- 20 E. Rivercrest Dr. [HAR]
Photo:Â Patrick Bertolino
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COMMENT OF THE DAY: MONTROSE HASN’T EVEN HIT PUBERTY YET 
“I regularly walk around in Montrose. I’ve also been to many urban neighborhoods in the northeast which are as close to 100% gentrified as you can get. I’m talking Greenwich Village in NYC, Beacon Hill in Boston, Georgetown in DC.
Montrose is not anywhere close to that level of gentrification. It won’t even be there in 20 years. Right now, you can still walk around Montrose and see loads of old 60s and 70s garden complexes with $700 a month apartments. There are plenty of trashy convenience stores, rundown strip malls, and vacant lots. And yes, there are still plenty of young artists and musicians who live in the area and hang out in areas like the Menil plying their craft.
Any neighborhood where a lot on a major commercial street can sit vacant for over a year is not that gentrified yet.
Okay, so yes. Montrose is obviously gentrifying. It’s different from how it was 20, 30, 40 years ago. That’s part of city life–places change, some people move out, other people move in. And eventually, maybe in a few decades, if Houston doesn’t get destroyed in a hurricane or become the next Detroit due to economic collapse, Montrose probably will become the kind of bland-ish upper crust West U-ish neighborhood people act like it already is. But here’s the reality: It’s not there yet, and it won’t be for quite awhile.” [Christian, commenting on Comment of the Day Runner-Up: The Creative Destruction of Montrose] Illustration: Lulu
The final portion of the 6-story former Town & Country V office building at 908 Town & Country Blvd., including its elevator shaft, came down in an awkward curtsy yesterday, leaving workers in the lower floors of the neighboring 15-story CityCentre Five with nothing left to block their views of the Katy Fwy. Demolitions of the adjacent Town & Country III and Town & Country IV office buildings preceded it.
The unobstructed freeway view won’t last forever: Developer Midway is planning 2 new office buildings — as well as a residential highrise — for the cleared site.
- Previously on Swamplot: How To Pull Down an I-10 Office Building, Town & Country Style;Â Taking the Edge off Town & Country V;Â Underground Parking Garage near CityCentre Replaced with Garage-Shaped Lake;Â How To Topple That Last Bit of Seventies Mod Office Building Without Letting It Topple You;Â Smashing Views of a Half-Eaten Katy Fwy. Office Building from CityCentre Five;Â Midway Fences In Empty 1970s Office Park Where 3 More CityCentre Towers Might Sprout
Last Fall at I-10 and Beltway 8
Video: Bryant Martin
Public Works
The new bar planned for the 20,878-sq.-ft. warehouse at 3229 Navigation Blvd. in Houston’s East End that earlier this decade was home to Fred’s Trailer Truck Supply will be called Straylight Run and serve — according to its promoters — as Houston’s first-ever “Virtual Reality Bar.” That’s the conclusion of some internet sleuthing by HAIF (and Swamplot) commenter CrockpotandGravel, who after seeing Swamplot’s report on the alcohol license procured for the spot at the corner of Navigation and Engelke tracked down the establishment’s website, a (possibly spurned)Â logo proposal, and Instagram feed.
Straylight Run on Navigation
Today’s sponsor, TechSpace Houston, wants to let you know about an exciting event taking place at its Westchase campus later this month. (Thanks for supporting Swamplot!)
TechSpace Houston — the new modern flexible workspace in Westchase, is hosting a Free Coworking Friday on Friday, August 25 — and inviting Swamplot readers to come try out the space for the entire day!
Here are the details about TechSpace Houston’s Free Coworking Friday:
- When: August 25, 2017 from 8 am to 5 pm
- Where: TechSpace Houston, 2101 CityWest Blvd., ground floor
- Please sign up here to let them know you are coming!
Can’t make it on August 25th? Claim a free day pass and come in a different day!
TechSpace Houston is a unique shared office space totaling 46,000 sq. ft. — with 450 workstations and lots of campus amenities. Each floor houses a variety of office space solutions, including co-working spaces, 1-to-3-person private offices, large private office suites that can accommodate 4-to-50 people, conference rooms, event spaces, and a variety of thought-provoking collaboration lounges — including a unique social platform-style seating area and an outdoor Wi-Fi enabled patio.
TechSpace Houston provides an alternative to long-term leases. It’s a great solution for all types of businesses, no matter what stage: startups, entrepreneurs, SMEs, growth companies, and Fortune 100 teams. If you are in need of flexible office space — whether you work alone and need a co-working desk to tap into the local business community or have 2-to-50 employees who need a private office — TechSpace Houston can be a smart choice for your business.
Let Swamplot readers get to know your business’s offerings. Become a Sponsor of the Day!
Sponsor of the Day
TEXADELPHIA’S TRIUMPHANT RETURN TO THE WESTHEIMER STRIP 
A little more than 2 years after retreating from its last Houston outpost — and later, having to see its former Westheimer location festooned with a giant Beaver statue — Tex-Mex cheesesteak chain Texadelphia is ready to return. Houston’s very first-in-a-while Texadelphia franchise is scheduled to open by late next month in the endcap of the Westside Plaza strip center at 8383 Westheimer Rd., on the corner of Dunvale, where it will replace the recently shuttered Potbelly sandwich shop pictured above. [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo: The Square Foot
- 305 Belin Manor Dr. [HAR]
The 25-story SkyHouse River Oaks apartment tower, completed at the end of 2015 on a portion of the site of the former Westcreek Apartments just west of the San Felipe Target, has actual streetfront retail on its ground floor. And as of last week, it’s all full and open. That’s when Inferno Pizza began serving in the 2,400-sq.-ft. space at 2031 Westcreek Ln. Suite N1. The neighboring space has been a Glow Spa and Nails since last year.
There’s designated parking for spa- and pizza-goers in the first floor of the building’s garage. Pizza Inferno’s interior is organized like most fast-casual you-tell-us-how-to-assemble-it restaurants, though the buildout also added a 600-sq.-ft. mezzanine dining area and some patio seating (tables are coming in a few weeks) in front:
Tower Pizza
COMMENT OF THE DAY: NAVIGATION BLVD.’S FOOD- AND DRINK-FILLED FUTURE 
“Navigation seems to be becoming the East End’s version of the Washington chug-and-chow strip. Good spot for that as it’s close to the bayou and the hike and bike scene being developed and has lots of old industrial on some minor bluffs waiting to become something different.” [Dana-X, commenting on The Warehouse Bar Coming Up Just Past the Curve in Navigation] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY RUNNER-UP: THE CREATIVE DESTRUCTION OF MONTROSE 
“No one likes it when a fun edgy neighborhood like Montrose gentrifies. Seeing original funky local haunts replaced by chains and high end destinations is like losing an old friend. But this process of gentrification is actually good in the long run because each generation gets a new chance at building a home for the local counterculture. Without that cycle of displacement and rebirth, the counterculture becomes entrenched and turns into an establishment culture within the counterculture. Rising rents in Montrose pushed out lots of artists. But it also created demand for studio space that gave birth to the 1st Ward arts district and great new developments like the Silos. And the same dynamic is playing out for bars and clubs popping up all over the east side. The counterculture lives on and thrives when each generation has a chance to find their own voice by converting a forgotten part of the city into the next counterculture hub. In the end, the kids are alright. They just need a push out into the wilderness every few decades to keep things fresh.” [Old School, commenting on The Death, Life, and Continuing Obituary of Montrose, Still Texas’s ‘Coolest Neighborhood‘] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY SECOND RUNNER-UP: HOUSTON’S BIG BOUNDARY ADVANTAGE 
“. . . One of the reasons that Houston manages to buck trends affecting other central cities is that Houston is orders of magnitude larger than many central cities. Within its incorporated city limits, Houston could contain all of Manhattan, Chicago, San Francisco, Washington DC, Boston, and then have room enough left over for Santa Barbara. That means that Houston contains its first-ring suburbs, most of its second-ring, and even some some third-ring; and then it also does this funky “limited-purpose annexation†scheme in the northwest suburbs and has a special non-annexation deal with The Woodlands to keep those areas as an unincorporated buffer zone from which they are still somewhat able to tap commercial property tax revenues from those areas. And as demographic pressures push and pull people across different regions, Houston has to adapt to all of those trends simultaneously, but it also has a diversified-enough tax base to be able to do so — you know, presuming that its elected officials never do anything especially stupid like capping revenues and also underfunding pensions for decades.” [TheNiche, commenting on North Houston Amazon Fulfillment Center Opens; Qui Now Taking Reservations; Ending the ‘Dry Heights’] Illustration: Lulu
Wrecking balls may have gone out of style, but cable hookups still put on a good Houston show. A reader with a front-row view of the soon-to-be north end of CityCentre shows us how, in videos and a photo showing the continuing section-by-section disappearance of the 1977 office building at 908 Town & Country Blvd. known as Town & Country V.
First, demolition workers weaken some of the building’s steel support beams by heating them with torches and making a few strategic snips. Then they attach one end of a cable to the beam:
Cable Hookups and Yanks
Today’s Swamplot sponsor is ASCOT — also known as the Alcohol Servers Counsel of Texas. Thanks for supporting this site!
If you work in a restaurant, or in any kind of food-service or food-prep operation, you’re probably already familiar with state requirements for training in food-handling safety. And if you work in a bar or for an alcohol distributor, you probably already know why it’s so important that everyone who has anything to do with selling, dispensing, or delivering any kind of alcoholic beverage complete state-certified training in alcohol safety.
Since 1988, ASCOT has been licensed by the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission to provide TABC-certified alcohol-server training programs. That makes ASCOT one of the oldest and most established food and beverage certification programs in the country — as well as Texas’s longest-running provider of training in this important field. And ASCOT has been a preferred source for training in food handling in Houston since 2004.
If you’re responsible for making sure new employees are trained promptly and well in these particular areas, you can be sure they’re getting the exact program they need — in the most helpful format possible — by sending them to ASCOT. ASCOT offers its training courses both in a classroom setting and online, in both English and Spanish.
Use the discount code ASCOT on the alcoholservers.com website and the online alcohol-server training course works out to just $9.89 per class. The food-handling class costs just $7.00 — no discount code is needed.
ASCOT’s server-training program is certified by the TABC, and its food-handler program is ANSI Accredited as meeting the ASTM E2659-09 standard. For more details, or to sign up, head over to the ASCOT website — alcoholservers.com — or call 713.922.1223.
Be a proud supporter of Swamplot. Become a Sponsor of the Day.
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What’s happening at the corner of Navigation Blvd. and Engelke in the East End? A mix of alcohol and demolition: Mixed beverage, late-night, and beverage cartage permits were issued by the TABC last month to a yet-to-be-opened establishment named Straylight in the 20,878-sq.-ft. metal warehouse building with the brick front at 3229 Navigation Blvd. This spot is 4 blocks down the street from Ninfa’s, just past where Navigation starts to curve east toward Buffalo Bayou. Adjacent to that property, excavators are finishing up their work demolishing the former General Supply & Equipment Co. building at 3203 Engelke St.
The newly vacant lot now spreads just to the north of the building where Straylight is planned, as shown in these photos taken by Swamplot reader Johnny Mann Jr.:
Straylight
