Here’s a photo of the little rubble pile forming outside the former Houston Club Building at 811 Rusk, a presage of the bigger rubble to come. Skanska, which bought the 18-story building standing on the block bound by Rusk, Capitol, Travis, and Milam, has said it plans to replace it with a 34-story, 700,000-sq.-ft. office tower that’s being designed by Gensler.
- Demolishing the Houston Club at 811 Rusk Street [HAIF]
- Previously on Swamplot: Skanska’s New Downtown Office Tower, Houston Club Tunnel Tenants Making Their Escape, Houston Club Building To Be Demolished, Say Auctioneers, ARCO Office Going Down; Downtown Houston Club Building Will Stay Put, Skanska Goes for a Houston Office Building Hat Trick, Skanska Helping Houston Club to Early Exit, Will Skanska Knock Down the Houston Club?, At Risk on Rusk
Photos: HAIF user Nate99
Prime Property reports that Houston developer Morgan Group will demolish a bunch of townhomes and a small office building on S. Gessner Rd. to make way for another of its Pearl-brand apartment complexes; the Briar Forest property was recently purchased, explains Nancy Sarnoff, and the demo of the 131-unit Quadrangle Townhomes at 2021 and the Tanney School building at 2055 S. Gessner might go down before the new year. The Morgan Group complex pictured here, Pearl Greenway at 3788 Richmond Ave., opened recently; 
Monday morning’s fatal collision between the bicycling Rice University architecture student and a southbound Metro train seems to have occasioned the folks at Houston Tomorrow to wonder at the best uses for Main St.: Blogger Kyle Nielsen shows — with a rented 
“Sooner or later all of this development will raise the question: what do you do with a grocery store once the grocery store has moved out? It’s a question that’s been grating on me for a while. The space that used to house Randall’s at the corner of Bissonnet and Fondren has been vacant for almost six years. It would be nice to get another grocery store in there — and maybe if we can redevelop and upgrade the apartments around there it’d be a viable option — but if not, what are the options? I mean, other than a charter school campus or a scary after hours nightclub? [
With the Moody Foundation’s $1.5 million donation as a nice starter, the Galveston Historical Foundation was able to raise the rest of the $3 million it needed to buy the 1892 Bishop’s Palace from the Catholic archdiocese and keep it open as a museum. Designed by Nicholas Clayton for Col. Walter Gresham, the 17,420-sq.-ft. Victorian mansion at the corner of 14th and Broadway had housed clergy since 1921 before the foundation opened it up for tours. The Houston Chronicle reports that the archdiocese plans to use the windfall to renovate the St. Mary’s Basilica, also in in Galveston, while the foundation “
The owners of 1301 Fannin said today that Ziegler Cooper has been contracted to renovate the 24-story Downtown building’s soon-to-be-available office space. Maybe inspired by 
“I think the Yao Ming reference is a show of support for the project. Like Ming, the Ashby Highrise will be a highly valued source of inspiration for the commoners in its shadow. I’m glad people are finally coming together on this.” [
Real Estate Bisnow predicts that in the next year and a half as many as 60 new retail centers anchored by grocery stores will pop up in the Houston area. And not only are the stores proliferating, reports Catie Dixon, they’re getting larger: Many of these new buildings will balloon to 100,000 sq. ft. While national chains like 
