COMMENT OF THE DAY: YOUR VERY OWN INNER LOOP TRAILER PARK, FOR FUN AND PROPERTY TAX CONTROL 
“Are there typically HOA restrictions against mobile homes inside the Loop? Like if someone’s sitting on a cleared-off lot and not wanting to build, could they just pull in 2 mobile homes and start renting out? Or would the neighborhood/city be pounding on the doors? Not sure such a thing is feasible with $400k lots, but if you had to demo a multifamily and still wanted to hold onto the property, sounds like [that] could potentially keep the tax value low while still bringing in rental income.” [joel, commenting on All That’s Left of the Heights Trailer Park Behind Eight Row Flint] Photo of cleared mobile home park on W. 11th St.: Swamplot inbox
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The Kroger Market at the not-quite-intersection of Airline Dr., Parker Rd., and Fulton St. in Northline is shutting down next month, an employee at the store tells Swamplot this afternoon (confirming a rumor from a reader in the vicinity). The store’s last day is planned for April 20th, after which it will cede the area to its nearest grocer competitors: the Food Town just over half a mile up Airline, at the intersection with Little York Rd.; the other Food Town a little over a mile further west down Little York; and the not-quite-an-H-E-B Joe V’s Smart Shop on N. Shepherd Dr., just across I-45.
Behind its cube-on-a-spindle signage, the store sits at the northern end of a classic array of strip mall companions (capped to the south by South Texas Dental, whose space and streetside signpost once belonged to a Blockbuster Video); standing alone at the southeast corner of the center sits El Muelle Seafood & Oysters, housed in a former Taco Bell.
- Previously on Swamplot: Secretly Preserved Weingarten History Quickly Erased from Side of Weingarten-Owned Heights Kroger; Kroger on OST at Cambridge St. Closing Down For Real on January 24th; Kroger Says It Has ‘No Plans’ To Close Signature Store on OST; The Kroger on OST at Cambridge St. Is Closing
Photos: James T.
The plans submitted to the city along with a variance request being advertised lately along Canal St. show that the developer — an entity which traces back to Frank Liu — is asking for permission to drop below a required 3,500-sq.-ft. minimum lot size on its new property. That would allow the company stick about 29 houses on the L of land the documents refer to as Williams on Canal, which wraps around the brightly muraled La Familia Meat Market building and 2 pre-1950’s homes just south of it on St. Charles. The drawings in the request show 64 townhomes altogether, including the company’s adjacent land on the same block (extending all the way to Commerce St.):
Trash cans, cinder blocks, and other debris strewn around the southeast corner of W. 11th and Allston streets are what remain of the huddle of 9-or-so trailers that has occupied the lot since at least the mid-1990’s. A set of permits on file with the city for Jozzie’s Mobile Home Park expired at the end of December, and the final exodus looks to have occurred in the last few weeks. Have the homes been given a new space to hang out in? And what will take their place, here on the 13,200-sq.-ft lot backed up against Citgo-station-turned-whiskey-bar Eight Row Flint?
- 708 W. Clay St. [HAR]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: CHANGING TASTES AT THE CORNER OF MONTROSE AND WESTHEIMER 
“Dallas invading Houston with its bland ‘designer tacos’ made for yuppies. Right across from Austin’s Uchi, where the waitstaff tells you what you’re suppose to taste as you eat. I remember when you could get a blowjob for $20 in this neighborhood. This is sad.” [MW, commenting on Edge Realty Now Seeking To Fill Bright Orange Box with Neighbors for a Montrose Velvet Taco] Photo: Swamplot inbox
A double-V’d walkin’ and bikin’ bridge like the one shown above will be spanning Brays Bayou before too long, the Houston Parks Board says, linking together the sections of Mason Park separated by the waterway. The agency is planning a short mid-morning party for the planned structure’s construction kickoff next Tuesday, on the southern side of the park (mostly located east of the 75th St. crossing). The whole complex is just downstream of the Gus Wortham Golf Course, for which renovations finally teed off a few weeks ago (trailing much ado a few years back that culminated in the land not getting turned into a botanical garden).
The board says the other, decidedly less suspenseful pedestrian bridge announced earlier this year should be done in the fall as well; that one will will run across Brays alongside the Martin Luther King Blvd. car bridge at the downstream edge of of MacGregor Park, and look kinda like this:
Permissions started to trickle in earlier this month for the  knockout of various buildings on the newly former Exxon Upstream research facility at the corner of Buffalo Spdwy. and W. Alabama St. California-based Spear Street Capital and Transwestern admitted to buying the property last week but stayed mum on plans for the site. A reader took a wandering tour around the edge of the 1950s lab complex yesterday afternoon, noting the parking garage teardown shown above, and the various signs of deliberately accelerated wear-and-tear around the rest of the structures:
- 5001 Krueger Rd. [HAR]
That empty lot at the southeast corner of Taft and W. Gray streets has been getting its concrete skin broken up and cleared out lately, a number of readers note, as early work for the Alta at West Gray apartment midrise and its basement parking gets going. (The particularly dramatic shot above of the Downtown skyline peering over the wreckage was captured during the Friday morning mist by reader MontroseResident, though a few other cameras were on the scene before and after.) Until 2009 the site housed the Good Neighbor Healthcare Clinic (a conversion of another ex-Weingarten’s grocery, according to the business); Good Neighbor had plans to build a midrise healthcare and community center on the site, but ended up selling the land to serial Alta developers Wood Partners early last year. The new plan for the site may look something like this:
RADIOSHACK TO CLOSE A BUNCH MORE STORES NOW THAT IT’S BANKRUPT AGAIN 
The roster of planned store closings in the wake RadioShack’s déjà -vu declaration of bankruptcy last week now includes 11 Houston-ish addresses, according to the company’s handy filter map of inventory clearance sales. An initial list of this round’s Chapter 11 location casualties, filed in court and published on Friday by Consumerist, limited the roll call of the soon-to-shutter to just 4 strip centers ’round town: the RadioShack on Hillcroft Dr. near Richmond Ave. (between Galaly Furniture and Liberty Income Tax); the one in the Bellaire Triangle (where Best Optometrists used to be); the Rice Village-adjacent Kirby Dr. location, between Creative Blinds and Loan Star Title Loans; and the S. Gessner location near US-59, which shares a strip mall with LA Crawfish, Iglesia de Dios Shammah, and the dental office of Hanh Nguyen.  Back in its heyday, RadioShack once sported some 80-plus Houston stores; the last time the company declared bankruptcy, back in 2015, some 32 of the area’s then-77 locations were initially marked for closure. The number of Houston-area stores remaining, prior to the announcement of this latest wave of goodbyes, was down to the high 20s — putting early estimates of the remaining Houston ‘Shack count down to the mid-teens. [Previously on Swamplot] Map of closing RadioShacks (in red): RadioShack
Swamplot’s elevated tipster with an eye on the Westheimer Rd. scene — just east of the Montrose Blvd. Smoothie King — sends some update shots this morning of the ongoing construction of a planned Ruggles-replacing restaurant-retail combo, half of which looks slated for fill-in by a Velvet Taco branch. The Dallas chain will take over a 1-and-a-half story piece of the center, next to the areas highlighted in orange above; Edge Realty is currently leasing the rest of the space in the center, which will attempt to hide some of its parking from prying sidewalk eyes:
- 26A Shady Ln. [HAR]
Reader and aerial logo photographer Henry Phillips sends these recent shots of work crews playing pin-the-signage-on-the-restaurant at the next local locale of Austin import Torchy’s Tacos (which will bring the Houston-area count up to 8, out of the chain’s 11 planned plantings so far). The latest tacover is happening in the Westchase Mall corner slot at the southeast corner of Westheimer Rd. and Wilcrest Dr. most recently occupied by another defunct branch of Black-Eyed Pea; the developing restaurant shares a strip center sidewalk with the Whole Foods that was transplanted across Wilcrest into the dead former Randalls last year.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: ACTS OF PREEMPTIVE CALIFORNIA-IZATION IN THE HOUSTON SUBURBS 
“Someone ought to do a subdivision in Katy/Fulshear and name the streets Crenshaw, Imperial, Valley View, etc. Would (i) be humorous and (ii) help keep the California transplants outside Beltway 8. Win-win.” [Purple City, commenting on The Denton Suburban Roadways Quietly Impersonating West Houston’s Iconic Streets] Photo of Houston street names in Denton, TX: Lauren Meyers
