Hewitt Drive
Hewitt Drive starts at Highway 84 and continues down to I-35 (the northern part beyond 84 is Estates Drive). In any case, this starts at the Woodway Drive interchange. I do have fond memories of this road, and what I have here does reflect that as I continue to add onto the page.
Version 3.0 adds Baylor Scott & White Hillcrest Clinic - Hewitt, Goodwill, McAlister's Deli, 1701 Hewitt Drive (Dunkin'), Hewitt Autoplex, Rosa's Cafe & Tortilla Factory, KFC, Daylight Donuts, Mexicano Grille, 225 N. Hewitt Drive (Little Caesars), and Castleman Creek Elementary School. It also updates H-E-B plus! (new photo), Walmart (new photo), Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers, Genie Car Wash & Fast Lube and divides the page into three sections.
WOODWAY DRIVE to MARS DRIVE
H-E-B plus! / 9100 Woodway Drive
Despite the Woodway address here, I've put the H-E-B Plus on this page since it replaced an H-E-B store at 105 Hewitt Drive, dating back to 1991, and the new H-E-B Plus still faces Hewitt. In 2004, the 1991 store was demolished for the new "H-E-B plus!" format.
The new brand of H-E-B store was one of only three launched in 2004 and in addition to the large 100k+ square feet format featured a rather extensive non-food selection (clothing, albeit limited; electronics; toys). The original smaller H-E-B was turned into parking for the new H-E-B, with the older parking being partially turned into a gas station and car wash. The photo above is courtesy MCAD taken within a year of its opening (just a preview--see the bigger version here).
Someday I'll add the original store directory to this site.
Take 5 Oil Change / 201 Hewitt Drive
This opened sometime in spring 2022. It replaced a Jack in the Box restaurant, which operated from 1991 to no later than January 2021 (though I believe it closed in 2020). While the building and parking lot are all-new, the signage infrastructure was recycled.
Pet Supplies Plus / 203 Hewitt Road
Check out this page for the history of the building as well as some musings regarding its original tenant.
SpareBox Storage / 501 Hewitt Drive
The main access to this storage unit center, formerly Aaron's Self Storage II, is off of Old McGregor Road, though it has a Hewitt address. In 2017, the units closest to Hewitt Drive were torn down and rebuilt as modern, two-story buildings with climate control, but in 2021 it was bought out and rebranded to SpareBox Storage.
Do It Best Retail Service Center / 801 Hewitt Drive
Large distribution center for Do It Best Corporation. Do It Best has been here since at least the mid-2000s. Unfortunately, I can't find much on when they occupied the space or when the building was built.
Walmart / 600 Hewitt Drive
Wal-Mart Supercenter #5389 opened in June 2004 and did not appear to replace any smaller Walmart store. It replaced some sort of warehouse (previous history unknown) and when the store opened, it originally had a McDonald's inside. I do remember this McDonald's, it had a mural of the 1950s-era McDonald's in the back, complete with a large painting of "Speedee", their old mascot. They also had pretzels like Walmart McDonald's did.
Later on this got replaced with a Subway (probably about the time it got the "Walmart" re-do in the early 2010s), which has since closed. Picture courtesy MCAD.
CEFCO / 905 Hewitt Drive
This CEFCO has only been a CEFCO gas brand (formerly Exxon) since November 2016 and November 2017, but the convenience store has portion has been a CEFCO since 1994 when it opened as CEFCO #9.
McDonald's / 913 Hewitt Drive
The exterior and interior of this McDonald's has been upgraded to modern prototypes but the restaurant has been open since 1996.
Baylor Scott & White Hillcrest Clinic - Hewitt / 1001 Hewitt Drive
Formerly Hillcrest Clinic until the BS&W partnership, this clinic has general family medicine doctors as well as a Baylor Scott & White Pharmacy on-site.
Taco Bell / 1101 Hewitt Drive
This Taco Bell opened in 1996.
Bush's Chicken / 1301 Hewitt Drive
Bush's Chicken has been here since 2008. It has long been a fixture of Hewitt Drive, moving twice after being founded in what is now Chopsticks.
CEFCO / 1425 Hewitt Drive
This got the CEFCO gas brand at around the same time as the Exxon above (except this one was a Shell prior), with CEFCO operating here since 2000, buying a pre-existing convenience store.
Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers / 1501 Hewitt Drive
This new-construction Raising Cane's (opened June 2015) replaced a Burger King (pictured above), which operated from 1998 to spring 2014 and featured an indoor playground. The Hewitt Raising Cane's was the 73rd in the state and 225th nationally, as well as the second Raising Cane's in the Waco area.
The picture is from McLennan County Appraisal District, and the cut-off portion shows that it was taken in the year 2008. That Burger King Kids Club sign remained until its closure, long after being irrelevant.
Goodwill / 1508 Hewitt Drive
Heart of Texas Goodwill Industries has been operating a donation center/retail store here since spring of 1997. (This is placed before McAlister's Deli deliberately. We go by placement, not solely numbers).
McAlister's Deli / 1505 Hewitt Drive
This McAlister's Deli location opened in the year 2000. The logo has been updated and no doubt the interior has been touched up, but it remains very much the same as it did over two decades ago.
Golden Chick / 1524 Hewitt Drive
The Chick came home to roost in Waco once more in January 2016. It's a fried chicken restaurant, of course.
Whataburger / 1528 Hewitt Drive
It appears that this Whataburger opened in January 1999. Even in 2002, it seemed very new and still isolated.
MARS DRIVE to WEST WARREN STREET
Burger King / 1601 Hewitt Drive
The King re-emerged in January 2020 (just blocks away from its old location) in this former Taco Bueno, which operated from mid-2006 to around December 2018.
1701 Hewitt Drive
This building has a Dunkin' (with Baskin-Robbins) and, since February 2022, Athletico Physical Therapy. The Dunkin' side opened in 2019.
Genie Car Wash & Fast Lube / 915 N. Hewitt Drive
Before this point, Hewitt Drive was in the Waco city limits, and when it enters Hewitt officially, Hewitt Drive becomes "North Hewitt Drive" despite heading south. While there's a Genie Car Wash further down on Hewitt, this one has the larger and more old-fashioned signage, despite only dating back to at least 1993.
The original car wash was built in 1985, but around 2006 it was partially redeveloped when some of the self-serve car wash bays were torn down, along with a vacant building that was originally built as Taco Torch for a small strip center.
Hewitt Autoplex / 847 N. Hewitt Drive
This gas station-turned-auto dealership was a location of "The Phillin' Station" from 1983 to 1998 (gas brand unknown, but the name suggests Phillips 66) and 1998 to 1999 it was a TETCO. From 2003 to 2008 it was a less-successful second location of Katie's Frozen Custard (see the Valley Mills page). Midway Motors took over by late 2008 (but only used half the building and using the address of 843 N. Hewitt) while Texas State Low Cost Insurance took over the other half. By May 2013 it was Texas Autowerx with the tagline of "Classic and 'Not-So-Classic' Cars" and after a brief interlude of being home of Impact Nutrition Supplements & Smoothies (it had a drive-through) from fall 2016 to sometime in 2017. After that, it became Hewitt Autoplex.
Taqueria Altos De Jalisco / 719 N. Hewitt Drive
This was a Wienerschnitzel from 1998 to 2000, then Church's Chicken from 2002 to 2003. It has been Altos de Jaliscos since 2003.
Taco Casa / 710 Hewitt Drive
Taco Casa opened here in 2008 shortly after Bush's Chicken (Bush's Golden Crisp Chicken, originally) moved, which had previously operated here from around 2001 to 2008.
Family Dollar / 709 North Hewitt Drive
Family Dollar opened here in early 2009 to replace their store down at the "Hewitt Mall".
Rosa's Cafe & Tortilla Factory / 703 N. Hewitt Drive
This used to be the site of a bank at 701 N. Hewitt Drive, built in 1984 (in 1986 it was First Federal Bank), by the mid-2000s it was The National Banks of Central Texas based out of Gatesville. Sometime around early 2017, the namewas changed to NationalUnited. By 2020, the branch was closed. Rosa's opened in the spring of 2022 in a new building, and did not replace the 2005-opened Rosa's off of Franklin Avenue.
Whistling Duck's / 621 N. Hewitt Drive
Gas station with Midway Food Mart. It converted from a Texaco sometime around late June 2022.
Brookside Apartments 620 N. Hewitt Drive
Circa 2008, these apartments were known as "Four Seasons" and assumed their current name a few years later. Based on the name of the subdivision of these apartments, they possibly were that name back in 1976 when they were built.
109 West Panther Way
Food Lion #1114 was here from August 1992 to November 1994. I can't find much on the post-Food Lion years but it definitely appears it never served as another retail store, much less grocery store, again.
After Food Lion, the building served as an EMSI call center for an indeterminate amount of time. Midway ISD purchased the building in October 2019 to become a "a technology and data center for the district" but it has apparently leased the building (as of March 2021) to a branch of Support Services Group.
KFC / 615 N. Hewitt Drive
This KFC was new-built in 2019 in the parking lot of the call center/former Food Lion.
Chopsticks / 500 Hewitt Drive
Golden Fried Chicken was here from 1985 to the late 1990s when the franchise split off and renamed it as Bush's Gold-N-Crisp Chicken, the first location of what is now known as Bush's Chicken. For a very brief time in the early 2000s it was Bush's Crispy Taco, a short-lived spin-off of the restaurant, and has been Chopsticks, a local Waco Chinese take-out since 2003. The picture from McLennan County Appraisal District was taken in 2004.
Daylight Donuts / 324 North Hewitt Drive
Daylight Donuts has been operating here in a new-build building since 2007. It replaced a Sonic that operated here from circa 1979 until some point in the mid-2000s. It competes with the nearby Shipley Do-Nuts.
Shipley Do-Nuts / 318 N. Hewitt Drive
This Shell with "Hewitt Food Mart" inside shut down between 2017 and 2018; however, the Shipley Do-Nuts counter inside the store continues to operate despite the closure of everything else.
Mexicano Grille / 259 N. Hewitt Drive
Mexicano Grille opened in 2017. Mazzio's Pizza operated here from 1998 to around early 2017.
Davis Iron Works Inc. / 224 N. Hewitt Drive
Davis Iron Works has been here since 1974 and later became Davis Steel Services & Iron Works. In the warehouse portion, Metals 2 Go has been here since 2003, but according to tax records are the same company. The warehouse originally had a railroad spur, but in the late 2000s was removed.
Uncle Dan's Bar-B-Que / 231 North Hewitt Drive
According to Waco Today, this restaurant opened in 1990, but according to McLennan County Appraisal District, the building was built in 1984. It was "Pizza Plus" originally from 1984 to 1989, and briefly RDJ's Burgers in a Flash (a second location spun off from the original restaurant in Temple) before becoming Uncle Dan's in 1990.
225 N. Hewitt Drive
Nutone Cleaners has been here since at least 2001. Little Caesars has been here since 1996.
HEWITT PLAZA
Also known as Hewitt Mall, this dated shopping center has a few stores and restaurants like a Pizza Hut but it's biggest attraction is United Super, an IGA store that has stood the test of time in a world where other competitors have been run out of town, including Winn-Dixie and Albertsons.Despite the Hewitt/Woodway H-E-B turning into a large H-E-B Plus in 2004 and the construction of a new Walmart Supercenter to the east about a decade or so later, United Super has stuck around in this dated shopping plaza. "United Super" sounds a bit like "United Supermarkets", which can be found to the west (about two hours in Brownwood) or to the 90 minutes north or so to the Dallas-Fort Worth suburbs, but it isn't (and could prove challenging in the event that United Supermarkets ever shows up in Waco to challenge H-E-B).
I only took a few pictures unfortunately and despite wanting to show them off, they're not great due to the phone acting weird around lighting fixtures. Still, it shows off a few of what makes this supermarket quirky, the '70s striping and the interesting produce department. It also is just about 20k square feet. Instead, I request you to check out what Google Maps has to offer of their photos.
WEST WARREN STREET to INTERSTATE 35
Despite West Warren Street being about where North Hewitt becomes South Hewitt, West Warren isn't East Warren until a few blocks east of the crossing; moreover, a stoplight did not even exist here until 2009. From around 2012 to 2014, South Hewitt was expanded to four lanes. It was still two lanes from Park Place Drive to First Street after the construction at Spring Valley Road was done.315-319 S. Hewitt Drive
This former Fina gas station has not been a Fina in years. It wasn't a Fina back in late 2002 (my first recollection of it) and I think it stopped selling gas sometime around 2004 (this picture is from January 2004, not too long before the station shut up entirely--courtesy McLennan County Appraisal District). Islamic Center of Hewitt is at 317 South Hewitt in the same building, and based on some pictures they have done some work inside but it's clear that they operate on the down-low without any signage whatsoever.
Castleman Creek Elementary School / 755 South Hewitt Drive
This Midway ISD school opened in 2010.
CEFCO / 100 Ritchie Road
This CEFCO (gas/c-store combo) opened in December 2017 with a Which Wich inside. There was still a Which Wich at the site two years later, probably got wiped out in the events of 2020, but by early 2022 Marco's Pizza had replaced it.
Conoco / 1702 West Spring Valley Road
As of February 2008 this was a Quik Pak with Texaco, but by 2011 was a Philips 66 with "Hewitt Grocery". (Based on other records, CEFCO bought out Quik Pak, but apparently, not this one!)
By November 2019, Hewitt Grocery had lost its gas brand, though by April 2021 had gained a Conoco. Originally, Hewitt Drive ended here at an intersection with Spring Valley Road. In the late 2000s it was extended with an overpass over Spring Valley and a strange four-way intersection with a railroad cutting through it. It continues onto Interstate 35. It eventually curls back around as South 12th Street and reconnects with Loop 340.
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