A red tag from the City of Houston, a reader reports, has been posted on the window at Internum, the design and interiors store at 3303 Kirby where this Mini Cooper’s been mounted since December 18. “Remove car from building front,” the City of Houston violation reads, “barricade sidewalks at front — do this immediately.” The violation is dated December 27, but as of this morning the car’s still hanging in there.
So these apartments might not have the same shimmery glamour as their namesake, Beyoncé Knowles. But the pop star and Houston native, moved by the devastation in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, did chip in with her sister, Solange, and mother, Tina — as well as Destiny’s Child co-star Kelly Rowland, St. John’s United, and Temenos CDC — to help provide housing for Houston’s low-income and homeless populations.
The 43-unit building (shown above) at 1719 Gray went up in 2007. Now, Temenos has laid out on its website plans for a second building — with almost twice as many units as the original — at 2200 Jefferson, less than a mile away on the east side of I-45.
There’s no mention whether Beyoncé is involved in Phase II. But there are renderings:
Yesterday morning, Macy’s announced that it would be closing its store Downtown at 1110 Main this spring. But what’s going to happen to the building? Mayor Parker, who knows a thing or two about demolition, said yesterday afternoon that Kenneth Franzheim’s former Foley’s is coming down: “Macy’s is losing the lease, and the owner of that piece of property wants to build something else,” she told KUHF News. The owner in this case would be 1110 Main Partners, an entity connected to Hilcorp Ventures, whose president, Doug Kelly, told the Houston Chronicle yesterday that the company has “no specific plans to announce” about the site. Well, announcing plans is one thing:
Last month, Cite magazine editor Raj Mankad hiked 8 miles through the Katy Prairie to see the prehistoric human remains found during the construction of Grand Parkway’s Segment E for himself. He brought back a few photos and an essayist’s-eye-view of the archaeological saga:
It appeared as if TxDOT had aimed the 15-mile-long highway segment directly at the burial ground. The highway was suspended, figuratively and physically, like an unintentional monument honoring the burial grounds, like Texas was trying to tell anyone in an airplane or spaceship to LOOK HERE. . . . What I saw were several pieces of plywood, propped up on five-gallon paint buckets, covering what I presume to be the human remains and the tools, buffalo teeth, and other objects found with them. The plywood was weighted down with rocks. . . . To my amateur eyes, the excavation looked makeshift and tenuous, not systematic or professional.
Photos: Brett Sillers
If you look closely at these new renderings of Robertson Stadium’s replacement that UH released a couple of weeks ago, you can see the Downtown skyline. UH, a member of the Big East starting in 2013, says that this 40,000-seat, $105-million stadium — whose naming rights are still being shopped around — will be built with a new east-west orientation, at least in part because that’ll make the skyline look real nice on teevee.
More details and even more renderings:
UP IN THE PINES TO STOP THE KEYSTONE XL PIPELINE 
Three hours north of Houston in Cherokee County, reports Brantley Hargrove, protesters interfering with a 485-mile section of TransCanada pipeline being built to carry diluted bitumen south to refineries on the Gulf Coast faced some resistance of their own: “[An] 18-wheeler bearing a cherry picker to pluck protesters out of trees slowed as it approached a shouting, sign-wielding crowd. Several young men leaped in its path. One fell beneath the truck. The others screamed and pounded the hood with their fists. A deputy rounded the front of the truck and drove the protesters back, loosing clouds of pepper spray. [A 75-year-old woman], standing off to the side of the road, caught a gust of the burning mist.” Separately, TransCanada’s website notes its plans for the Houston Lateral Project (shown in red on the map), a 47-mile spur that will come close to Beltway 8. [Houston Press; Gulf Coast Project] Map: TransCanada
ENOUGH SQUARE FOOTAGE TO QUIBBLE OVER “We bought a fairly new house this year. We were all surprised when the appraiser’s square footage was 7 percent (200 square feet) smaller than what they had listed on HAR. Turns out the builder built the original owners a smaller house than they paid for. Some of their original closing documents showed the smaller square footage, but others had the larger number, so we understood why they were confused. We adjusted our offer price based on the revised square footage and called it good. . . . BUT as it turns out [the original owners] had been paying property taxes on the larger square footage. Now it’s our turn to pay the property taxes and I’d like to get the square footage corrected. Our estimate is that we’ll be overpaying by $600 this year if the error isn’t fixed. Unfortunately, I’m reading this information [PDF] from the HCAD website. I’m not sure whether this is a ‘clerical error’ or a ‘substantial error.’ For a substantial error, you apparently can’t protest unless the error causes the property to be over-appraised by more than one third (!). And for clerical errors, they say that inaccuracies in estimation such as estimating the square footage of a house, cannot be changed. I’m guessing I could push this as a clerical error (tell them they must have transposed some numbers when filling in their system). Has anyone done this with success? Or are we just screwed?” [Swamplot inbox; previously on Swamplot]
Did you know Macy’s had a store Downtown? Well, not for much longer. Macy’s announced this morning that its 1110 Main St. location will be shuttered this spring. Clearance sales will start January 7 and continue for up to 11 weeks. The store debuted in 1947 as the Foley’s flagship (at right) in a 791,000-sq.-ft. Kenneth Franzheim building. The company will close 5 Macy’s and one Bloomingdale’s in other cities as well.
Photos: jaraylee182004 (Macy’s), Jim Parsons (Foley’s)
BIG VAGUE NEWS YOU CAN’T USE 
From Swamplot’s tipline comes this groundbreaking prognostication: “This is terribly vague, but as leases and jobs still depend on confidentiality, I am limited on what I can say. . . . A major (non-residential) Houston property is about to make a significant change. The property management may also consider pursuing notable architects for this change. Expect demolition to begin before the end of the year.” Egads, could it be true? [Swamplot inbox] Photo: Seth Bienek
HOUSTON CLUB BUILDING WILL BE DEMOLISHED, SAY AUCTIONEERS 
Going, going . . . gone?: The company auctioning off the contents of the Houston Club ahead of its move to the 49th floor of One Shell Plaza gleefully reports on its website that the Jesse Jones-era 18-story office building at 811 Rusk is “scheduled for demolition!†That’s more than Skanska, which owns the building, has officially announced, though the Swedish construction firm’s own website does note that “future redevelopment” is planned for the Downtown site. [Lewis & Maese via CultureMap; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Silberman Properties
CLOUD 10 HITTING SWEET SPOT IN THE VILLAGE 
We’re guessing Chris Leung will be keeping his ice cream below 273 Kelvin in the shop and open kitchen he’ll be launching this spring at 5711 Kelvin in Rice Village. Cloud 10 Creamery will be one of the street-level shops in the new Hanover apartments set to open next month. This’ll be Cloud 10’s first storefront; Leung’s ice creams have been available since last summer at a few restaurants and food trucks around town. [Houston Press; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Chris Litherland
This rendering of a glassy new Macy’s, posted a couple of weeks ago on the website of architects Munoz + Albin, incited a new round of speculation (on HAIF, anyway) about the fate of Downtown’s last department store. The ol’ box of bricks at 1110 Main St. (pictured below), designed by Kenneth Franzheim, opened in 1947 as the Foley’s flagship. Would Hilcorp, which now owns the property, demolish the post-war relic?
Former Houston Rocket Hakeem Olajuwon quietly opened the doors this past week of a brand-new flagship store for his new clothing line, DR34M. It’s conveniently located just off NASA Pkwy., inside a mansion built during the Depression by a Texas oilman — used later for more than 20 years by NASA for its Lunar and Planetary Institute.
The 17,000-sq.-ft. Italianate mansion by the Clear Lake shore was completed in 1930 by Houston city hall architect Joseph Finger for Jim West, whose family sold it to Humble Oil when he died in 1941. Since then, it has been owned by the Pappas restaurant family and Rice University. And in 1969, during the Apollo missions, the nearby Johnson Space Center moved its moon unit here; it stayed until 1991.
Olajuwon, who has made a lot of investments in Houston-area real estate since his 2002 retirement from the NBA, bought the West Mansion in 2006. He had plans to subdivide the sprawling 41-acre estate to sell off to developers, according to news reports. Later reports indicated the mansion would be razed, or that a retirement village would be built around it. But since early this year, workers have been making extensive renovations to the building, inside and out:
These renderings of the Marriott Marquis show the shapes of things coming — by 2016, according to current plans — to Downtown. Planned for the corner of Walker St. and Avenidas de las Americas, the hotel will stand facade-to-facade across Discovery Green with its older brother, the Hilton-Americas, doubling the number of rooms that serve the George R. Brown Convention Center.
Morris Architects, teamed up with Rida Development, is responsible for the design of this 30-story tower, which will have more than 1,000 guest rooms and exactly one 40,000-sq.-ft. grand ballroom. On the deck atop that ballroom appears to be some fully realized Texas mythology: the state as an island, surrounded by a chlorinated “lazy river.” Guests will tube around it, enjoying what’s more typically considered a Hill Country pastime.
And this is what the hotel is supposed to look like around dusk:
The proto-strip center that houses Yale St. Grill in the Heights went up for sale earlier this month, but Barbara Guidry, who’s been the vintage-y diner’s manager for 30 years, doesn’t expect any changes: “[The building’s] been sold before,” she tells Swamplot, “but this is like an institution.” The 1952 building has been listed at just under $3.2 million. The restaurant shares the 18,000-sq.-ft. structure — located a couple blocks north of the 19th St. shopping district — with Heights Antiques and Dr. Ullman, an optometrist. All 3 are long-term tenants on triple-net leases. Guidry says, “No, this place is a gold mine.”
Photo: Flickr user jgeo
