BELLAIRE FOOD STREET SCRAPS FOOD HALL PLANS, WILL GO FULL STRIP-STYLE INSTEAD 
The 10,000-sq.-ft. food hall that had been planned as part of the 24,000-sq.-ft. pan-Asian restaurant building just in side Beltway 8 dubbed Bellaire Food Street will not come to be, reports Eater’s Alaena Hoestetter. Instead, that space will be used to give a 3 more not-yet-named restaurant their own individual storefronts. So far 10 restaurants — Shi Miao Dao, Fat Ni BBQ, Peppery Lunch, Beard Papa’s, Popfancy, Migo, Meet Fresh, Waistation, Chatime, and a South Korean coffee chain called Tom N Toms that serves a “baked sweet potato latte” — have been announced as tenants. Upstairs is reserved for developer Kevin Kan’s office. [Eater Houston; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Bellaire Food Street
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A Swamplot reader sends this photo from Arnott St. showing ominous new chain-link fencing wrapping what’s left of the Memorial Club apartments at the Washington Ave roundabout. New Years was the deadline for residents to move out of the four 3-story buildings to the west of Westcott St. so that Greystar could tear them down and build a new set of apartments in their place. It already replaced Memorial Court’s other, former 5-building half on the east side of Westcott with a 297-unit Elan Memorial Heights building in 2016. Back when the developer purchased the complex in 2013, Greystar said it hoped to have a grand total of 550 units spread across both sides of Westcott.
- Previously on Swamplot: Everyone Ordered Out of Memorial Club Apartments’ Remaining Half, New Apartments Set To Rise in Its Place; Crews Have Begun Clubbing the Memorial Club Apartments by the Washington Roundabout; New Apartments Facing Washington Ave Roundabout Will Have Retail on the Ground Floor and Maybe a Trader Joe’s; A Trader Joe’s Coming to Washington Ave.?
Photo: Swamplot inbox
- 32819 Whitburn Trl. [HAR]
In an email sent out to constituents earlier this week, a staffer for City Council member Greg Travis writes that the little red rectangle above — marking where Randall Davis has plans for a 50-unit condo tower — is subject to single-family deed restrictions. That doesn’t prohibit the developer from going ahead with the highrise at 3723 Westheimer, she explains, although it does mean Davis perhaps jumped the gun by submitting a variance request for the development to Houston’s planning commission last week. It’s now withdrawn that request and instead plans to hold a public hearing before the commission. The date is TBD, but it will “likely take place on February 28,” according to the staffer.
Residents of Westgrove Court — the subdivision along Eastgrove and Westgrove streets that the tower wants to move into — and others nearby will receive a written notice 15 days before it goes down. “If residents of the 38 single family home sites in Westgrove Court jointly file a protest (a letter signed by them),” she writes, “the Planning Commission will have to approve by 75% and not simply by a majority.”
On Monday, Nancy Sarnoff over at the Chronicle reported Davis was under contract to buy the 17,300-sq.-ft. property. It isn’t the first time someone’s tried to put something other than single-family on it: For decades, the single-story retail building shown above has been there. It sports a fenced-in patio at its corner:
A building permit filed yesterday for renovations to the former Brown Bag Deli at 702 Main St. has this familiar name on it: Shake Shack. The photo at top of the storefront’s north side along Capitol St. show its windows completely whited-out to prevent passers-by from getting too curious about what’s going on inside. On Main St., Brown Bag Deli’s December 21 closure notice remains stuck to the front door.
The storefront takes up the northeast corner of the 10-story Great Jones Building and is right next door to the WeWork that arrived in the structure last year. At the opposite, south end of the block, the adjacent Chase Building (formerly known as the Gulf Building) became home last month to Houston’s newest food hall Finn Hall.
Photos: Swamplot inbox
ALDI IS MAKING ITS MOVE AT THE CROWDED CROSSROADS OF WESTHEIMER AND S. GESSNER 
Aldi punched its ticket for entry into the Tanglewilde Center yesterday by filing a building permit to convert the closed 21,300-sq.-ft. Batie’s Ace Hardware at 9525 Westhimer into a supermarket. It’ll be the third grocery store within a 2,000-ft. radius of the intersection of Westheimer and S. Gessner Rd. Randall’s sits at the northeast corner, and Kroger is just west of the crossroads. The hardware store being converted closed down late last year. [Previously on Swamplot] Photo: Swamplot inbox
MEMORIAL PARK GOLFERS WORRY THAT JUST-APPROVED COURSE REDESIGN COULD MESS UP THEIR HANDICAPS 
Houston’s city council just approved that $13.5 million plan to redesign the Memorial Park Golf Course so that the Houston Open can be held there in 2020. The vote passed unanimously at city hall this morning, but not before a few course regulars had a chance yesterday to vent about how the upgrades will skew the playing field: “I want to be an average Houstonian who plays with everybody else on the same level,” said Joseph Kratoville, who’s out there 4 or 5 times a week, adding that in its present state, the course is “the anti-country club. I get to meet people from all walks of life.” Baxter Spann, whose firm Finger Dye Spann renovated both the Memorial Park and Gus Wortham courses previously, spoke similarly: “I’m concerned that the focus may be on making this a tour-level course without adequate regard for the everyday golfer,” he told the council. The course closes tomorrow, although the driving range and on-site Becks Prime will remain open. It’ll need to be back open by November 1 in order for the PGA Tour stop to be held there the following year, report the Chronicle’s David Barron and Robert Downen. Meanwhile, 2019’s Houston Open will take place at the Golf Club of Houston (in Humble) like it has since relocating there in 2003. [Houston Chronicle] Rendering: Nelson Byrd Woltz
In a series of tweets yesterday, Leah Binkovitz over at the Urban Edge took viewers on a Google StreetView tour of the 9 Houston sites included in the spring 1956 edition of the Negro Travelers’ Green Book, the handy pre-civil-rights publication that, by its own description, existed to “give the Negro traveler information that will keep him from running into difficulties, embarrassments and to make his trips more enjoyable.” Too bad though, there wasn’t left much to see. Almost all the properties — home once to various hotels, motels, and restaurants — are vacant now.
New editions of the guide came out each year from 1937 to 1967, however, meaning a whole bunch of other Houston venues made the list at sometime or other. And, according to Craig Hlavaty at the Chronicle, at least 5 of them are still around, most notably, the art-deco Eldorado Ballroom pictured above at 2310 Elgin.
And perhaps less notably, the two-tone Ralston Discount Liquors #1 store on the corner of Lyons Ave. and Gregg St. formerly known as Ralston Drug Store:
IS ANOTHER HOUSTON FOOD HALL ON ITS WAY TO RICE VILLAGE? 
Whispers of a forthcoming food hall at University Blvd. and Morningside Dr. have been audible ever since Trademark Property put out renderings in 2016 showing the eastern Rice Village Arcade building there rebranded as “Rice Village Market.” Since then, the building’s remained mostly untouched, but now, with the help of one particularly sharp fact-finder over on HAIF, Eater’s Alaena Hoestetter offers this detail: “the forthcoming project,” she writes, “is from the same entity responsible for St. Roch Market in New Orleans.” It would be the second third time St. Roch’s operators attempted to branch out beyond their native NOLA. Last February, the food hall’s parent company opened an “identically named spinoff in Miami,” writes Hoestetter, prompting the City of New Orleans to file a lawsuit alleging unauthorized use of the moniker. The company’s principle later “confirmed to Eater that the new project wouldn’t bear the St. Roch moniker,” reports Hoestetter, though the suit is ongoing. (No final word yet on what another St. Roch spinoff planned for Chicago will be called.) In Rice Village, company representatives appear to be playing it safe so far: The LLC they established in Texas last September is known simply as Rice Village F&B. [Eater Houston via HAIF; previously on Swamplot] Rendering: Trademark Property
- 230 Blalock Rd. [HAR]
Crescent Communities appears ready to deliver on the promise it made last summer to residents of The Georgian apartments at Westheimer and Willowick: that after tearing down their building, the replacement would include not just rental units, but some kind of “integrated retail” as well. The rendering at top shows just that: A 14,000-sq.-ft. collection of storefronts fronts both Westheimer and an off-street inlet wrapped by the planned 8-story building. In the second image, you can see the main entrance to the building and its 300 units off Willowick. Overhead signage on that facade bears the project’s name: Novel River Oaks.
Excavators starting demolishing The Georgian complex shortly before the new year, but still have some more left to pick apart. Over on HAIF, a handful of demolition photographers have been documenting the apartments’ final days since deconstruction began.
- Novel River Oaks [Crescent Communities via HAIF]
- Previously on Swamplot: The Takedown of The Georgian Apartment Complex Is Off to a Great Start; Everyone Ousted from The Georgian Apartments on Willowick, New Apartments Set To Rise in Its Place; On-then-Off Sale of The Georgian Apartments Near Highland Village Is On Again, Maybe
Renderings: Crescent Communities
OTHER LOCAL RECIPIENTS OF THE UAE’S HARVEY FOREIGN AID CHECK: LIBRARY, HOMELESS SHELTER, KIDS HEALTH SQUAD 
Also receiving a chunk of that $6.5 million check that the United Arab Emerites announced its cutting Houston: the city’s Flores Neighborhood Library branch at 110 N. Milby St. It’s been closed since Harvey, but the books and equipment inside the building at Milby and Canal are mostly in decent shape, a spokesperson for Councilwoman Karla Cisneros told the Chronicle‘s Alyson Ward last summer. (The floor and drywall, she says, are another story.) $800,000 will go toward repairs as well as “upgrades to the library’s programming and computer lab and the purchase of new furniture,” according to the city’s press release. Beyond the library, a new homeless shelter to be built in an unspecified location will also get in on the UAE aid money: $2 million of it. Dubbed The Navigation Center, it’ll provide temporary housing for folks waiting on somewhere else more permanent and will also function as a disaster recovery shelter during storms. And last but not least, Houston’s health department is getting $1.1 million, which it’ll use to fight environmentally-induced illnesses in children. How so? By bringing its asthma education program into 3 more ISD schools, testing kdis for blood lead poisoning, and creating a new illness screening team its calling the Children’s Environmental Health Mobile Unit. [City of Houston] Photo: Houston Public Library
TIMBERGROVE H-E-B TO CLOSE JUST AHEAD OF SHEPHERD H-E-B’S END-OF-MONTH OPENING 
January 29 will be the last day of service at the 1511 W. 18th St. H-E-B, reports The Leader’s Landan Kuhlman. And the next day, he writes, H-E-B’s new double-decker location at 2300 N. Shepherd Dr. will open just under a mile away (with legally-offered beer and wine on the shelves). It’s the second 2-story store the grocer has opened in Houston — the first was in Bellaire — and has been in the making between 23rd and 24th streets since late 2017, by which time the block had been devoid of its former Fiesta tenant for over a year. A third H-E-B of the same breed is currently on the rise in Meyerland Plaza. [The Leader; previously on Swamplot] Photo of new H-E-B at 2300 N. Shepherd Dr.: Brandon DuBois
Here’s a look at the new HQ that Houston nonprofit Avenue CDC wants to build at 3527 Irvington Blvd. just north of the road’s fork with Fulton St. and east of Moody Park. The rendering emerged yesterday following news that the United Arab Emirates was coughing up $6.5 million of the $10 million it pledged to give Houston after Harvey. After its donation gets disbursed to a handful of local recipients, Avenue CDC will come out with $2.6 million — reports the HBJ’s Olivia Pulsinelli — all of which it plans to put toward the 3-story, 30,500-sq.-ft. building. An additional $8.7 million for the structure will be collected from elsewhere.
According to a press release from the folks set to inhabit the new HQ, their idea is to “conveniently co-locate a variety of vital resources for residents†inside, such as a health clinic, early childhood education center, post-disaster housing counseling offices, and a realty office. The residents they’re talking about include homeowners in the CDC’s nearby Avenue Place development — a neighborhood of 95 three- and four-bedroom homes — as well as Avenue Terrace, an adjacent 192-unit apartment project. Both communities went up on what used to be FedEx’s 20-acre truck depot off Irvington and Weiss St. over the course of the last few years.
- United Arab Emirates Provides $10 Million To Help People Of Texas Recover And Rebuild From Hurricane Harvey [HBJ]
- United Arab Emirates Provides $10 Million To Help People Of Texas Recover And Rebuild From Hurricane Harvey [PRNewswire]
Rendering: Avenue CDC
