Commercial Roofing Contractors in Lowry Crossing, TX

On a roll: After months of searching, Galveston Bagel Company, which operates a popular food truck, has found a home to open a full-service restaurant.

Last week, Heather and Saul Estrada closed on the acquisition of the building at 1110 23rd St. most recently occupied by Koop’s BBQ Kitchen & Catering, but long known for housing Charlie’s Burger.

The Estradas are business partners with Dillan Mena and his wife, Shelby, who launched Galveston Bagel Company last year to the appreciation of islanders who had been wondering why the national bagel boom had passed by their city.

The Menas were searching for a place to open a restaurant and the Estradas became business partners, buying the building, which they’ll lease to the restaurant.

The building needs major renovation and an opening date is set for early July, if all goes as planned, Heather Estrada said. The eatery will begin by serving breakfast and lunch, eventually adding dinner, Heather Estrada said.

Dillan Mena still plans to operate the food truck at 2424 Postoffice St. on the island, he said.

The 23rd Street restaurant will serve bagels, sandwiches and other creations by Dillan Mena, a trained chef.

“We have a vision for it to be a community place,” Heather Estrada said. “We want something that Galveston is really going to love.”

The restaurant will feature works from local artists and more, she said.

V.J. Tramonte of Joe Tramonte Realty represented the sellers — Quiroga and Associates — and Hudson Holmes of the same firm represented the Estradas.

Meanwhile, Koop’s BBQ is working to open in a circa 1925 building at 4501 Broadway that long ago was home to the Dolfi Italian Grocery. Stay tuned.

Greek peek: The wait is nearly over for mid-county diners hungry for the opening of Café Petra Express at Mainland Crossing Shopping Center, 9300 Emmett F. Lowry Expressway in Texas City.

A representative answering the phones at Café Petra, 2800 Marina Bay in League City, said the Texas City eatery would open in about three weeks. Crews are putting the finishing touches on the building, he said.

The growing Café Petra, which has two other locations in Louisiana, serves authentic Greek and Lebanese cuisine, such as falafel, gyro sandwiches, kabobs and more. Stay tuned.

Awaiting tables: Meanwhile, some readers are hungry for answers about the opening date of long-awaited breakfast and brunch concept Brick & Spoon, 10000 Emmett F. Lowry Expressway, at Mainland City Centre, site of the former Mall of the Mainland. Friendswood attorney and developer Jerome Karam last year acquired franchise rights to five Brick & Spoon restaurants, known for Southern cuisine, in Galveston County cities. Karam this week couldn’t be reached for comment. On March 7, the restaurant on social media posted a notice it was hiring for all positions.

Leap Frog: Elsewhere at Mainland City Centre, Sweet Frog, a purveyor of premium frozen yogurt, is planning to open a shop soon, but hasn’t nailed down a precise date. Sweet Frog, operated by Sweet Frog Enterprises, lets customers create their own soft-serve frozen yogurt with a variety of flavors and toppings. Brick & Spoon and Sweet Frog will join already opened Grazia Italian Kitchen, Texas Pit Stop BBQ and Big Phil’s Soul & Creole Cafe. Stay tuned.

Grease is the word: A new automotive service shop has opened in Texas City. Grease Monkey, a franchisor of automotive service centers offering oil changes, preventive maintenance and other car care services, has opened at 3010 FM 1765. Gabriela Leal, the franchise owner, plans a 4 p.m. April 21 ribbon-cutting with the Texas City-La Marque Chamber of Commerce. The celebration will include an open house and is open to the public.

Odds and Ends: Is this the end for Tight Ends Sports Bar & Grill, 2502 Gulf Freeway in League City? No one’s answering the phone and the building was closed Tuesday during normal operating hours with nary a person in sight, which doesn’t bode well for its signature Lingerie Friday. No one answers various corporate office phones listed online.

Tight Ends squeezes into the genre of breastaurant, in which scantily clad women serve up hot wings and drinks with a side of cleavage in a sports bar atmosphere. Tight Ends opened in 2016 in the highly visible building vacated that year by Quaker Steak & Lube. Stay tuned.

Long live the Queen: In other business ends, Pierogi Queen, 2047 W. Main St. in League City, said May 20 would be its last day after six years of business.

Owners of the purveyor of authentic Polish cuisine gave it their all, they said in an April 9 social media post.

“We were trying so hard for so long,” they said. “Sadly, our achievements did not help us enough to keep running any longer. We are grateful for all we got, but at this point, with current food prices and not able to find reliable help, we came to a decision of closing our League City location as well.”

Pierogi Queen announced on March 14 it also no longer would be a part of the Railway Heights Market, 2800 Washington Ave. in Houston.

Miroslaw and Ewa Sek opened the League City Pierogi Queen in 2016. The family years ago left the hardships of Communist Poland and settled for a while in Chicago. But Texas was where they found folks as friendly as Polish people, Ewa Sek told Biz Buzz in 2016.

True to its name, the restaurant specializes in pierogis, which are filled dumplings. The restaurant also is known for kielbasa, cabbage rolls, potato pancakes and cheese blintzes.

“We have one month to say goodbye,” Pierogi Queen said in its April 9 social media post.

Biz Birthday: Has it been 65 years? La Marque-based A&A Machine & Fabrication celebrated its milestone birthday last weekend with a party for employees and guests. On April 10, 1957, Manuel Chionsini, Fred Heinemann and Charles Hutchins launched a machining business in La Marque. The company name A&A was known for “Always Available” for its petrochemical customers and for providing solutions to their problems, C. Alan Hutchins said.

The company added welding and fabrication in the 1970s and in 1975 entered the market making high-pressure tubing. It has since become known as a worldwide expert and product provider of both low density polyethylene and linear low density polyethylene component manufacturing. Over the years, A&A has achieved diversification by adding other niche products, including gasification.

Today, the company is run by C. Alan Hutchins, president and CEO, and his executive staff, David Vasichko, vice president of machining; Kraig Warren, vice president of fabrication and engineering; Whitney Ziegler, HR and safety manager; Marie Hammond, accounting manager; Steve Jones, IT manager; and Benny Salas, quality control manager. The company in Dec. 2021 was acquired by Capital for Business, which kept the management team and employees.

“Our employees not only have opportunity to grow their careers, but the company is positioned securely for the future to provide jobs and products for our clients,” C. Alan Hutchins said. “Here’s to another blessed 65 years.”

When does the influx of people at our southern border become an emergency? Apparently when it finally affects cities and states far from that border.

Mayor Eric Adams declared a state of emergency Friday due to the sharp increase in the number of migrants arriving in his city. “El Paso, the city manager, the mayor, they should stop sending buses to New York,” Adams implored.

Last week in these pages, City Councilman Joe Borelli saluted the mayor for declaring the emergency and noted that “17,400 migrants have entered New York City since this spring (more than half of whom were sent by the Democratic mayor of El Paso, Texas), and the estimated price tag has ballooned to more than $1 billion. Even in a city with the budget of Switzerland, these figures are daunting.”

They are. And they represent a tiny fraction of migrants presenting themselves at the border. According to US Customs and Border Protection, 203,597 people crossed our southwest land border in August alone. For comparison, that number was 62,707 in August 2019. Suddenly 17,400 over the course of several months doesn’t seem like New York’s fair share.

The emergency declaration is meant to unlock Federal Emergency Management Agency dollars. But that is a Band-Aid solution when the numbers are this astronomical.

Borelli referred to the state of emergency as “acknowledging reality.” That would be nice. But so far Mayor Adams doesn’t want to discuss root causes or push for political solutions to stem the migrant tide.

For too long it had been an emergency New Yorkers could ignore while pretending it was cruel to acknowledge an emergency was happening at all. Any suggestion that unchecked migration had to be somewhat controlled was met with slogans, signs and other empty gestures.

On Dec. 6, 2016, shortly after Donald Trump was elected president, the City Council passed one of its pointless resolutions “Affirming that despite president-elect Donald Trump’s senseless threats, NYC will remain a Sanctuary City for immigrant residents.” Twelve days later, thousands of New Yorkers came out for “The March for Immigrant New York” to celebrate “International Migrant Day.”

In January 2017, signs appeared throughout yuppie Brooklyn. In the windows of cafés and shops, a man with pleading eyes and a baby in his coat stared at us with the words “Refugees welcome here.”

What did it mean? That refugees could also come and buy the $7 lattes that the brownstone set were buying? Like most people who put signs in windows, the Brooklynites didn’t actually mean it. Refugees were welcome here because it was a poke in the eye to Trump, who wanted to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it, not because refugees could actually be welcomed here.

It was all theoretical. People who had no contact whatsoever with the migrant problem at the border wanted everyone to know that they cared. So much. They’re full of caring. And you, person without such a sign in your window, you care far less. That the border towns had done a lot, for years, to help incoming migrants went unmentioned.

Then Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis implemented policies to deliver the migrants to the doors of the establishments with the welcome signs — and suddenly the welcome mat was yanked away.

DeSantis and Abbott didn’t move migrants to sanctuary cities to be cruel. They didn’t do it because they hate immigrants. It wasn’t to cause an emergency. The emergency was already happening.

They did it to force the conversations that Democrats would rather not have. What do we do with the people arriving en masse? Your sign in the window? Prove it.

New Yorkers have to understand that there are consequences to the policies they push. The singular man with the baby in his coat exists only in leftist imaginations. The reality is hundreds of thousands of men, every single month, crossing our border. The Biden administration has allowed our border to be wide open. New York should know what exactly that entails.

“This is unsustainable,” Adams said when announcing the emergency order. It is, for everyone involved. Now it’s time to face it.

Residents and clergy volunteer to help those seeking asylum in historic border town

The dawning sun shines down on the pavement leading to Sacred Heart Church in El Paso, Texas, slowly warming the desert chill.

The heat is a much needed respite for the hundreds of migrants from Central and South America seeking shelter and protection near the century-old church.

Wrapped in jackets and American Red Cross blankets seen in humanitarian crises the world over, the asylum seekers, many of whom have journeyed for months to reach the US, have been sleeping in the rough in near-freezing temperatures.

They have been coming in record numbers since August, flooding the streets of El Paso, a frontier city bordering Juarez, Mexico. The US city has a higher-than-average poverty rate, which puts constraints on how much support is available.

“Our community is a resilient one,” said Peter Svarzbein, a former El Paso City council member.

“We're not the most prosperous city in the United States or in Texas but we're full of love and compassion.”

Nowhere in the city is that generosity more evident than outside of Sacred Heart Church, which lies a few hundred metres from the border in historic El Segundo Barrio, once known as the “other Ellis Island”.

It is an area of low-slung houses and colourful murals, where Mexican and American culture mix seamlessly. The vibrant area is anchored by the redbrick church that dominates its skyline.

English and Spanish can be heard in equal measure on the neighbourhood's streets.

Church volunteers gather daily to offer warm meals and comfort to the migrants, most of whom have crossed illegally into the US, hoping to seek asylum.

“[It’s been] very challenging,” explained Rafael Garcia, the priest at Sacred Heart.

“We sort of started from zero. We did not have a shelter, we had to start getting volunteers on a day-by-day basis to provide food and clothing.”

At its peak in mid-December, as many as 2,400 migrants were crossing into the city every day.

While the crossings have slowed in recent weeks, the city remains at the forefront of a growing problem for the administration of US President Joe Biden.

Last Sunday, Mr Biden briefly visited El Paso before heading to Mexico for the North American Leaders Summit.

Mr Biden toured Bridge of the Americas, the city’s busiest port of entry. He met US Customs and Border Protection agents who have been grappling with the record number of migrants attempting to enter the country.

The Border Patrol apprehended about 2.4 million people in the last fiscal year — which ended in September — the highest number ever recorded.

Before his four-hour trip to the border, the President announced that he would be expanding Title 42, a Trump-era policy that allows the US to turn away asylum seekers for health safety reasons.

Under the administration's new immigration policy, migrants from Nicaragua, Venezuela, Haiti and Cuba will be returned to Mexico if they enter the US illegally.

The administration is trying to discourage migrants from crossing illegally by providing a new, legal pathway for them to apply for a parole programme online from their home countries.

But immigration experts have roundly condemned the new policy.

“The administration is trying to kind of play both sides and appeal to nativists and restrictionists while also trying to present this kind of mirage that the United States is living up to its human rights obligations when it's not,” said Sunil Varghese, policy director at the International Refugee Assistance Project.

Many of the migrants are fleeing economic and political instability that have forced them to seek opportunities elsewhere.

Those already in El Paso do not have the option to apply legally through the new programme and are stuck in limbo.

“They're fleeing an oppressive government and they had to leave on probably short notice, like most people that are in forced migration,” Fr Garcia told The National.

“They're here now with a hope of asking for asylum, like you can in most parts of the world, and that option is blocked.”

Fr Garcia said he is committed to helping those outside his church but he worries “what's going to happen to them” now that they have no legal avenue to claim asylum.

During his stopover, the President did not visit Fr Garcia’s Parish.

If he had, he would have seen a community working hard to help those in need and trying to keep a sliver of the American dream alive for those still seeking it.

If Mount Vernon voters approve either of two alcohol-sales ballot initiatives on May 11 - and voters in the Piney Woods town of Tatum do the same - that would leave Delta County the last dry county in East Texas.

When Northeast Texas voters go to the polls on Saturday, citizens in four communities will be casting their lots for or against measures that would allow, in some fashion, alcohol sales where such sales are not currently legal.

The cities of Campbell, Josephine, Lowry Crossing and Mount Vernon all have alcohol-related items on municipal ballots in the May 11 elections.

Dry counties dropping off East Texas map?

The Mount Vernon ballot has two proposals - one to allow beer and wine sales for off-premise consumption and one to allow the sale of mixed beverages at restaurants.

If either of those pass, that would make Franklin County, of which Mount Vernon is the county seat, a "partially wet" county, like all but three counties in East Texas.

Among counties in East Texas, only Delta, Franklin and Panola counties remain dry. The rest have mixed, or "partially wet" regulations regarding the public sale of alcoholic beverages.

Deep in "The Woods," the small city of Tatum, which straddles the Rusk-Panola County line, will vote on May 11 on whether to allow the sale of beer and wine for off-premise consumption.

If both voters in both Panola and Franklin counties decide to allow alcohol sales, that would leave Delta the lone county west of Interstate 35 with dry status. Of the 256 counties in Texas, only 19 remain dry. Of those 19, all but the aformentioned three are in West Texas.

Campbell, Josephine, Lowry Crossing also deciding

The ballot initiatives in Campbell, Lowry Crossing and Josephine won't change the wet/dry status of Hunt and Collin counties, where public alcohol sales are legal, but they would obviously impact the towns in question.

The measures in Campbell and Lowry Crossing would allow sales of all alcoholic beverages for off-premise consumption. Josephine's proposition would allow the sales of beer and wine for off-premise consumption.

Campbell is in Hunt County, while Lowry Crossing is in Collin County. Josephine is mostly in Collin County, but extends over the Hunt County line.

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New video footage out of Del Rio, Texas shows hundreds of migrants illegally streaming into the U.S. across the Rio Grande, joining thousands of migrants who are already camped out under the international bridge.

Fox News captured video of the devastating scene during a ride along in a Texas Department of Safety helicopter after the Federal Aviation Administration grounded its drones in the area.

The video showed hundreds of people, mostly from Haiti, walking across a dam to enter the U.S. They then follow a dirt path to join an encampment under the bridge where upwards of 11,000 migrants are waiting to be processed by Border Patrol agents, up from 8,000 as of Thursday morning.

The number of migrants at the camp has nearly tripled since Wednesday, when there were 4,000 migrants there. Border Patrol agents are struggling to process new arrivals.

Fox News reporter Bill Melugin described it as a “nonstop trail of migrants” who are crossing the Rio Grande in multiple areas.

The footage comes just one day after Representative Tony Gonzalez (R., Texas) visited the migrant camp and said the situation was “as bad as I’ve ever seen it, and I’m not taking that lightly.”

Gonzalez wrote in a tweet that “there is virtually no border,” with migrants freely between the U.S. and Mexico.

The Democratic mayor of Del Rio, Bruno Lozano, called on the Biden administration to address the crisis, saying that the open border presents a “terrorism” threat.

“Border Patrol is overwhelmed,” Val Verde County Sheriff Joe Frank Martinez told the Texas Tribune. “They just can’t process them fast enough, so there’s a backlog of these individuals underneath the bridge. They’re not detained, they’re just gathered there waiting their turn to get processed.”

Customs and Border Protection said it was deploying more agents to the area to help process migrants more quickly.

“The Border Patrol is increasing its manpower in the Del Rio Sector and coordinating efforts within DHS and other relevant federal, state and local partners to immediately address the current level of migrant encounters,” the agency told the Washington Post. “To prevent injuries from heat-related illness, the shaded area underneath Del Rio International Bridge is serving as a temporary staging site while migrants wait to be taken into USBP custody.”