Do you know the way from Cassoulet to Jalapeño Gefilte Fish? With this handy map, navigating your multiple-course progressive dinner-about-town should be no problem. It’s former Houston Press food critic Robb Walsh’s 100 favorite restaurant dishes in Houston, conveniently laid out on a navigable Google map by Press reader Kyle Nielsen. Yep, Fried Mojarra at Taqueria Jesus Maria (#95), Kubideh and Zereshk Polo at Kasra Persian Grill (#89), Frito Pie at the Rio Verde Taco Truck (#50), Chocolate-Peanut Butter Cake Ball at Coffee Groundz (#94) — they’re all here, glistening bits of fat and all. We’re counting 44 dishes inside the Loop, the rest in the great beyond. Not included on account of them being all over the place: the Whataburger Triple Meat, Triple Cheese with Bacon and Jalapeños (#59) and James Coney Island Chili (#80). Burp.
Read more about: Google Maps, Maps, Restaurants
The Johnson family may not want to come directly from the airport to their new home when they return tomorrow from their weeklong surprise vacation in Paris. “Organizers are frantic they may not be able to finish,” reports abc13’s Cynthia Cisneros, who adds that the project was still 21 hours behind schedule as of this afternoon (that’s marked down from about 30 yesterday). Meanwhile, the folks at HHN Homes have updated the company’s website for the project with a screaming headline: “Extreme Help Needed!!” and a list of specific trades they’re hoping to attract for shifts beginning 8 pm tonight and Saturday.
“Every radio station and tv station is soliciting the public for volunteers,” notes Swamplot photographer Candace Garcia, who visited the site this afternoon. And she noted evidence of more problems:
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Read more about: 77021, Construction Problems, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, New Construction: Residential, South Union
Your keys, please? A local used-car dealership is the new sponsor of the “free” valet parking service at First Colony Mall in Sugar Land. Independent used-car giant Texas Direct Auto, which has its roots in eBay (and still sells most of its cars online), now has its blue and white umbrellas parked in front of the Cheesecake Factory and on the mall’s interior street near Kona Grill, with valets ready to take your car. The company’s main dealership is just 5 miles north of the mall, on the 59 feeder road. And yes, the company does take trade-ins. [Ultimate Fort Bend]
Read more about: 77478, First Colony, Malls, Parking, Retail, Sugar-Land
House down! And another! And . . . a bit more:
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Read more about: Daily Demolition Report, Demolitions
Metro’s University Line has passed its final environmental review, the transit agency announced today. “The approval in the form of a federal Record of Decision allows Metro to go forward with utility coordination, design and pre-construction planning along the 11.3-mile route, some of which will run along Richmond Avenue from roughly Main to Cummins streets.” [River Oaks Examiner]
Read more about: Light-Rail, Metro Rail, University Line
Intrigued by the South Union neighborhood where the team from Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and HHN Homes is making a valiant effort to build a 4,500-sq.-ft. home for the Johnson family — in less than a week? Maybe you’re wondering what the rest of the area is like? Well, the home right next door, at 3609 Goodhope St., is for sale! Asking price: $40,000. Don’t worry: It won’t be the fanciest home in the neighborhood.
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Read more about: 77021, Homes for Sale, South Union
District F city council member Al Hoang failed in his bid yesterday to have a justice of the peace evict an organization calling itself Vietnamese Community Services from the Vietnamese Community of Houston and Vicinities building across the street from Plazamericas in Sharpstown. In a hearing the Chronicle’s Moises Mendoza describes as “bizarre,” Hoang told Judge Russ Ridgway the Vietnamese Community Services name sounds too much like that of the building’s owners, and that the result was “too confusing.” Hoang is a former president of the Vietnamese Community of Houston and Vicinities, which also goes by the acronym VNCH. In May, he helped the organization win city council approval of a $400,000 community development block grant — to renovate the VNCH building.
“Although Vietnamese Community Services has been in the building for 18 months, Hoang said he only recently discovered it’s not calling itself Vietnamese Elders Association, as he believed it had been since the group first moved into the building at 7100 Clarewood Drive.
Vietnamese Community Services offers hot meals and English classes, among other things, to elderly community members.
Hoang has been demanding that Vietnamese Community Services change its name or move elsewhere for the last few months, but the executive director of the organization refuses to do that.” Earlier this week, that organization’s executive director, Kim Nguyen, told Chronicle columnist Lisa Falkenberg that her group had already planned to move to a new location next month, so that the building could be renovated. [Houston Chronicle; Falkenberg column]
Read more about: 77036, City Council, Evictions, Institutional Buildings, Neighborhood Disputes, Sharpstown
Note: Story updated below.
HHN Homes manager Linda Stewart tells Swamplot the construction crew building the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition home for the Johnson family on Goodhope St. in South Union is running about 10 hours behind schedule — and still “desperately” needs framers and workers from the “cornice trades” (to complete exterior trim work).
Swamplot photographer Candace Garcia watched workers slip and slide on the muddy site and rain-slick materials earlier today, and snapped a few pix of the scene. “It is REALLY wet out there,” she reports:
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Read more about: 77021, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, New Construction: Residential, Photos, South Union
Since last Swamplot expressed thanks to its local advertisers, 2 more have joined this smart group:
- Boulevard Realty, the boutique real-estate firm previously known as Karen Derr & Associates Realty
and
Thanks again also to our continuing advertisers:
Regular readers already know it: These organizations and firms make Swamplot possible. Wanna get in on the action and get your message out to Swamplot’s large and growing local readership of Houston real-estate and neighborhood fans? Advertising on Swamplot is easy! Check out our rate sheet (PDF) and contact us if you’re interested.
Read more about: Notices
Signs have been going up and coming down around the West End site Walmart is reportedly buying. Yesterday, Swamplot reported that signs posted over the weekend across from Koehler St. on Yale had been taken down, though a representative of the planning firm hired for the project told blogger Nicholas Urbano, who’s been protesting the development, that the removal had been a mistake and that the signs would be back up soon. They are up now, Urbano reports. But the two other signs surrounding the Walmart site (for the replatting of a portion of the Houston Heights Addition, shown above) have been removed. Another member of the “Stop the Heights Wal-Mart!” group reported on the group’s Facebook page that an engineer he encountered on the property told him that Ainbinder Company would now be “looking to present this a different way” at the August 5th planning commission meeting.
The Yale St. variance sign, now back up:
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Read more about: 77007, Big Box Stores, Development Strategies, Proposed Developments, Signs, Variances, West End, West End Walmart
A sign inside the Rochester Big and Tall store at the Uptown Collection strip center on Westheimer at Yorktown describes the new-concept superstore soon to take it over: Destination XL will be “an experience . . . where life, style and size has no boundaries!” Conveniently, exercise equipment store Hest Fitness Products has vacated the space next door. That’ll make it easier for the large-size men’s clothing store to . . . expand: Workers will bust through the wall separating the 2 spaces, and Destination XL will take over all 11,000 sq. ft.
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Read more about: 77056, Galleria, Openings and Closings, Retail, Strip Centers, Uptown
Comment of the Day: Saves You Money!!
“Harness/Lanyard runs about 400 dollars total. They must be replaced too. In addition there is significant overhead for training. Including time to train, and productivity losses. These Productivity losses amount to regulations that call for your tie off point be able to withstand a load of 5 kips (5000 lbs). So In the image where the dude is standing on a wood beam, laborers would have to construct a system for him to be tied off to. How do laborers know what can take 5000 lbs? well Scaffold builders do that a lot… how do scaffold builders do that? With an engineer who designs the scaffold? And all the time, and money trickles down to the homeowner.
Finally, in the housing industry there is a large illegal immigrant workforce. They are working at lower wages [than] US citizens. If they get injured the cost vs productivity/exploitation of that illegal still falls in the companies[’] advantage.” [Enginerd, commenting on Comment of the Day: Extreme Homebuilding Makeover, Oil and Gas Edition]