You’re looking at Harris County’s very first Cherry Berry Self-Serve Frozen Yogurt Bar. It’s going in at 949 N. Shepherd Dr., into a Merchants Park shopping center storefront that most recently housed an AT&T Wireless shop.
Froyo’s arrival in Merchants Park caps 5 years of steady transformation among the tenants in the Kroger-anchored shopping center that sprawls more than 2 blocks south down N. Shepherd and N. Durham Dr. from W. 11th St.
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The Kroger embiggened itself immensely in 2010 bringing in a Starbucks along the way. GNC and Subway followed not long after the Kroger’s grand reopening, and around the same time, Tuesday Morning supplanted Anna’s Linens. In mid-2013, the cavernous Golden Island Chinese buffet shut down and was reborn as a Petco. And earlier this year the King Dollar store, where nothing cost more than $1.15, shuttered and came back to life as a UT-Physicians clinic.
- Previously on Swamplot: Heights Kroger: Okay, Now We’re Really Big; Expanded Heights Kroger: Now Wider Than Wide Angle
Photos: Swamplot inbox (CherryBerry); Candace Garcia (Kroger)
How or why is this even news ? If Swamplot is going to post a story every time a business opens in a strip center, or replaces an existing business already in one, I’m going to have to bow out of this website altogether.
Must have been a very slow day.
c.l. – I think you missed the point….”[this] caps 5 years of steady transformation among the tenants in the…shopping center.” It’s changed from the likes of dollar stores, Chinese buffets, and cellular stores to pet stores, doctors clinic, and froyo. The neighborhood’s a-change’n.
This shopping center has gone from being pretty gross to helping anchor the high dollar valuations we see now in the heights. These yogurt places do really well in really high end places so it’s a sign of what the heights has become.
That center has come a long way, alright. I remember when nightclub NRG was there in the 80s. That place was interesting.
@c.l.
Everything that happens in the Heights is news on Swamplot. I’m hoping we someday get similar updates on grocery-anchored strip centers off FM 1960.
Okay, I took the bait and kept reading this article about a frozen-yogurt shop opening. While it is illustrative of how that massive center has changed over the years, didn’t fro-yo jump the shark about 5 years ago?
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I think the more recent “jump the shark” items are food trucks and gourmet donuts. Why haven’t we cued up the “Breaking News” banners on those shops? (tongue firmly in cheek)
Yes, the GMC and Subway scream that Rosenberg, I mean the Heights, has now arrived.
Bama, alas, FM1960 is simply not that interesting.
You’ll be missed, c.l.
Actually, FM 1960 is very interesting, because it’s a case study in how once-outer-suburban Houston becomes middle-suburban Houston and faces demographic change (in this case, decline), similar to what the Heights went through in the 1960s and 1970s. What to do with crappily built, overabundant commercial space? What happens to the adjoining residential areas when school reputation tanks? How do original residents deal with a new population of an entirely different ethnic background? How does the overseeing local government, not used to dealing with issues of urban decline and revitalization, respond? How to beautify a poorly designed, brutally ugly thoroughfare (I’d say the Heights still has that issue, particularly with Shepherd / Durham) that is hostile to pedestrian movement, despite being the location of neighborhood-based businesses? Anyone who’s an urban development geek finds both the Heights and FM 1960 to be compelling narratives.