YALE ST.’S MIDDLE-AGED TREES JUST GOT MORE EXPENSIVE TO CHOP DOWN 
Now that the petitioning and voting on the matter has wrapped up, The Houston Heights Association and Trees for Houston had a party this weekend to celebrate Yale St.’s designation as the city’s first official green corridor (between 6th and 19th streets. Organizers gave out baby trees as party favors, Nancy Sarnoff reports, noting that the existing treescape is largely the product of area folks planting seedlings “on both sides of the four-lane road in 1986. Volunteers kept them watered and fought city efforts to expand the roadway, which would have eliminated many of the trees.” Houston’s general colorless tree laws give the city jurisdiction over cutting down certain trees more than 20 inches wide; the green corridor label, defined in 1991 but never actually used before now, trims that protection threshold down to just 15 inches wide along the 1.6-mile stretch of Yale. Other than the reduced belt-size standards, the same rules apply for getting approval to cut down a protected tree anyway — whether by planting  new trees, going after tree preservation credits, or making some pay-by-the-inch contributions (as adjusted for inflation) into the parks and rec department’s tree fund. [Houston Chronicle; city tree ordinances] Photo of Yale St. trees: City of Houston
Sign up for the Newsletter
The once-white house at 435 Hawthorne — where a young LBJ stayed rent-free with his Uncle George in his early 1930’s pre-politickin’ teacher days — is up for grabs again. The 2-story 3-bedroom at the corner with Garrott St. (half a block east of Taft) is back on the market as of just under 2 weeks ago for just under $750,000. The Westmoreland Historic District home was sold back in 2012 for $266,000 and change, and most recently went for about $535,000 in 2013 (post flip-ready redo).
What’s new this time around? You can look for yourself at some of the new finishes in the click-and-drag 360-degree photo tour set up by the current sellers, including some rotate-in-place views inside what’s advertised as a use-it-or-rent-it garage apartment suite out back. The new sales site also notes that the back yard has been redone with an easy-to-please spread of artificial lawn:
- 4911 Holly St. [HAR]
UBER’S SELF-DRIVING CARS HIT STREETS WITH ACTUAL PASSENGERS, DRIVERS JUST IN CASE Meanwhile, in Pittsburgh: As of Wednesday, Uber is letting some of its customers opt into possible pickup by its fleet of heavily tricked-out self-driving Ford Fusions. The rollout is the company’s first testing of the autonomous cars with real passengers in the urban wild; so far, they still come equipped with a prepared-for-takeover human in the driver’s seat (as well as a data-monitoring shotgun rider). Paying passengers interact with the car from the back seat via electronic tablet, which shows them the LiDAR data the car collects and allows them to take selfies. TechCrunch’s Signe Brewster got to check out one of the cars as part of a press preview and reports that the car’s driving was “so normal it got a little bit boring” by the end; Brewster does note that he “had a flurry of butterflies the first time the car encountered an obstacle — an SUV backing into the road. You don’t notice how many unexpected incidents occur during a routine drive until you ask a robot to take the wheel.” [WTAE, TechCrunch; previously on Swamplot]
What’s all this sitting by the meters on the 500 block of McKinney St. today? Allyn West sends over some shots of the parking-spot-sized pocket parks currently occupying a few of Downtown’s on-street spaces. And you, too, can sit there, but only if you hustle: The ephemeral parklets are open for communal use until about 3 PM as part of the annual Park(ing) Day affair, now in its 12th year of instigating fleeting streetscape conversions in hundreds of cities around the world.
One of this year’s parks has its very own ideologically-conflicted seesaw:
That mosaic-filled penthouse in the north tower of the split-up-then-stuck-back-together Mosaic highrise complex has been relisted once again as of Friday, this time down at $1.49 million. The unit hit the market in 2014 asking for $2.05 million (up from the $930,000 it originally sold for in 2012, in the wake of the original owners’ bank-rupturing bankruptcy). Since then, the listing has taken only a few quick days off here and there to step down the price. The customized 3-bedroom pad includes the mother-of-pearl show-off-whatever-you-want slots in the main entryway (shown above; sick guitar collection not included). Here’s a look around at some of the unit’s other tilework:
- 5358 Tilbury Dr. [HAR]
- Previously on Swamplot:Â Daily Demolition Report: Chevy Chased and Beaten
The double hypodermic needles atop the Cesar Pelli-designed O’Quinn Medical Building have just gotten brightened up: a lighting designer from FUSE sends Swamplot these bare-all shots of the Madonna tower’s roof following the company’s just-wrapped installation of a new LED setup around the tips. Down below, Texas Children’s Hospital announced earlier this week that it has bought the tower from Baylor-slash-St.-Luke’s, along with a Baylor outpatient clinic down the street. Texas Children’s told the Chronicle that it isn’t planning to boot tenants until they can move into that under construction campus on Cambridge St., somewhere around 2020.
Nor does the new owner have plans to change the tower’s name right away — though many of the physicians who petitioned against the building’s O’Quinn christening in 2005 aren’t likely to mind if they do. At the time, dozens of doctors signed a document insisting that the current namesake, Houston’s own John O’Quinn (of fen-phen and breast implant lawsuit fame), “bears partial responsibility for the litigious environment in which we work,” and that it was offensive “to have money we earned — and which he took by suing us — going to name after him a medical building in which we work every day.”
The sunset shot above looks west across the Rice campus (that’s the stadium that played backdrop to JFK’s go-to-the-moon speech, given 54 years ago this past Monday, on the right above the octagonal base); the itty-bitty silhouette of the distant Williams Tower can be seen poking up from the horizon on the left. Here’s the tip itself, so close you can almost see the filament in the flashing bulb:
COMMENT OF THE DAY: TAKE IN THOSE SCENIC INDUSTRIAL HOUSTON SIGHTS JUST LIKE A LOCAL! 
“I’ve got a better business plan when it comes to views from the new Beltway 8 bridge: Since the new one is going to be a suspension bridge much like the Fred Hartman bridge, climbing it like the  [Sydney] Harbor bridge will be out of the question. So here’s what I’ll do: For a fee, I’ll place a hole of strategic size in your back left tire. I’ll calculate the proper size in accordance to your vehicle make, number of passengers, and weight. You then take a leisurely drive up the bridge — and by the time you reach the apex of the bridge you will be forced to pull over as you can no longer drive on your flat back left tire. Then and only then will you have the glorious view of the Ship Channel that you crave as you wait for AAA. Remember, my fee will be very modest and you’ll be experiencing the REAL Houston bridge view experience that only we locals have been blessed with for years.” [DNAGuy, commenting on Houston Home Sales Bounce Back; Calling Brooke Smith as the Next Heights] Photo of Fred Hartman Bridge: Jackson Myers via Swamplot Flickr Pool
The cross still standing above the entrance of the former St. Elizabeth Hospital building can just barely be seen peeking out over the top of the structure in the color photo up top, included with some black-and-white historical shots in the Fifth Ward Community Redevelopment Corporation’s recent call for ideas on what to do with the place. The hospital at 4514 Lyons Ave. opened in 1947 and later gigged as a detox center, substance abuse treatment facility and halfway house before being bought by Riverside General in 1995. The structure was renamed the Barbara Jordan Healthcare Facility until it was shut down in 2014 when Riverside wasn’t able to make ends meet (financially or building-code-wise). The Fifth Ward redevelopment folks bought the property in April.
A site plan drawn up by Gensler shows the current layout of the property, including the original 3-story E-for-Elizabeth main building. Some now-doomed subsections and add-ons are shaded in red, and the convent building, which looks like it might stay in the picture if somebody makes a good case, gets just a warning coat of pink:
Tin Hall (the building itself, anyway) is now back in the hands of pre-2014 owner Fred Stockton, report Shawn Arrajj and Emily Donaldson. The Tin Hall property was bought by Mark Martinez in 2014, who sold the land to MHI McGuyer Homebuilders later that year; Martinez was allowed time after the Hall’s closing to relocate the structure, and made plans to move it down to a spot off Spring Cypress Rd. just east of Dry Creek — a process slowed down by issues with finding water for the venue and its planned nextdoor retail development.
- 27715 Braydon Ct. [HAR]
Rolling-sphere-themed restaurant and entertainment chain Pinstripes has just leased up some space in the under-construction Kirby Collection (and hey — there might even be some bocce players nearby still looking for a new court!) That’s the first confirmed tenant for the project, which Thor Equities wants to open by the end of next year; the 33,600 sq. ft. of leased space makes up around half of the total retail space available, and is split across both retail floors of the complex (shown in the foreground above, with a row of trees peeking down at Kirby Dr. from the edge of the roof). Pinstripes will take over a 7,260-sq.-ft. subdivision of first floor space, out of the segment labeled 23,900 in the ground floor plan below:
The Texas Direct Auto signage outside that 80-sq.-ft. Main St. office asking Red Line rail passengers to sell their vehicles may have hit a bit of resistance, but the company is nonetheless now aiming its ad campaign even higher: The drone video above (posted yesterday) shows the roof of the company’s space-themed downtown building on Leeland St. is now fully decked out with the same all-caps appeal for car sales. As a commenter pointed out yesterday, the nearby Toyota Center also shows off a rooftop label to flying passer-bys — though the arena goes one step further and lights up at night, as well:
The 1980’s kiosk formerly used to run MJ Motorcars out of the expansive parking lot of the Southwest Plaza Shopping Center, a reader notes, is now being turned into a drive-thru daiquiri shop. Houston has been slowly picking up on the tape-over-the-strawhole skirting of open container laws over the last few years; the new Prime Daiquiri location in front of 8150 Beechnut St. will provide an alternative for those with no time to hit up Club Tequila in one the retail center’s anchor spots (between noodle shop Tau Bay, the freshly opened Planet Fitness branch, and Harbor Freight Tools).
A site plan included in Investar Real Estate Services’s leasing flier for the property shows the to-go bar in place in the kiosk, as well as a few new pad sites drawn into place near by:
CONTINUE READING THIS STORY
