TAKEOUT BEER SALES AT BREWERIES COULD BECOME LEGAL UNDER NEWLY PROPOSED STATE LAW 
A pair of bills filed recently in Austin aim to let craft breweries across Teas sell beer at their facilities for “off-premises consumption,” reports Houston Public Media’s Katie Watkins. It’s not so unprecedented: According to the Texas Craft Brewers Guild, “Texas is currently the only state where customers can’t purchase a growler or six-pack to-go” at local breweries. (And on top of that, take-out sales of wine and spirits are already legal in Texas at wineries and distilleries.) If passed, the bills, S.B. 312 and H.B. 672 would apply only to breweries making less than 225,000 barrels a year and would set a limit on the amount of take-out product permitted for sale over that time span. Representative Eddie Rodriguez, the House democrat who filed the bill, put it this way to Watkins: “It’s 2019 and people are used to being able to get the things they want.” [Houston Public Media] Photo of Saint Arnold brewery: Marc Longoria
Sign up for the Newsletter
- Decades-Old Rice Silos Crumble in East Pearland To Make Way for New Industrial and Commercial Business Park [Community Impact]
- Exxon Starts Shutting Down Baytown Refinery So That It Can Conduct Major Planned Maintenance Overhaul [Houston Chronicle]
- Downtown’s Houston Center Will Undergo Complex-Wide Renovation [Houston Chronicle]
- Waiting on Dozens of New Garbage Trucks, City Will Use Rental Trucks in the Meantime [Houston Public Media]
- Texas Legislators Consider Slapping More Restrictions on Sand Mining in Order To Curb Flooding It May Cause [Houston Public Media]
- 2019 Houston Open Scheduled for Oct. 7 to 13 at Humble’s Golf Club of Houston [Houston Public Media; previously on Swamplot]
Photo of Houston Central Library, Jesse H. Jones Building: elnina via Swamplot Flickr Pool
- 17226 Sunshine St. [HAR]
The shopping center at the southwest southeast corner of Montrose Blvd. and 59 known as Chelsea Market has just recently gotten the chain-link wraparound, as shown above from the west (top) and east (above). Its days had been numbered ever since plans showing a Broadstone apartment tower in place of the 3-building retail complex surfaced online last year.
Renderings of the tower, to be named Broadstone Museum District, show it rising 16-stories high:
Like some kind of otherworldly brand ambassador, this large larger-than-life-sized inflatable now looks dutifully out over the strip center parking lot off Belway 8 and Woodforest Blvd., its antennae twitching in the wind. The building it tops — home to Jenny Nails II, J Donuts, Betlway Beverage, Dominos, a hair salon, and Boost Mobile — was once part of the Randalls-anchored retail complex dubbed the Eastbelt Centre that stopped being a thing when Galena Park ISD moved its administrative offices into the supermarket’s building nearly 2 decades ago.
That converted structure lies just next door to the strip building . . .
SEARS PROBABLY WON’T BE COMPLETELY LIQUIDATED THANKS TO THE BANKRUPTCY BIDDER WHO JUST AGREED TO BUY IT OUT 
Early this morning, the days-long bankruptcy auction for Sears being held at the Manhattan offices of its law firm Weil, Gotshal & Mangles reached a conclusion when the retailer accepted a $5.2 billion takeover bid from one of its executives, Reuters reports. Eddie Lampert, former chairman of the retailer’s parent company Sears Holdings Corp, upped an earlier $5 billion offer and agreed to take on more liabilities as part of the winning deal. “The billionaire’s proposal, made through his hedge fund ESL Investments Inc,” according to Reuters’ Mike Spector and Jessica DiNapoli, “will save up to 45,000 jobs and keep 425 stores open across the United States.” (That’s including Kmart locations, too.) It comes over the objections of a handful of Sears’ creditors who, the Reuters journalists report, had been calling instead for the company’s liquidation. “There remains a chance the deal could fall apart,” according to the reporters, as a bankruptcy judge still must sign off on the agreement. A court hearing hasn’t been scheduled yet, but is expected to go down later this week. [Reuters; previously on Swamplot] Photo of Memorial City Sears, closed since last year: Toru O.
- 5230 Grape St. [HAR]
MIDTOWN APARTMENT DEVELOPER COULD OUTDO ITSELF ON THE OTHER SIDE OF LA BRANCH ST. 
The developer with a 7-story apartment complex underway at 2111 Austin St. “is debating putting a 12- or 20-story high-rise on a second piece of land” across the street,” its president tells the HBJ’s Fauzeya Rahman. Winther Investments bought both the formerly vacant parcels in 2013 and broke ground on the first project last June. It’s going up catty-corner southwest of the St. Josephs Professional Building off the Pierce Elevated. [HBJ ($)]
- 3024 Del Monte Dr. [HAR]
Now that the former XCars service center across from the Silber St. Walmart has been torn down, construction is underway on the Enterprise Rent-a-Car building that’s taking its place. The new 960-sq.-ft. building’s placement on the third-acre lot suggests there will be plenty of room to fit a fleet of cars there, too. The L-shaped structure that stood on the property previously was a bit bigger — 1,200-sq.-ft. — and featured a long canopy extending out over its parking lot and toward the El Pollo Loco that went up directly across the street in 2015.
Right now, Enterprise’s closest rental office is just down the street, across Silber from the Marq-E Entertainment Center and directly adjacent to Italian car dealership Helfman Imports.
Photo: Swamplot inbox
NEW TEXAS SENATE BILL: IF HOME LIES IN ANY FLOOD ZONE, SELLER MUST SAY SO 
State Senator Joan Huffman filed a bill last Friday that, if passed, would require sellers to tell buyers if their homes are located in a 100- or 500-year floodplain, a reservoir, or a flood pool — the area next to a reservoir that’s expected to fill up with water during major flooding events (but that most were unaware of until reporters blew the lid on their existence in late 2017). The bill, S.B. 339, would also force owners to disclose whether the home they’re listing has flooded before, whether it might flood under “catastrophic circumstances,” and if it’s located less than 5 miles downstream from a reservoir. “If a seller doesn’t disclose the information,” reports the Texas Tribune’s Kiah Collier, “the law would allow buyers to terminate the contract — or sue.” [Texas Tribune] Photo of flooding at Creech Elementary School, Katy, near Barker Reservoir: Breta Gatlin
A Swamplot reader perched up in the SkyHouse Main Apartments has been documenting the evolving scene 3 blocks away from his living room, where the block once home to U-Haul Moving and Storage of Midtown at San Jacinto — now completely demolished — is now giving rise to a larger, replacement U-Haul building. The photo at top looks east down Pease St. to show workers planting the earth with beams for the new structure. On the left, you can see what the previous moving and storage building looked like during its final stand at the end of last year.
The demolished building consisted of 28,376 sq.-ft. for self-storage, moving supplies retail, and truck parking. Building permits filed for its replacement indicate it’ll be 220,160-sq.-ft.:
- 11306 Beauvoir Dr. [HAR]
Budding internet etymologist and Albany High School senior Adam Aleksic is out with his latest annotated map (bigger version here), which points out the origins behind some of the Houston area’s most well-known neighborhood names. As you can see in the legend at the top right corner, the author makes a distinction between developers and people — both of which have left their marks in the region’s spacial vernacular. And of course, no map of Houston would be complete without its fair share of wet spots, too, which appear in the meanings behind 6 locations shown above: Lazybrook, Timbergrove, Spring Branch, River Oaks, Clear Lakes, and Denver Harbor.
- Infographics [The Etymology Nerd]
Image: The Etymology Nerd
Last night Houston’s planning and development department spelled out a proposal to run a new pair of protected bike lanes on Austin St. from Buffalo Bayou to HCC’s main campus in Midtown. South of the college, the officially-designated bike route would continue down to Hermann Park along La Branch and Crawford streets but without anything to buffer it from the rest of the road.
Throughout Downtown and the northern portion of Midtown ending at McGowen St., plans show the bike lanes separated from the street by 2-ft.:
