- 8710 Winston Falls Ct. [HAR]
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For a charitable nonprofit, Rodeo Houston comes across as a tad indifferent about one of Houston’s neediest causes: CEO Skip Wagner tells the Houston Business Journal‘s Emily Wilkinson that Rodeo Houston is “busting at the seams” and needs more space: “And we’ve got 18 acres that is just wasted right in the heart of Reliant.” What, Wilkinson asks, would Wagner prefer to see happen to the Astrodome?
“Honestly, we don’t care. There are two options — one is tear it down. If so, it would become open area, and we would use it effectively that way. Second, ultimately if they gut it or renovate it, as long as we can use it to put on elements of our show, then we’re fine with that.”
And what about the 48 acres Rodeo Houston bought of the former AstroWorld site across 610? “We could move things like our bus operations over there and expand the presentation footprint (at Reliant),” says Wagner. “We can look at how to use it for its maximum benefit — maybe put in some RV hookups.”
- Rodeo Houston prepares for record growth, CEO says [Houston Business Journal]
- Previously on Swamplot: It’s Not Like We’re Doing Anything Else With the Astrodome, Rodeo Buys Half of AstroWorld To Use as 48-Acre Parking Lot, The Astrodome’s New Gig: AstroTurf Storage Warehouse, What’s Brewing at AstroWorld? Chunk of Former Amusement Park Site Sold to Unidentified Developer
Photo: Candace Garcia
Sharing Benignus Plaza with Jason’s Deli, Texas State Optical, and a salon, this 2,500-sq.-ft. suite at 10321 Katy Freeway will be the first Club Champion store in Texas. The Chicago-based company sells custom golf clubs built to fit, and it provides a demo space for practice. Sitting just east of Town & Country Village, the Benignus Plaza store will be almost directly across I-10 from Hicks Ventures’ proposed Block 10 West Office Park.
- Previously on Swamplot:Â Great New Indoors Replacing The Old Great Indoors
Photos: Swamplot inbox
A Swamplot reader sends in photos of this Travis St. office building’s — well, stuccover. Gone are the striped awnings and gas light (pictured at the top) likely added during the building’s New Orleans Revival phase. Also gone is a trick-of-the-eye mural continuing those awnings (and window-fronting balcony railings, too) painted on the brick load-bearing wall that faces south toward Francis St. Built in 1959, the 4,741-sq.-ft. Midtown office space was purchased last June.
Want to see more of the stuccover?
Invasion of the Art Snatchers: Carrie Schneider and Alex Tu, pictured above (though not in their everyday wear), are planning to reproduce the Art Guy Michael Galbreth’s “The Human Tour,” reports Houston Press‘s Meredith Deliso. As a UH student in 1987, Galbreth came up with the crosstown tour: a 40-mile, anatomically correct urban hike in the shape of a human figure.
If you like intensely cinematic video renderings of former housewares stores set to a really rocking soundtrack, you’re going to love this one: It’s Block 10 West Office Park! This screenshot from the video shows how developer Hicks Ventures plans to maintain fidelity to the original I-10 site near Beltway 8, retaining the parking lot that used to front the former Great Indoors, which Sears sold along with 9 other stores about a year ago.
WHERE WILL THE RAMEN BE? 
You can order ramen at dozens of places in Houston, but The Modular food truck’s Joshua Martinez’s Goro & Gun, declares Houston Press‘s Katharine Shilcutt, is going to be the first dedicated to the squiggly noodle: Doubling as a bar, Goro & Gun is set to open in about a month somewhere Downtown; CultureMap’s Tyler Rudick hazards a guess that 306 Main St. will be the new spot, but Martinez calls that story’s reporting “very inaccurate.” So where, then? Martinez and his fellow gaijin Brad Moore and Ryan Rouse aren’t ready to say, but Shilcutt does slip in a few clues: “The downtown restaurant which will house Goro & Gun hasn’t been home to anything successful in years. Its last resident was a sandwich shop, which closed almost as quickly as it opened.” And it’ll be in a “shotgun-style space.” [CultureMap; Eating Our Words] Photo: First We Feast
COMMENT OF THE DAY: PLANS FOR HOUSTON “Houston didn’t develop organically. The original street grid was planned, the Heights was planned, Montrose and River Oaks and the Villages and Cinco Ranch, etc., all planned. At least 90% of the people who wax poetic about Houston’s ‘vibrancy’ and ‘free spirit’ probably live in a place that was very carefully planned. Our freeway system was the result of planning, and our organic twisty-turny roads were straightened out. Everything within 5 miles of Rice University was aggressively planned, and people love it. Property values in Houston are high in places that were planned, low in places that weren’t, which tells you what the market wants: Planning.” [Mike, commenting on ‘The Galleria Is My Idea of Hell’ and Other Houston Stories]
Yesterday’s Daily Demolition Report listed 1706 Alamo St., where Houston’s Theater LaB has operated since 1993. The 65-seat theater sat on 1,600 sq. ft. in the First Ward. Theater LaB sold the property last October. Also in the demo path, a reader reports, was Thespian Park across the street, where among bajillions of native plants the Tunisian-born set designer Rodolphe Zarka installed 18 of these panel murals in 2003. A tipster tells Swamplot that a group of First Warders were told late Monday night that everything — murals and all — was going to be bulldozed the next day.
LBJ wuz here: Built in 1904, this 3,161-sq.-ft. home on the corner of Hawthorne and Garrott in the Westmoreland Historic District gave the future president a place to crash in 1931 when he was teaching public speaking and coaching the debate team at Sam Houston High School.
In March 2011, the house was put on the market for the first time in 90 years; the price climbed to almost $619,000 that June. It sat for a year, going for just under $285,000. Renovations began that summer. And the house returned 9 days ago with a new MLS number, new photos, and a new historically low — for this place, anyway — price: $569,900.
This Commerce St. parcel of property will be up for auction on February 14, reports Real Estate Bisnow‘s Catie Dixon. Owned by Cushman & Wakefield, says Dixon, the Downtown lot bound by Elysian and Austin is almost 29,000 sq. ft. of surface parking — for now, anyway — that stares at Minute Maid Park. Maybe the most important detail is that the lot backs up to Buffalo Bayou . . .
Seem familiar? This 1952 mod appeared in the HBO boob-job exposé Breast Men, starring David Schwimmer as Houston’s early-’60s boob pioneer Dr. Kevin Saunders. Or maybe that two-faced fireplace sparks your memory: Last July, the 4-bedroom, 3,558-sq.-ft. home was listed for sale at $1.1 million. (It was the one with the bomb shelter underneath the patio?) Well, in December it was sold for an even $1 million. And it showed up in today’s Daily Demolition Report.
Why not take one last peek, before it goes?
COMMENT OF THE DAY: TATTERS TALE “. . . I rather like greater Houston’s add-it-as-you-need it layout. I mean, I definitely see the distinct advantages that other cities have in their planning, so I’m not knocking them, but I think Houston has advantages, too. I couldn’t ever put my finger on why until reading this article, but I like that Houston doesn’t seem like some piece of created artifice, regulated in such a way as to preserve it in a frame. A “mediation between private homes and the impersonal corporate world†feels like some sort of sop. Like, if the city looks like something I see on TV, then everything must be fine here. No place is perfect, and no one should be lulled into thinking it is. Some more beauty would be nice (I can remember when this town had a lot more trees, for example), but our citizens are so disparate that I’m not even sure we can all agree on what ‘beauty’ is. We’re not homogenous, which gives us some great advantages, but it makes our public spaces kind of bland, even while the private ones are eye-popping. The city (including its many suburbs) wears its elbow pads on the outside of its jacket, showing off the tatters. It keeps the valuables on the inside, in hidden pockets. That won’t change for a long, long time.” [Sihaya, commenting on ‘The Galleria Is My Idea of Hell’ and Other Houston Stories]
Since 2011, Houston Arts Alliance has been curating Writing & C/Siting Houston, a series of personal stories from local writers about their favorite Houston places: secret hike and bike trails along Buffalo Bayou, family-owned businesses in Midtown, Hindu temples in Sugar Land. Novelist and essayist Miah Mary Arnold and UH professor William Monroe will be the first in 2013 to contribute their stories to the series, giving a reading tomorrow night. Joining them will be essayist Phillip Lopate, who describes the city in “Houston Hide-and-Seek” as “a decentralized octopus gobbling up all the land around it.”
Don’t ever say sluggers don’t need their creature comforts: This 16,000-sq.-ft., 5-bedroom, 9-bathroom mansion at 405 Timberwilde was home to former Houston Astro and 1994 NL MVP Jeff Bagwell, who retired with 449 homers after 15 seasons. Oh, and his mansion? It’s for sale for $15 million.
