COMMENT OF THE DAY: ENERGY DEPENDENCE 
“The current Houston economic boom isn’t connected to nation-wide anything. It’s connected to energy-sector activity. If, how and when energy activity slows will determine if the Houston economy, and the Houston real estate market by extension, also slows or busts. If all drilling were to stop tomorrow, our boom would be a bubble that popped. If energy activity continues at this pace for 100 years, they won’t be able to call it a bubble. They’ll just call it growth.” [Densify, commenting on Comment of the Day: Bursting Your Housing Bubble Bubble] Illustration: Lulu
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THE CATCH IN KINDER FOUNDATION’S BAYOU GREENWAYS CASH GIVEAWAY 
It’s one thing to get the money to build a bunch of nice parks, and it’s another to keep them nice: Houston Chronicle reports that the Kinder Foundation isn’t convinced that the city will be able to pay for the maintenance of all those miles and miles of hike and bike trails and linear parks it’s setting up through the Bayou Greenways Project. That’s why — before the foundation agrees to donate the $50 million it’s dangling out there to the project — it wants the nonprofit Houston Parks Board to be put in charge of future upkeep: “Under the proposed arrangement, the city agrees to pay the park board up to $10 million a year for maintenance. Although the nonprofit likely will hire private companies and Harris County Flood Control to do some work, the city parks department would be the preferred contractor for the bulk of it, essentially bringing much of the funding back to city coffers. Additionally, the agreement includes an annual 20 percent contingency fund the board can use for capital improvement projects, such as installing new lights or replacing aging trails, or for disaster recovery after flooding or hurricanes.” [Houston Chronicle ($); previously on Swamplot] Photo of hike and bike trail construction on Brays Bayou: Allyn West
The bids that were submitted to HISD yesterday to buy the Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice High School in Magnolia Grove rang up almost $5 million more than those the first time around in July: Neighboring St. Thomas High School is still in the running to purchase the 11-acre campus on Dickson St., just north of Memorial Dr. and Buffalo Bayou; it offered $45 million, compared with the $42 million the private school said it would pay in July. But St. Thomas was again outbid, this time by an entity called Elk Mountain Ltd. — connected, it appears, to the Gordy Oil Company — which submitted a flat $47,927,114.
A PREMATURE PHOTO OF PREVIEW, OPENING SOON IN SUGAR LAND 
This signless storefront, a reader reports, will be the home of Preview, the seafood restaurant opening this November just a few doors down from the forthcoming Welfresh Market on Hwy. 6 in Sugar Land. Chef Jason Liao explains to Eater Houston why he chose the ’burbs: “[B]ecause it fit into his budget, is a high-end area and he ‘saw what was happening with Underbelly, Uchi and Oxheart opening in uptown, midtown and [central] areas’ but wanted to take a different route. ‘I’m not trying to do volume or turn tables,’ Liao says. ‘I can afford that small space in that area, and can have people who appreciate what we do [want to] go out there and eat.'” [Swamplot inbox; Eater Houston; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Swamplot inbox
Here’s a pic of the foliage and signage of the closed Wel-Farm Supermarket in Sugar Land — which, a reader reports, will soon have its hyphen removed and hyperbole reduced when it opens later this fall as the Welfresh Market. The grocery store, specializing in Asian produce, is located inside the shopping center near Dulles Ave. at 4635 Hwy. 6.
- Welfresh Market [Facebook]
Photo: Swamplot inbox
COMMENT OF THE DAY: BURSTING YOUR HOUSING BUBBLE BUBBLE 
“Your fears of a bubble being caused in this manner are unfounded. The sales of older homes (by Houston standards at least — still less than 10 years) have shot up in just the last 9 months. Sure, we always need to guard against bubbles, but I don’t think an EaDo-specific bubble is occurring, and certainly not because there aren’t existing single-family homes.
Teardowns of existing, livable (leaving out the shotgun shacks) single-family homes have started (here, for instance). In the place of the teardowns are multiple townhomes.
There are some examples of irrational exuberance on the part of the developers, like the $500,000 asking price for the townhomes bounded by Nagle/Capitol/Delano/Rusk, but the recent high appreciation occurring is not out of line and has only been occurring for a few years, whereas places like the Heights and Rice Military have seen prices increases for many years, all without any neighborhood-specific bubble. Midtown, too, has avoided a bubble-then-crash and they have an even smaller stock of single-family homes yards than EaDo.” [eiioi, commenting on Comment of the Day: East Downtown, Brought to You by Montrose] Illustration: Lulu
Looks like MAM’s House of Ice will be opening inside this 780-sq.-ft. former paint supply liquor store at 1040 W. Cavalcade — just in time for winter! This spot is a bit east of where the sky-blue dessert trailer usually parks at Rutland and 20th. Why here? The owners explain to Eater Houston that they “‘tried really hard not to go into a strip center because [they] wanted to have green space’ so that families could go out, extend blankets on the green and enjoy the outdoor picnic tables.” HCAD records show that this new lot comes in at 3,500 sq. ft.
- New Orleans Style Snoballs [MAM’s House of Ice]
- MAM’S House of Ice Snoballs to Open in November [Eater Houston]
- Previously on Swamplot: Snoballs at MAM’s: the Heights of Ice
Photo: Eater Houston
ORDINANCE OPENING CHECKBOOKS, NOT SPACES 
How much new parkland has the city acquired since 2007, when it passed the so-called open space ordinance meant to encourage residential developers to donate part of their properties to the public? “Not one acre,” reports the Houston Chronicle. Almost all the developers, reports Jayme Fraser, have “written checks” instead. But the city hasn’t spent the $11 million it has garnered in fees to buy land; much of it, rather, has gone to maintain and add amenities to the parks it already has: “Mark Ross, deputy director of parks development, said neighborhoods often want upgrades that can be easier to fund, such as . . . [a] playground and water fountains . . . . ‘Most of these might be considered minor improvements, but it’s what people appreciate the most,’ Ross said, pointing to 28 projects completed.” [Houston Chronicle ($)] Photo of Mason Park: Jose Luna
IZAKAYA-WA OPENING REAL SOON IN MEMORIAL 
Eater Houston’s Darla Guillen reports that that Japanese izakaya-style restaurant and bar that a Swamplot reader in August reported would be opening in the Memorial Bend Shopping Park will be opening this Wednesday. And Guillen suspects that the location just inside the Beltway at 12665 Memorial Dr. could very well prove to be very well chosen: “It seems that the restaurant’s proximity to some Japanese corporations will likely encourage a strong Japanese following.” [Eater Houston; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Houston Sushi
In the market for a historical home inside the Loop but just can’t find one that fits your budget? Why, here’s the 6-bedroom mansion that former Houston Post publisher and Governor William P. Hobby had built in 1929 — it’s only $2,385,000! And it looks nothing like an airport! In Braeswood, just a few blocks from the Med Center, the stately Tudor at 2115 Glen Haven has been available since the middle of August.
Wanna get closer?
COMMENT OF THE DAY: EAST DOWNTOWN, BROUGHT TO YOU BY MONTROSE 
“I totally agree with what’s going on in EADO. Face it. It’s way too close to everywhere people want to be not to turn around. And I don’t see any bubble bursting as it’s not inflated at all. Things are still super cheap.
Our strategy for EADO, 3rd ward, and med center area can be summarized in 3 words: “BUY BUY BUY†(and sell in Montrose, at stupid high prices, to get the cash to do so).” [Cody, commenting on Townhouses Going Up in East Downtown] Illustration: Lulu
THE HIGH-TECH BURGER JOINT IN THE WOODLANDS 
Wanting to try Fielding’s Wood Grill, now open in the strip center on Research Forest Dr. where Shenandoah meets The Woodlands, the Houston Press’s Molly Dunn discovers an amenity inside that could prove tricky for the finger-licking clientele: “There’s . . . an iPad bar . . . to surf the web, chat with friends or play some games. It’s as though they took a portion of the Apple Store and placed it smack dab in the middle of the restaurant.” [Eating Our Words; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Swamplot inbox
We hardly knew ye: The Sonic Drive-In at 7001 Harrisburg and 70th has quietly closed and covered its windows with solemn gray-painted plywood. The place had been situated among other chains and franchises and bus terminals near the recently installed big yellow bumper at the end of the forthcoming East End Line, catty-corner from the Magnolia Transit Center and a few blocks north of the Gus Wortham Golf Course (and perhaps the potential future Botanic Garden).
There are almost 6,000 miles of street in Houston, according to the Memorial Examiner, and now about a half a mile of one in Midtown can call itself remarkable. The Greenroads Foundation, which confers on streets a kind of LEED-like designation, gave its first formal props to a project in Texas to Bagby St. between Tuam and St. Joseph Pkwy., for the $9 million in improvements built along the 0.62-mile span the past few months.
Included in those improvements are bike racks, street furniture, wayfinding signs, wider sidewalks, and narrower, less harrowing crosswalks. (You can see in the photo above that these improvements don’t include burying utilities.) But the designation isn’t meant just to make the lives of pedestrians more aesthetically pleasing: LED lights were installed; rain gardens were put in to help with drainage; “fly ash” concrete, which reduces carbon emissions, was used where possible; and Bagby itself, with its potholes, patches, and cracks, was repaved atop what the Midtown Redevelopment Authority calls “newly stabilized materials” that are supposed to require less maintenance over the long haul.
Here are a few more looks at the transformation:
 and Improved... "Pin It")
COMMENT OF THE DAY: ALL THAT FRACKING TRAFFIC 
“The gear needed to frac wells on a single well-pad is unbelievably heavy. A single pump might weigh 75,000 lbs, and you use 12 or more on a single pad, not to mention a hydration unit, a blender, a manifold, a data van — and these are the things that just stay on the well site. You also have sand carried in vehicles so big that they are often called ‘sand hulks’. They come and go from a single well site constantly. And depending on how you get water to the site, that may mean even more trucks.
This army of vehicles leaves from a single yard and tends to go over some of the same roads over and over again on its way to different well-pads where the wells to be fracked are.
The point is, fracking tends to place a lot of stress on a small number of roads that are in continuous use in a given area. I work in in the frac business and am totally pro-fracking, and I think it is totally reasonable for localities (whether counties or states) to require a reasonable road maintenance surcharge from companies that operate frac spreads in an area. (Of course, it should be based on actual use.) After all, these are the same roads our employees drive on to get to work or to run errands and that their kids ride school buses on.” [Robert Boyd, commenting on Headlines: A New San Jacinto Monument Museum; Road-Buckling Fracking Trucks] Illustration: Lulu
