- 2383 W. Bayshore Rd. [HAR]
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Smashing nominations, everyone! Thanks to you, the ballot for 2016’s Best Demolition award is loaded up with some truly impressive has-beens.
With your help, we’ve compiled a bang(ed)-up list of potential candidates. And with a little more help — in the form of your votes — we can now pick the winner! Before you vote, ask yourself this: Should this category commemorate the best act of demolition, the demolition that produced the best results, or the best building to meet its unmaker?
The voting rules for this year’s Swampies are posted here, but they’re not that complicated: You can vote in this category through each of 4 methods: in a comment below, in an email to Swamplot, on Twitter, or on Swamplot’s Facebook page. If you’ve got a favorite candidate, start a campaign! And don’t forget to add why you’re voting for that particular nominee. The polls close for all categories at 5 pm on Tuesday, December 27th.
Without further, um . . . adieu, here’s the list of this year’s Best Demolition contenders:
The 2016 Swampies
The section of bayou-hugging greenway trail running between Durham St. and Stude Park is getting the official OK tomorrow morning from Harris County Flood Control District and the Houston Parks Board. The photo above is of the pedestrian bridge across White Oak near Durham St. that previously supplanted the area’s “Bridge of Death” route; the segment opening tomorrow runs from that same bridge east along the bayou to the Studemont St. non-pedestrian bridge. The organizers are hoping would-be trail fans will use some means other than car to get to the ceremony location (off Studemont just north of I-10); if you have to drive, however, the invitation says you might be able to get a parking space across the freeway north of  Target.
Further east along the White Oak trail, here’s an updated view of how that link into Near Northside by the Leonel Castillo Community Center is coming along (taken in mid-November, once again from the same spot as that glitzed-up flood photo that made an appearance in Air New Zealand’s recent in-flight feature on Texas):
Greenways Growth Spurts
COMMENT OF THE DAY: FURTHER READING INTO YOUR HOUSTON FLOOD AND FIRE CHANCES 
“Every home is susceptible to flooding. There are not ANY non-flood areas. There are only homes that are more likely to flood and homes that are less likely to flood. The likelihood is expressed, on flood maps, by the single-year probability of being flooded (with some other factors). This does not properly describe the likelihood of being flooded during the course of a longer time period — of, say, a 30-year mortgage. Homes eligible for NFIP preferred flood rates can have up to just less than a 1 percent chance of flooding annually. These ‘preferred areas’ are what the public thinks of, euphemistically, as non-flood areas. Assuming a .009 probability (just less than 1 percent), a home has a 20 percent chance of flooding, at least once, over the course of a 30-year mortgage (look up binomial probability). An alternative way to think about it is that 1 in 5 homes, in preferred flood zones, will flood over the course of a 30-year mortgage. [In that case,] you are actually more likely to experience a flood than a house fire in a ‘preferred flood area.'” [Jardinero1, commenting on Where Houston Floods Outside the Flood Zones] Image of recent flood map revisions: FEMA RiskMap6
The speckles above on the tile floor at 20706 Vanderwick Dr. in Katy are some of the stragglers left behind by a surprise termite swarm early this year, according to a lawyer for the new owners. Todd and Carla Greene, who bought the 1982 home in September, are currently suing Texas Certified Home Inspection, which purportedly inspected the kitchen for wood-chewing critters at the end of August prior to the sale closing. The couple alleges that Carla was using the stove in the kitchen about 6 months later (a few days after the pair’s March move-in) when thousands of insects began to emerge from multiple kitchen drawers and cabinets; the shots above were taken after the action died down.
Per the University of Kentucky’s entomology folks, the termite exodus was right on time. The couple hired an exterminator, who found several areas of extensive wood damage around the kitchen — here’s a shot inside the vent in the island stove:
Unwelcoming Committee
Here they are, ripped and culled from your submissions: the official nominees in the first category of the 2016 Swamplot Awards for Houston Real Estate. That, of course, is Favorite Houston Design Cliché. Thanks to all of you who contributed! These awards wouldn’t happen without you.
As in years past, you can vote up to 4 times in this category by 1) leaving a comment below this post; 2) sending us an email; or by expressing your preference on 3) Twitter or 4) Facebook. Make sure your vote counts by reading and following the 2016 voting instructions, and get your vote in by 5PM on Tuesday, December 27th.
Just as important as the votes you cast, though, are the explanations you provide with them. Tell us why you’re voting for who you’re voting for! What you write may sway other readers to vote as you did. And if your candidate wins or comes in second place, your clever comments might be included in our round-up post.
Here, then, are the 2016 nominees for Favorite Houston Design Cliché:
The 2016 Swampies
From some of the same folks who brought you those fun-with-worst-case-scenarios hurricane flood maps earlier this year —  Neena Satija and Kiah Collier of the Texas Tribune, and Al Shaw of ProPublica — comes a fresh set of animated maps of a few of Harris County’s most flooded and floodable places, along with a bit of investigation into how they got that way (and whether that might change any time soon). The new illustrated presentation shows off the spread of properties that took a dip during some of Harris County’s last few citywide submersion events (flooded properties from Tax Day 2016 are shown in yellow above, along with the Memorial Day 2015 flooded properties in orange).
Texas A&M Galveston researcher Sam Brody tells the authors that “more people die here than anywhere else from floods. More property per capita is lost here. And the problem’s getting worse.â€Â In sorting through some of the whos, whats, and hows of Harris County’s flood infrastructure and chronically soggy residents, the article juxtaposes the recent flood damage data with the likes of FEMA-mapped 100- and 500-year flood zones (shown above), a visual tally of the land area developed last decade, and a view of what’s left of Houston’s coastal prairie (as of 2010):
Harris High Water
TALK ASTRODOME TOMORROW WITH THE GUYS THAT WROTE THE BOOK ON IT 
There’s a new tell-all biography of the Astrodome out this fall, now that year 50 since the stadium’s mid-1965 opening has wrapped up. Robert C. Trumpbour and Kenneth Womack’s The Eighth Wonder of the World: The Life of Houston’s Iconic Astrodome covers Dome history from its development days, and gets into how the building shaped Houston and Houston’s reputation. The authors, one of whom has also written another book about stadium construction politics, will be in town tomorrow night for a free talk and book signing — you can check out the when-and-where and RSVP here. The book includes what University of Nebraska Press refers to as some of the structure’s more “memorable problems, such as outfielders’ inability to see fly balls and failed attempts to grow natural grass — which ultimately led to the development of Astroturf.” The text also touches on some of the most recent will-they-won’t-they preservation scuffles— though its publication date precedes this year’s approval by Harris County of initial funding for that plan to turn the bottom levels of the stadium into a parking garage.  [University of Nebraska Press] Image of book cover: University of Nebraska Press
Beacon Island (née Lighthouse Island, in its more pedestrian days) is up for sale once again, Brandon de Hoyos writes this week. The eponymous prison-striped beacon at the northern tip of the property has been in place since at least the late 1980s — by which time the 35-acre piece of land had also completed its transformation from Clear Creek shoreline to peninsula to full island, as channels were carved into the southern edge of Clear Lake to expand waterfront access. The land also currently hosts the roadways and underground infrastructure installed by woulda-been joint developers The Verandah Cos. and Crow Holdings, right before the housing market collapse and 2008 recession.
Current owner Isola Ventura previously had previously planned for a mixture of residential structures on the island, from townhome to highrise. The island has already been divvied up and okayed for those various  purposes by League City’s planning department, roughly as labeled below in the current leasing materials:
League City Layouts
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE 3-STEP FREEDMEN’S TOWN PRESERVATION SHUFFLE 
“1. Buy a block (maybe the vacant one on W. Gray . . . the blocks are small). 2. Move all extant historical structures to said block and make it a park, with public space for outdoor events. 3. Rehab the brick streets. Anything beyond this, in the name of historical preservation, is in name only.” [Turning_Basin, commenting on City Wants To Create Historic District To Protect What’s Left of Freedmen’s Town Historic District] Photo of torn up brick street section at Andrews St.: Chris C.
LAST CALLS FOR YOUR NOMINATIONS FOR THE 2016 SWAMPIES It’s down to the wire for submissions to the first 2 categories of this year’s Swamplot Awards for Houston Real Estate: nominations for Favorite Houston Design Cliché and Best Demolition close tonight at midnight. After that, the “Where Are They Now?” Award and Best Industrial Incident categories will close on Wednesday night, trailed by Special Achievement in Parking and the Houston High Water Award on Thursday; by the end of Friday, we’ll shut down submissions of contenders for Neighborhood of the Year and this year’s Greatest Moment in Houston Real Estate as well. But why wait that long? Voting for the first category will start before then — get those nominations in now so you can focus on the good stuff.
The ribbed tank hiding behind the track excavator in the north-facing shot above will soon be going completely underground, per current plans at the corner of Durhill St. and Buffalo Spdwy. First Stop Food Store, the current occupant of the retail shell on the property, sits right across Buffalo Spdwy. from one of the 2 planned senior living facilities in the vicinity — that property is just out of the frame to the right, while one of the houses in the Pemberton Circle gated townhome cluster can be seen peeking over the fence on the left.
The 1950s convenience store building and property itself changed hands early last year. Here’s a shot from July, a few happy months before the parking lot breakup seen above:
Tanking Up
As of a few minutes ago, Star Cinema Grill has officially announced its purchase and takeover of the Alamo Drafthouse in Vintage Park, plus plans to redo the interior with some “modern decór”. An unusually-light-and-getting-lighter December schedule tipped some movie hounds off to an impending change, though neither company was ready to confirm anything by the end of last week; Alamo closed as Alamo for the last time on Sunday, however, and as of earlier today the theater appeared to have completed its Facebook identity swap (and to have fielded answers to at least one skeptical Alamo customer’s since-deleted commentary on the matter).
The shift knocks Alamo back down to just 1 Houston-area location in Mason Park, following several years of floated potential expansion plans for Midtown and maybe-moving-forward-again Regent Square; the Austin export still has plans listed for a new theater in Sugar Land’s Imperial Market complex. Star Cinema, meanwhile, says the Vintage Park spot will reopen under the new name by Friday, and claims the chain’ll be up to 6 Houston-ish locations by the end of 2017.Â
- Star Cinema Grill Acquires Houston-Area Movie Theater [BusinessWire]
- Previously on Swamplot: Imperial Sugar Refinery Mixed-Use Redo Plans Now Crystalizing Along Hwy. 90; Midtown Alamo Drafthouse Cinema To Sit on Top of New Milam St. Parking Garage; An Alamo Drafthouse at SculpturWorx? Not So Fast
Photo of former Alamo Drafthouse in Vintage Park:Â Casey W.
Vintage Update
