THE TEXICAN
Step inside the Magic Island, which is going to be reopened.
Houstonians who have driven by Magic Island off the Southwest Freeway as of late may have noticed some activity going on in the parking lot adjacent to the Egyptian-themed entertainment venue.
Emboldened by caffeine and curiosity, The Texican visited the site at 2215 Southwest Freeway and spoke with two people who are working with the owner to restore the destination-dining experience, which featured magic shows, to its former glory.
Manny Fahid, was an employee at the venue during that ’80s heyday, and his assistant, Sue Smith, are working for the building’s owner, Mohammad Athari, an area neurologist, to somehow renovate the building and turn it back into a Houston nightlife destination. Athari keeps an office space just next door, where Smith and Fahid have set up their own offices. Proposed architectural renderings of what the two-story, 22,000-square-foot property could look like in the future reside on a table in one of the rooms. It’s like Midtown meets Gatsby at the Smithsonian. The plan is to have it back in operation by late 2018.
The premise will be the same as when it opened in September 1983, just updated for today’s audiences in love with old-school entertainment, and perhaps with craft cocktails and burlesque.
Photos in the Houston Chronicle
THE INTERIOR OF THE EGYPTIAN-THEMED CLUB IS COVERED IN GRAFFITI AND IS IN DISREPAIR.
archives from the decadent ’80s show it to be an ornately tongue-in-cheek haunt covered in Egyptian-style decorations. It started out as a private club before later going public with a fee for nonmembers —offering magic shows, blackjack, roulette and psychics.
The refurbishment won’t be easy. Scavengers and street people have had their way with the building over the past decade. The inside is covered in crude graffiti — in subject matter and style. A fire during Hurricane Ike didn’t do it any favors either, along with a few fires that Fahid says may have been set by transients.
“We need to tear everything out and start over,” Fahid says, surveying the scene under a patio. “There is no longer a lick of electrical wire inside.”
Houston actually was Magic Island’s second location. A movie producer named Michael Callie started the original club in Newport Beach, Calif., in hopes of turning it into a chain. He sold off the concept to another businessman, who brought it to Houston during the ’80s oil boom. People Magazine even came to town to write about the place in 1985, as celebs turned it into their nightly playground.
Money woes in late 1985 led to a shake up, and Athari and a business partner David Amad saw potential in the business. As the Houston Post wrote the following March, it was soon “going great guns” under their watch and was in the black. Acts booked that year included Kay Starr, Frank Sinatra Jr., Jerry Van Dyke and the incomparable Tiny Tim, who appeared on the “high-falutin’ ” club’s shortlived local TV variety show.
The public could come inside for $7.50 while members paid $25 monthly for nightly privileges. Dinner and show packages started at $29.95. No jeans or tennis shoes on anybody. The food never got any proto-foodie love, but the food wasn’t the attraction.
But if Magic Island is to restart fresh, it can make its own rules for the kids and grandkids of the club’s first wave of regulars.
“We want it to look just the way it was,” Smith says. “Unless people were here the first time around, they had no idea of the magnitude of it inside.”
Time will tell if Athari’s dream will become a reality. For now, we still have that pharaoh head presiding over the Southwest Freeway’s notoriously punishing rushhour traffic.