AG81 said:
australopithecus robustus said:
Captn_Ag05 said:
With Century Square, PopStroke, the redevelopment of Hensel Park, and all of the mid rises and planned mid-rises, how much longer do we think the Hurricane Harry's center and that large parking lot will last?
The Culpeppers are wisely waiting until Century Square infills more so they are not competing for the same users. That's a Legacy property for them that they've had forever. Prudent developers.
Interestingly, it's the Culpeppers that caused most of the growth to move to College Station. In the 1970's Bryan had about 40,000 residents and College Station about 17,000. College Station ended at 2818. The Culpeppers owned Manor East Mall (where the Tejas Center is), the only Mall in town. In the late 70's the DeBartolo family (owners of the SF 49ers at the time) was building malls across the country and wanted wanted to build one at Briarcrest and the bypass. Being only a few miles down the road from Manor East Mall, the Culpeppers objected and the city declined to offer tax abatements. The DeBartilos went down the road to the College Station City Council which gladly granted the tax abatements. The mall was built and the massive growth in College Station followed. In the intervening years Bryan population grew from 40,000 to just over 86,000. By contrast in the same period College Station grew from 17,000 to just over 120,000.
The mall wasn't built by DeBartolo, though, it was built by CBL. I'm not surprised if that was changed fairly early on along with the other changes--there were plans to put Joske's, not Foley's, in the flagship corner, and space for a seventh anchor between JCPenney and Bealls.
Still, the mall was a symptom of College Station's growth, not a reason for it. By the early 1970s you already had massive new residential growth (Southwood Valley was platted out, with rooftops going all the way to Rock Prairie Road).
The 7th anchor, I imagine, was to have Montgomery Ward, which Manor East still held onto the very end (well, a year before the chain failed).