- 5635 Willers Way [HAR]
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The land at the northeast corner of Shepherd Dr. and Bissonnet St. (not far down the street from closing-this-weekend Kay’s Lounge) has been sold to an entity using the La Porte corporate address of traditionally freeway-hugging Gringo’s Mexican Kitchen. The mid-1980s convenience store (formerly a Sunrise Grocery) and its 0.35 acre property were put on the market at the start of the summer; the sale closed a little over 2 weeks ago. Word through the NextDoor grapevine is that the building won’t be a Gringo’s, but might be replaced with a 3-story retail-office-space combo once the convenience store’s lease runs out around Halloween.
2132 Bissonnet
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOW HOUSTON LEARNED IT’S NOT FLOOR COUNT, IT’S HOW YOU USE IT 
“Competing for the tallest building is the civilizational equivalent of comparing certain body part sizes. Houston may have been ‘robbed‘ of it back when it was a headstrong teenager, but with maturity comes the realization that it’s really not necessary to spend ridiculous amounts of money just to have the tallest, shiniest building on the block.” [meh, commenting on ExxonMobil Backs Off Property Tax Dispute; Fiesta Wayside’s New Look]
METRO is currently seeking some public input on replacing the Reliant Park light-rail stop’s outdated moniker. The agency’s preface to the poll notes that the naming rights to the station itself were never a part of Reliant’s $300-million park-branding deal back in 2002, and  says any new name “needs to be reflective of the area, but should not include any reference to a corporate entity which might require another change in years to come.”
Setting aside any potential consideration of that plan from a reader to go ahead and get nearly 30 potential future name changes over with at once, the nominated names currently in the running are (drumroll):
Saving NRG
An excavator was spotted bowing its head yesterday afternoon in the freshly cleared spot at 12740 Memorial Dr., until recently populated by the likes of Baskin Robbins,  Anne’s Salon, and A-1 Cleaners. Per an associated leasing flier for the property, the newly blanked space looks to be slated for drive-thru bank-dom, with a place next door for a retail friend.  The land sits immediately next to a Bank of Texas branch (visible over the fence on the left), itself across W. Bough Ln. from a freestanding Chase. Heading south down Memorial Dr., a Prosperity Bank keeps watch over the next Memorial Bend bend with help from the strip-center BBVA Compass branch across the street.
- Previously on Swamplot:Â Memorial Dr. Baskin Robbins Strip’s Planned Departure Could Make Bank, Retail, Parking Spaces
Photo: Swamplot inbox
Making Bank
- 15520 FM 912 [HAR]
Is there a connection between where you live and your likelihood of getting arrested for weed in Houston? A map from January Advisor’s (and Sketch City‘s) Jeff Reichman adds a few data points to that conversation this afternoon, though he doesn’t appear to push any specific conclusions in his how, what, and why writeup. Reichman gathered data on the folks that Harris County’s public jail records system says were arrested over the first half of this year for minor marijuana possession offenses (instead of just being given a citation for the same offense). The red dots on the interactive map show the arrestees’ home addresses (scootched around a bit to somewhere within the dot’s 300-meter radius, for the sake of anonymity).
The other data layer (in shades of blue) shows census blocks with median income over $80,000 (marking roughly the start of what the US census measures as the top quarter of household earnings in the US, Reichman notes). The blue areas, which get darker as income gets higher, appear relatively arrest-free, though a 2012 study from the NIH suggest that more frequent weed use may be linked to higher socioeconomic status.
- Mapping Low Level Marijuana Arrests [January Advisors]
- Previously on Swamplot:Â Friendly Local Bot Now Continuously Tweeting About Houston’s Elevated Air Toxin Levels;Â Where the Tickets are Thickest and Other Parking Violation Fun;Â Where Houston’s Trump and Sanders Supporters Are Clustered
Map: Jeff Reichman
Mapping the Green
... "Pin It")
The skirt of first-story glass now appears to be in place along the northern side of Rice University’s in-progress Moody Center for the Arts, per the shot above from Allyn West this week. The second photo, taken a few weeks before as part of a sunset set, shows the facade looking a little bit blue — the magnesium oxide coating covering the building’s exterior bricks picks up different colors in different light conditions, as Molly Glentzer notes, contrasting with the pinkish St. Joe bricks used throughout most of the rest of the campus (as demonstrated by the nearby Shepherd School, shown here peeking through the sculptural hole and pipeburst on the end of its new artsy neighbor).
The $30-million center should be done in February, according to last month’s announcements, and the building is starting to look a lot like the renderings released by Michael Maltzan Architecture:Â
Changing Campus Colors
CROSSWALKS GIVE RED LIGHT WALKERS THE FINGER IN MIDTOWN, EASTWOOD 
The DON’T WALK hand at the corner of Holman and San Jacinto streets has been straightened out after a post-paint spree of flipping the bird to pedestrians, Steve Romo reports this week. The offending intersection is home to a number of HCC buildings and the parking lot behind recently departed Adkins Architectural Antiques, as well as a retail strip;  Romo notes that his news team tracked down at least one other similarly altered sign over at the intersection of S. Lockwood Dr. and Leland St., near the Learn & Grow Academy daycare and Houston Fire Station 18.  The city tells Romo it’s not the first time this kind of paint job has shown up around town (nor is it a uniquely Houston occurrence), and that the graffiti is a quick fix but diverts city resources, adding that folks should let 311 know if any more intersection signals are rude to them. [ABC13] Photo of signal at Holman and San Jacinto streets: Kate Erin C.
Word comes from Westheimer Rd. and Stoney Brook Dr. that the corner outpost of Alvarez United Transmission has now fallen beneath the canine-themed banner of Texas Direct Auto’s expansion. The shop is slated to be repurposed as a Sell Us Your Car! center, adding to the collection of Direct Auto facilites now guarding nearly all major highway ingresses to the city along with the Mars-themed Downtown locale. A rep for the company says the shop should be converted and ready to open later this fall; other United locations will retain their current allegiance and continue to operate.
County records pin the building at 7730 Westheimer to 1965, though signage at the site claims the business itself has been in operation since 1960:
Transmission Transition
- 9011 Ponderosa Dr. [HAR]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: FLUSHING OUT CONTRIBUTORS TO HOUSTON’S UNEQUAL SEWAGE DISTRIBUTION 
“Resources should be allocated based on ‘worst first’. It’s very likely that areas of wealth are also areas of redevelopment and thus, improvement — whereas poorer areas are stagnant and don’t get the same type of improvement because there is no investment out there. I know when I’ve tried to invest in a rough area, the city shit on my face. So I’ve backed down quite a bit. My guess is that people smarter than me stopped well before I did.” [Cody, commenting on Houston’s Poor and Minority Neighborhoods Literally Deal with More Shit, City Data Shows] Illustration: Lulu
A fresh batch of temporary buildings have recently made an appearance in the W. Dallas-adjacent field at the Gregory Lincoln Education Center, a reader notes. The buildings, some 21 in all, are a complete temporary campus set up for use by elementary school Wharton Dual Language Academy, whose own land less than half a mile away at W. Gray and Columbus streets is being turned over to construction crews for a $35.6-million expansion.  A 3-story building will be tacked onto the north side of the existing Wharton structure, closing off a new interior courtyard; below is a look through the renderings and floor plans for the expansion, as well as the layout for the anticipated 2-year-long of Gregory Lincoln squeeze-in:
Sporting Something New
A meeting is set for September 7th to take public input on the city’s plan to purchase the long-vacant land at the northeast corner of SH 288 and MacGregor to let H-E-B build a store on the site (at the edges of a few of Houston’s USDA-defined food deserts). The city says the meeting and comment period (which lasts through September 11) are standard parts of its 8-step program when developing within the floodplain — Brays Bayou is just to the left of the frame above (snapped back in 2014), which the southeastern corner of the land as the facade-and-foreclosure-twin Mosaic and Montage towers peek over from west of 288.
The land is currently owned by Houston Community College; the college system bought the tract (reportedly for the second time) back in 2013 as the proposed site of the elaborately monikered HCC Coleman College of Health Sciences’ Medical Science & Technology Early College Charter High School. The city would bundle the land together with some adjacent already-city-owned property to lease it to H-E-B, and the grocery chain would be able to buy the whole package once all 72,000 sq. ft. of new store are constructed and certified for occupancy.Â
- Public Meeting Notice [City of Houston]
- Previously on Swamplot:Â Visiting the Future Site of the New Third Ward Medical High School with the Ridiculously Long Name
Photo:Â Swamplot inbox
Flood Plain Food Desert
A field of rippling grass between the Denny’s and the Comerica Bank branch on Spencer Hwy. currently holds the half-finished form of one of the Krispy Kreme donut shops planned as part of the chain’s post-lawsuit re-emergence into the Houston market. The chain still has the location on its list of upcoming grand opening donut-campouts (labeled as down-the-street 4601 Spencer Hwy., though both Eater Houston and a look at neighboring addresses put the property number at or around 4061), but arch-ive-ist and daily demo reporter Lauren Meyers notes the overgrown site is pretty light on signs of active work.
Some of Fisher Elementary’s T-buildings can be seen loitering to the rightt, with the stadium lights of the McGuire baseball field and track facility rising distantly in the background on the right; on the west side of the building is a would-be drive-thru window:
Cold Now on Spencer Hwy.
