- 900 Jolen Ct. [HAR]
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Yesterday’s wind-exacerbated grass fire (pictured above) near Wolfgang and Barek roads near Guy, TX, was put out as of late last night, per the Needville Fire Department’s social media team’s recounting of events. The late-night snuff-out wrapped up around 10:30 and reportedly took crews from Needville, Damon, Richmond, Fairchild, Rosharon and the U.S. Forest Service about 6 hours. The fire occurred about 10 miles west of Brazos Bend State Park, itself scheduled to be partially set ablaze on purpose this morning.
The Needville department (which last August had to petition Nintendo to remove its building from the area’s list of Poké-stops) snapped these shots of last night’s blaze:
Guy on Fire
HOUSTON LIGHT RAIL BEATS THE COMPETITION IN PEDESTRIAN, BICYCLE COLLISIONS PER MILE 
Following 2 deaths over the course of Super Bowl Week and Weekend resulting from cyclist-vs-light-rail collisions, the Chronicle‘s Dug Begley takes a look at how Houston stacks up nationally in terms of train-related accidents. The verdict, after a look through some National Transit Database data: Houston’s rail system has more walker and cyclist hits per mile “than any other major line in the country.” Houston breezes in at less that 100,000 train miles travelled per collision (compared to more than twice as many miles traveled per collision in Dallas, and more than 17 times as many in Boston). Metro CEO Tom Lambert tells Begley it may have to do with Houston’s high number of at-grade crossings and relative lack of barriers to keep people off the tracks. Begley says that the original decision to build the train at-grade isn’t itself unusual given the cost of elevated rail, but notes that “few places outside Houston have built their lines in some of the most congested and pedestrian-heavy areas of their respective urban regions.” [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo of light-rail train dressed for Super Bowl Week: Christine Wilson
A relatively sleek new style of Walmart Supercenter (rendered above) is set to open next week, hugged on 2 sides by the Timbercrest Village RV Park just north of Hufsmith Rd., Beth Marshall notes this week. The prototypical “smart Walmart” at 25800 Kuykendahl Rd. appears to have taken over part of the property that was previously part of the trailer park’s land, and will take the name Walmart Augusta Pines in reference to its east-west cross street (August Pines Dr.).
The new store will include a health clinic, a means of checkout-line-free purchasing mitigated by phone app, and that previously noted first Chobani Cafe to open in Houston (or outside of New York, for that matter). The clinic is also the first in the Houston area since Walmart began its pilot program to move into broader healthcare and disease management services in 2014, with an initial focus on Texas, Georgia and South Carolina — 3 states that didn’t accept federal money to expand Medicaid  and also have a high concentration of uninsured residents.Â
- New Walmart Store To House Chobani Cafe [Community Impact]
- Walmart August Pines [Walmart]
Rendering of Walmart August Pines: Walmart
Rolling Out in Tomball
- 1205 Horseshoe Dr. [HAR]
Technically, that’s just $499,423, cash sale, only — but you get the idea. The former Monta Beach Boy Scout Lodge at 3003 Dover St. was build in 1937 and converted into a 2-bedroom house in the early 1950s. The 1,400-sq.-ft. home sits a few blocks from the east-facing armpit of I-45 South and the 610 Loop, on a 21,600-sq.-ft. property backed up against a drainage channel leading to Sims Bayou. The home was featured by the Chronicle in 2007, after the current owner (turned current listing agent) redid the wiring and chinking between logs; that article is now featured prominently in the listing, too, with a few other write-ups:
Pining Near Sims Bayou
Downtown cellphone naturalist Christine Wilson sends some shots this morning of unauthorized tree remodeling on the banks of Buffalo Bayou east of Travis St. by Spaghetti Warehouse (across from the University of Houston Downtown building shown up top). Wilson says a chat with some Buffalo Bayou Park rangers confirmed the identity of the anonymous tree hackers as likely beavers. That aligns with a report from earlier this month from the folks at Save Buffalo Bayou of other activity in the same area by rodents of unusual size. More closeup shots of denuded trees below:
Stumping Downtown
HOW MANY DOWNTOWNS DOES HOUSTON HAVE? 
The list of Houston neighborhoods with potential to be mistaken for Downtown by outsiders, Blake Mathews of KHOU writes this week, is long, and includes at least “Uptown (Galleria), the Texas Medical Center, Greenspoint, Greenway Plaza, The Woodlands and perhaps even Westchase.” So what makes a Downtown? Mathews runs through some factors for consideration, ranging from the city’s population density center (which falls somewhere west of Downtown) to total office space (Uptown has less than downtown Houston, but more than downtown Denver) to building height (with a specific shoutout to the Williams Tower, pictured here.) [KHOU] Photo of Williams Tower: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool
- 22 Grogans Point Rd. [HAR]
The remaining segments of the Richmont Square apartments are on their way down — a reader sends a few shots this morning capturing the current state of the disunion. The demo permits for the then-remaining 2 thirds of the storied 1960s apartment complex have been trickling in since December, with a few more issued late last week; the associated flattening work on the Menil-owned property started late last year as well. The view from the Richmond Ave. parking lot and former entryway shows the empty space formerly occupied by the complex’s main entrance:
Clearing Rooms on Richmond Ave.
THE SUPER BOWL’S JETS, DRONES, AND RADIATION-SEEKING HELICOPTERS Sunday night’s Thunderbirds flyover and the (pre-recorded, on January 31st) swarm of 300 glowing drones above a rooftopping Lady Gaga were only the flashiest aerial visitors to NRG’s 10 miles of mostly-no-fly airspace as part of the Super Bowl process — the National Nuclear Security Administration’s helicopters were also on the scene early last week, taking measurements of ambient background radiation levels around the stadium and elsewhere around town (as captured in the above video of a low Uptown flyby). The deployment of the choppers to aid in dirty bomb watching at major events is becoming more common — the NNSA did the same kind of thing at last year’s Super Bowl in Santa Clara, and Houston got a federal grant last summer to beef up its general radiation-seeking chops. Video of radiation monitoring flight along San Felipe St.: mytubenot
The sculpted birds above are now staring intently in various directions from just south of the entrance ramp for the Rice Village’s rooftop parking lot between University Blvd. and Amherst St. The new bird-studded cage hangs around the upper half of the Kelvin St. access staircase for the lot, previously shielded from prying eyes by a since-removed blinder of brick (as pictured second above at the start of the work last year, before much of the paint-up or knock-out action had taken place on the eastern side of the structure). The birds are the work of Californian metalworker and periodic perched bird sculptor Nathan Mabry. Changes to the building roughly align with the older renderings of the remodel, though the space was previously depicted with an extra new window (along with some ghostly stand-in art):Â
Kelvin St. Bird Cage
Behind the window bars and No Trespassing sign at 5734 Larkin St., a TABC application notice has been hanging out lately, a reader notes. The posting, which mentions the trade name Hidden Goods and denotes a request for late hours and beer and wine sales in the former home, is 2 doors down the street from residence-turned-cocktail-bar Down the Street at 5746 Larkin; other nearby hotspots on the block include the Iglesia Bautista Hosanna and the Larkin Street Baptist Church. The bar-to-be’s published legal notice from mid-December sports the name of Down the Street owner Cheryl Crider, who also opened opened bar-slash-coffee-shop Around the Corner in East Downtown back in 2015.
Photo: Swamplot inbox
Down Larkin St.
TAKING ON THE ‘HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM’ PROBLEM 
What can a little minor public shaming do in the face of a groundswell of clichéd space-themed Houston references from reporters and observers around the world (and the occasional newscaster from within)? Just in time to chronicle and reflect a seeming barrage of “Gee, no one’s ever repeated this before” references to Houston — as it emerged in the national spotlight in advance of yesterday’s Super Bowl — a Twitter account going by the handle Ugh Houston, created last month, set about to highlight, ridicule, and otherwise express disappointment toward any and all variations on the theme of  “Houston, we have a problem.” (The betting circuits even had 5-to-2 odds on whether the tagline, an alteration of the original quotation popularized by the 1995 movie about the Apollo 13 mission, would make an appearance in the Super Bowl broadcast, though ultimately, it appears, it didn’t. and it did.) Other phrases targeted by the account include references to landing eagles and launching anything without an actual rocket engine. Here’s the big question, then, waged in harrumph-y asides, worldwide: Should or shouldn’t Houston embrace its popular association with extreme difficulty? Image: Ugh Houston Twitter account
THE HOUSTON ZIP CODE WHERE THE KIDS DON’T LEAVE HOME 
New number crunching from the Pew Research Center suggests that around 57 percent of the folks between 18 and 34 in the 77045 Zip Code may be living with their parents. (77045 includes both residential areas and the salt-dome-adjacent industrial hodgepodge between Holmes and Almeda roads, southwest of that recycling plant that smoked out the Med Center last year). That figure compares to a 28.2 percent boomerang rate across most of Houston, which falls below the current-ish 32 percent national average, writes Maggie Gordon (who notes that the “new” numbers are based on the organization’s 2014 data). What’s responsible for the anomalously high numbers in South Main, which shoots well past even the Great Depression’s 35 percent? The difference, Gordon writes, may be rooted not only in the area’s low average wages, but also in the lower rate of folks actively pursuing college (which Gordon says is connected to low wages); the study also notes that some of the difference might reflect the smaller proportion of the Zip Code’s Millennals living with a romantic partner (which, Gordon notes, might be easier to meet in college these days). [Houston Chronicle] Photo of 3414 Ebbtide Dr., 77045: HAR
