RANDALLS READY TO SLIP OUT OF SHEPHERD SQUARE 
A spokeswoman for the grocer tells the Chronicle’s Nancy Sarnoff this morning that the Shepherd Square Randalls Flagship store will be closing, but doesn’t say when. It’s been at Shepherd and Westheimer for about the past 2 decades, back before the brand got bought in 1999 by national chain Safeway — which itself was acquired by Albertsons in 2015. The 128,000-sq.-ft. shopping center housing the store went up in 1989. (It’s shown above before Randalls’ signage was flipped, elevating the “Flagship” branding to a spot above the retailer’s own name.) Over the past year, several Houston-area Randalls have already shut down: at the Coles Crossing shopping center in Cypress, on 34th St. in Oak Forest, and on W. Bellfort in Stafford. [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Denise W.
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The indie coffee shop and practitioner of advanced siphon-brewing techniques suspended its service last Wednesday so that big-name instant and pre-ground coffee producer Cafe Bustelo could take over barista duties inside for the week. The photo above shows the storefront going off-brand with temporary fixtures that dub it a “Cafecito” using Bustelo’s classic color scheme. Closer to ground level, you can see the new matching window dressings, too — added on too along the store’s glass facade.
Even Siphon’s standalone sign at the corner of W. Alabama and Greeley St. has been transformed:
Food Substitutes
CITY WISHLIST FOR DAIRY ASHFORD: WIDER ROADWAY, HIGHER BAYOU BRIDGE 
On city council’s agenda for tomorrow: a vote of support for widening Dairy Ashford Rd. from 2 to 3 lanes on each side between Westheimer and I-10. As part of the roadwork, the existing bridge across Buffalo Bayou would be rebuilt — potentially above 500-year floodplain level, though the city hasn’t decided yet. New, wider sidewalks are on the table, too. With the council’s blessing, Houston’s public works department would next submit an application for the project to the Houston Galveston Area Council, which could choose to help pay for it with state and federal money. [Houston City Council Agenda] Map: Houston City Council
Here’s what the restaurant just west of the Meyer Park Shopping Center looks like in its afterlife. Signage came down the same day that the store closed, last Wednesday. It’s now listed for lease by the franchisee that owns the land at 4904 W. Bellfort as well as that beneath about 70 other Taco Bells, KFCs, and Pizza Huts in and around Houston: KorMex Foods.
KorMex grabbed this location along with 15 other existing stores when it went into business in 2000. By then, the building itself had been around for 7 years.
- 4904 W. Bellfort St. [LoopNet]
- About KorMex [KorMex Foods]
Photo: Jason Karwacki
W. Bellfort and S. Post Oak
 
Note: This story has been updated to indicate that City Council’s October 23 vote approved funding for previous work that was already completed on the plaza, not for future renovations.
This week Houston City Council voted to cut a check to workers that finished the first round of renovations on the plaza. The results of their work — including new fencing, gates, and a terrace — clear the way for the second chapter of redos to begin. The video at top winds it way through round 2 of changes, showing off the new children’s reading area, stage, and outdoor seating bound for the 0.75-acre space between the Jesse H. Jones Building (AKA Central Library) and the Julia Ideson building directly east of it.
While 25-year naming rights are already locked down on the Phillips 66 Jumbo Video Screen (on the right in the rendering abvoe) and Janice and Robert C. McNair Performance Stage (left), the puppet theater depicted below is still in need of a namesake:
Downtown Redo
MAN-MADE LAGOON EXPERTS’ SECOND HOUSTON SWIMMING HOLE: 12-ACRES BIG, 10-FT. DEEP 
Developer Land Tejas announced it’ll be deploying another artificial lagoon in Houston on top of the 2-acre one it’s already filling up with water near Summerwood. Technology for both of them comes from Dallas-based firm Crystal Lagoons whose patented, beach-fronted swimming holes function “year-round, even in cold climates” —- reports BusinessWire — “in which they can be frozen and used for winter sports such as ice skating and hockey.” Crystal Lagoons’ biggest one so far, a 23.8-acre body of water at the Citystars Sharm El Sheikh resort in Egypt is the current Guinness-World-Record-holder for “largest man-made lagoon.” But not for long: the firm’s got a 90-acre one in the works for Dubai. At Land Tejas’ 4,000-home community in Texas City — dubbed Lago Mar — the planned 12-acre Crystal Lagoon lagoon will be surrounded by a “70-acre resort-style compound,” reports the HBJ’s Fauzeya Rahman, including boardwalks, a hotel, restaurants, and retail. [HBJ] Map showing proposed resort component of Land Tejas’ Lago Mar development: Land Tejas
What better way to make use of all those empty parking spots than with an good old fashioned carnival like this one? It’s been a tradition at Greenspoint Mall going back decades now to plant a few attractions outside the building once the weather cools off enough for visitors to enjoy themselves. And management’s kept doing it — even as Macy’s, Dillards, and Sears all shuttered inside over the past few years and portions of the building and surrounding parking lot have sold to investors with heavy-duty plans for redevelopment. The attractions shown above are all sprawled out on the I-45 side of the building, where they cover up the “For Lease” banner that’s otherwise visible to passing northbound traffic.
There’s even a Ferris wheel:
Roadside Attractions
THE CASE AGAINST THE HOUSTON FORENSIC SCIENCE CENTER’S SHARED OFFICE SETUP 
Last month, leaders of the Center told Houston City Council their 200-plus person staff just isn’t fitting in at HPD’s downtown offices in 1200 Travis, pictured above. For one thing: “Technicians test guns by firing live ammunition on the 24th floor,” which neighbors offices above and below, reports the Chronicle‘s Zach Despart. They also “transport evidence upstairs in public elevators.” Although “shortcomings in the Houston Police Department’s own crime lab” were what prompted the city to found the Center as an independent body in 2014, the agencies’ ongoing closeness tends to raise eyebrows: “You walk into HPD’s headquarters on the way to the laboratory,” says Center president Peter Stout. The good news: their proximity is only temporary. Earlier this month, City Council approved a new 30-year lease for the Center at 500 Jefferson — a privately-owned building 9 blocks away — where it’ll get 83,000 sq.-ft. for “toxicology, DNA testing, fingerprint analysis and narcotics storage,” as well as a 25-ft. firing range in the basement, reports Jasper Scherer. [Houston Chronicle] Photo of 1200 Travis St.: WhisperToMe
With the former Shelor Motor Company building at 1621 Milam St. all but doomed to meet the wrecking ball, historian Stephen Fox digs through some old Chronicle clips to remind us that there’s still a few other old car dealerships lurking down south in Midtown. Sure, they may not be as pedigreed as the ill-fated building to the north, but get this: One of them still sells cars! It’s Midtown Cadillac at the corner of Main and McGowen streets, shown at top. Architect Harvin C. Moore — the brains behind more than 84 homes in River Oaks, as well as Rice University’s chapel — designed it for Sam White Oldsmobile (pictured above), which opened inside in the early 1950s, according to Fox. Sam White and its successor Rice-Menger occupied the building until 1985. It’s been a Cadillac dealership since Don Massey took it over in 1999, followed by Stewart and then Central in 2012.
Catty corner to it, Midtown seafood spot REEF was originally a dealership, too. Built in 1952, the building opened as Smith Chevrolet Co.:
Inner-Loop Auto Lore
In early 2004, a heavy FedEx envelope showed up 1753 North Blvd. for Meyer Minchen, the 81-year-old vet who’d lived there since the house was built. He busted it open. Inside was the Distinguished Flying Cross, along with 2 other medals the Air Force had decided to pin on Minchen 6 decades after the fact. When the Chronicle‘s Thom Marshall came knocking later that year to get the story, Minchen told him he already had 3 air medals in his collection but decided to request a review of his service records because why not. “Equipped with powerful searchlights,” the planes Minchen piloted “flew a mere 500 feet above the water looking for signs of enemy subs,” wrote Marshall.
The house has won some medals, too:
Yours For $2.2M
HAVING SEX WITH ROBOTS INSIDE STORES THAT SELL THEM IS NOW ILLEGAL ACROSS ALL OF HARRIS COUNTY 
Piggybacking on Houston City Council’s own pioneering efforts to outlaw sex doll brothels within city limits, the county has now adopted similar legislation. On Tuesday, the Commissioners Court voted unanimously to “define sex dolls . . . as ‘anthropomorphic devices’ and prohibit companies from renting them out to customers,” reports the Chronicle’s Zach Despart. (Taking the dolls home remains legal.) The new rules take effect on January 1. [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo of 5615 Richmond, formerly planned to house a sex doll brothel
Go ahead, name a few of Houston’s most heavily-Instagrammed hotspots. The Waterwall, North and South boulevards, maybe the “We Love Houston” sign that — until recently — sat along I-10. But who ever wanted to go pose next to the Katy Fwy. just to pick up a few new followers? If only there was a location where the photogenic offerings sat under a roof — preferably in one of those hip Houston retail-and-restaurant strips where the food might merit a few pics as well.
Enter Flower Vault, the budding brick-and-mortar Instagram destination shown at top that’s taken over half of Joybird Furniture‘s storefront at 1735 Westheimer, 2 blocks west of Dunlavy. For $20 per person (and $10 per pet), you can spend an hour taking pictures inside the studio’s blossoming interior spaces. The admissions fee won’t preclude other patrons from visiting at the same time, so you may have to take turns in front of the backdrops. But check out the results so far; it appears everyone’s been happy to share.
Not Your Father’s Florist
  
Following “four or five 3-month lease extensions,” the landlord of 2318 Waugh Dr. dropped by Corazon last Friday to give the business its 30-days notice, reports store owner Chris Murphy. Its exit date is now set for November 20, a Tuesday, so final sales will take place the weekend before. Murphy says he’d been working to track down a new location for the store since learning it’d have to leave more than a year ago — but hasn’t had any luck. Barring any last-minute workable option, “we’ll reluctantly have to liquidate fixtures and retreat to various online platforms,” he says, in order to keep dealing guayaberas, Luca Libre masks, and other imports like the store has been doing since 1998. It’s shown around that year in the across-the-street photo above, which also gives a view of the landmark red dot on the building’s south side. (The taller building behind it occupies the same piece of land but was torn down in 2016.)
Next up for the 6,250-sq.-ft. parcel: a trio of townhomes. The landowner’s plan, says Murphy, “is to demolish the building immediately once we vacate,” and plant the new residences in a line like this along Fairview St.:
Towhomes Imminent
CITY COUNCIL TO CUT CHECK FOR SECOND WARD SENIOR HOUSING TODAY 
This afternoon, City Council is set to approve a $3.5M loan to the private developer who wants to build 3 stories of senior housing on Commerce St., inside the red box shown above. Roughly $2.2M of it would come from grant funds the city got its hands on from HUD, but hasn’t spent yet. The other $1.3M is sitting in a stockpile of Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone money that the city’s been planning to spend on projects like this one. Of the 120 units planned inside the apartments — dubbed Campanile on Commerce — 105 would go to tenants earning 60% or less than the area median income. [Houston City Council; previously on Swamplot] Map: Houston Planning Commission
Renovations to turn the former Parsley Studios building at 1504 Yale St. into Blue Line Bike Lab‘s new Heights location are now nearly finished, and the most dramatic change is the new coat of light blue paint the structure’s 15th-St. side, pictured above. During the 75 years it housed the family photo business and functioned as a portrait studio for mayors and celebrities like Roy Rogers and Loretta Lynn — according to The Leader — the building underwent its fair share of paint jobs; the last big one washed out a checkerboard pattern along its Yale-St. side, leaving the structure mostly brown.
Last September, a liquidation sale emptied the place of “a quarter of a century’s worth of photo equipment, furniture, frames and photos,” reported the Chronicle‘s Jaimy Jones. By that time, most of the owners’ work focused on photo restoration, so brick-and-mortar amenities like formal seating — “and even a small dressing room with bright, round bulbs that frame a mirror atop an old-fashioned dressing table,” wrote Jones — were no longer necessary. The building sold to a group that’s linked to Blue Line, which has its nearest shop on the corner of White Oak Dr. and Columbia St. That existing location (which predates the shop’s other spot on Telephone Rd.) is now set to close, but not until a fleet of new bikes arrives the Yale St. building.
It’s shown empty in the photo below, although a newly-hung sign along Yale makes clear what will fill it:
1504 Yale St.
