Like its twin near Katy, it was purchased and reopened as a "Garden Ridge Pottery & World Imports" in 1986 (later just branded as simply "Garden Ridge"). It closed around 2006 and spent time as Armadillo Flea Market. Armadillo closed in February 2014 and was demolished later that year for a new warehouse development.

Sunoco / 14811 North Fwy.
Apparently, converting the Mobil was a big enough success for Stripes that a second store was built in 2016 and opened around January 2017 featuring a Stripes/Laredo Taco Company. This is still branded as a Stripes as of January 2023. (Yes, the addresses are out of order here, but this Sunoco is farther north).

MeXcal Cantina Pacifico / 14901 North Fwy.
This was built in 1994 as a Joe's Crab Shack (developed alongside an adjacent Saltgrass Steak House at 14909 North Freeway, which is still there...the parking lots connect in the back). Joe's Crab Shack closed around 2014-2015 and was significantly modified for "Fresas Cantina" which ended up opening in spring 2023 as MeXcal Cantina Pacifico. The parking lots had a back entrance to Back Ash Drive, this was closed since at least 2009 (if not longer).

Spanish Flowers / 14915 North Freeway
This was Zio's Italian Kitchen from 2000 to 2016. It became El Toro Loco in 2017 but became Spanish Flowers within a year or so. It was the same ownership as El Toro Loco (reopened with a new menu) but became associated with Spanish Flowers on North Main. It appears that this location of Spanish Flowers was never 24 hours unlike its North Main counterpart.

Floor & Decor / 17211 North Freeway
The first Houston location of Floor & Decor opened in this building in late November 2003. For a brief time (1993-1994), it operated as International Market, a flea-market like business with smaller retailers inside selling clothing, apparel, furniture, and other items.

It opened as Gemco (#587) in 1978 until the Gemco stores in Houston were closed in December 1983. It was the last Gemco in Houston to open. In 1984 it reopened as Sam's Wholesale Club (as it was known back then) but closed in 1991.

MainStreet America / 18750 I-45
Operated by Design Tech Homes, this originally opened in 2013 as a sort-of quasi theme park, with an admission price ($15 originally, but later raised to $20), model homes outfitted in the newest styles and décor, things to buy, and a restaurant on the premises. Based on what I could find, the restaurant went first (later replaced by a cooking school) and it closed after Hurricane Harvey when many of the model houses got flooded. The houses are still there but are by appointment only, the whole "theme park" aspect is no longer.

19750 North Freeway
This address was occcupied by Sears Outlet (later rebranded as American Freight) from 2013 to 2024, with the larger half (at 19746) occupied by Conn's HomePlus (formerly Conn's Appliances) since 2012.

While this did serve as Albertsons from 1995 to 2002, a lesser known fact was that following the demise of Albertsons and subsequent vacancy, from 2004 to 2007 it was reopened as an AppleTree, the only AppleTree supermarket that was not originally a Safeway and the first AppleTree to be in the Houston area since its 1997 exit. (It even had Boar's Head, which no other AppleTree had). Within a few years not only was the AppleTree in Houston closed but the chain was sold off entirely.

Bombshells Restaurant & Bar / 21005 North Freeway
In addition to Luby's, one of the other popular "cafeteria" chains in the South was Furr's Cafeteria, a one-time asset of Kmart and a spin-off of Furr's supermarkets. Houston never had many Furr's locations, though there was a location near West Road and Interstate 45 until the early 2000s.

When Furr's reappeared in Spring in May 2011, it was as Furr's Fresh Buffet, a buffet (rather than cafeteria) concept. It closed in January 2014 following a round of closings chain-wide. Later that year it became a location of Bombshells.

Six Flags Hurricane Harbor SplashTown / 21300 I-45 North
Originally built as Hanna-Barbera Land in 1984 (the only stand-alone park with Hanna-Barbera properties) and later redeveloped as a waterpark, I invite you to check out my very outdated (but nonetheless informative) Splashtown page from back when I was in high school. It doesn't even link to my own memorablia, some letters and some old brochures. This is about as much I'll cover this waterpark. Well, that and there was an arcade at the waterpark as well utilizing some of the Hanna-Barbera buildings...I don't think I spent money there but I do remember the attract mode of Crisis Zone.

McDonald's / 21330 Interstate 45 N.
Just outside Splashtown is this McDonald's restaurant (a Wendy's is nearby, that's where I remember visiting on my first visit to the waterpark in 1999), but the McDonald's was notable. It was originally built in 1984 and was rebuilt in 2002 (the 1984 restaurant faced north/south as opposed to the 2002 restaurant). I visited this restaurant in 2006. I don't think it had any unique menu items or a specific local touch but was certainly nicer than most McDonald's and was more akin to the mid-2000s "spruced up interiors" that stores had at the time. I specifically remember one of those "indoor glass water fountains". It was very similar to the one shown here as an example but not nearly as large (maybe a quarter of the size).

Unusually, it featured the "lightning script" logo on the signage on the Golden Arches signage (but not on the store itself). A blurry Street View picture can be seen here (it also shows up in a picture in the background of Houston Freeways, see page nine of the PDF). Around 2011 it was replaced with the traditional font, and in 2012 the restaurant was renovated to a standard prototype inside and out.

Spec's Wines, Spirits & Finer Foods / 25010 North Freeway
Academy Sports & Outdoors opened here in 1999 but moved out to a new location, with Spec's moving in from their adjacent space. These exchanges appear to have happened around 2016.

IHOP / 25619 I-45
The IHOP here was built in 1996, and while that's not too unusual, fairly stable, fairly popular, the nearby demolished restaurant (25657 I-45) is a tad more interesting. This opened as a location of El Chico and lasted from 1994 to 1998 (El Chico had built a number of restaurants in the 1990s which all somehow looked like they already 30 years old, but El Chico never had many Houston restaurants to begin with). In 1999 it became Tortuga's Coastal Cantina in 1999 and became eventually became Bikini's Sports Bar & Grill in 2012. In 2015, the parent company of Bikini's converted it to Gino's East (see the Bikini's Wikipedia article) but it closed in 2017. In 2019 the vacant restaurant was demolished.

Bowlero / 27000 Interstate 45 N.
The Woodlands Bowlero was originally Oak Ridge Super Bowl when it opened in 1985 under Fair Lanes, a bowling alley operator, though later became Fair Lanes Woodlands by the early 1990s and by 1996 was AMF Woodlands. Around 2013, AMF closed down and renovated the facility into the first Texas location of Bowlero.

Whiskey Cake Kitchen & Bar / 27800 North Freeway
This restaurant pad, part of Wood Ridge Plaza, has seen a number of changing hands over the years.

From 1981 to the early 2000s, it was a Red Lobster and by the mid-2000s was Gators Grill. I could find some references to Raceway Grill in late 2007 but it doesn't seem to have opened, the vacant Gators Grill was still intact as of December 2007. From around 2008-2009 it was Ambience Bar & Lounge.

Around 2010 it became Austin-based meal prep company My Fit Foods after a remodel, which closed several years later with the abrupt chain-wide failure in February 2017.