“Soon!” You can almost hear this dormant excavator warning the Montrose Fiesta. The first one started sneaking up on the strip center at Dunlavy and W. Alabama back in March, but it wasn’t until late last week that the permits were granted and the real smashing began. The Fiesta closed for good almost exactly a year ago, not long after the H-E-B Montrose Market went up across the street where the Wilshire Village apartments once stood. Fittingly, developer Marvy Finger has said he plans to replace the soon-to-be-felled grocery store with apartments.
More shots of the carnage:
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- Wilshire Village coverage [Swamplot]
- Previously on Swamplot: Here Comes the Heavy Machinery, There Goes the Dunlavy Fiesta, Scenes from the Dunlavy Fiesta Farewell Shopping Experience, Montrose Fiesta on Dunlavy Will Close Forever in Less Than a Month, Apartments Planned for Montrose Fiesta Site Will Go Tall Mediterranean, Montrose Fiesta Building Owners: That Variance Is for Future Generations, The Montrose Fiesta Is Over: Here Comes Lancaster Square, West Ave-Style Apartments and Retail Planned for Dunlavy Fiesta Site?
Photos: Allyn West
Great for Montrose real estate…a crappy strip center meets its demise!
Yup don’t miss that place one bit!
CRUSH BABY! CRUSH!!!
Just what we need more apartments; yay.. Good luck when the sewer and water systems fail..
I don’t like to see Fiesta closing stores. Their merchandise is inexpensive and if you’re adventurous, their meat department offers things few other big grocery chains offer. They are the antithesis of Whole Foods in the best (and yes, sometimes worse) possible way. I always loved how you could use their carts to walk your groceries home at the 14th/Studewood location. Talk about pedestrian-friendly!
@Anse – “I always loved how you could use their carts to walk your groceries home at the 14th/Studewood location.”
The Fiesta knowingly allowed this? Most stores call this theft.
@Walt, I wouldn’t say they “knowingly allow” it, but both that store and the one of 23rd have a driver with a pickup that goes around and collects the carts from the neighborhood almost daily. If you see an orphan cart on your street, you just call the store manager and they send the truck out right away.
@walt Somey grocery stores pay people to ride around apartment complexes collecting carts in the AM. I see them all the time.
Can’t wait to see the MMMM.
(Marvy’s Montrose Mediterranean Monstrosity.)
The late Fiesta at Dunlavy at W. Alabama and the one on Fannin @ Wheeler both also sent/send trucks around the neighborhoods to pick up the carts.
To all those who are pointing out that the Fiestas send around trucks to pick up the carts – yes, I acknowledge that they do this. But this does not mean that they willingly allow people to take their carts to wheel groceries home and then leave them abandoned on the side of the road. The cart recovery trucks are a loss reduction effort, not a customer service offering. Can anyone say, with a staight face, that a business would tell customers, “Yes, you may take our property without paying for it, abandon it wherever you like, and then we’ll go looking for it in hopes of minimizing our losses.” Of course not. Just because a business attempts to recover their property does not mean they gave you permission to take it in the first place.
The carts run $500-600 a piece, they have small tracking devices installed, and they pay someone to retrieve them. Most places also have wheel locks when they exceed a certain distance from the store they lock a front wheel, making it difficult at best to move the cart. The Aldi way of doing this makes far more sense though, insert a quarter and you get your cart, when you return it your quarter is returned — smart..
That was my favorite grocery store. The employees were very nice, the food was good and cheap, and I loved the music on the PA.
Why do I doubt the carts in question have these sophisticated devices….
Ahhh… Marvy’s shiny new Turd, for our neighborhood.
And it burns me up when someone buys $30 worth of groceries and steals a $300-500 cart to take it home. We all pay for that!
Wilshire Village was an eyesore. So was this entire shopping center. The new HEB and these apartments are a DRAMATIC improvement for the neighborhood.
Keep up the good work Houston. There’s still lots of crap in the neighborhood that could benefit from an introduction to a bulldozer.
Wrong.. Wilshire Village was classic art deco, and a classic that direly needed to be renovated. I enjoy the HEB but would have preferred the oaks and the cool design of the former structures. I also liked that Fiesta, and it’s gigantic (albeit unnecessary) parking lot. What I don’t like is more Fingers apartments, in some ersatz Mediterranean style – sounds uber tacky to me.