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Featured Posts
12/09/15 3:50pm

New Angles (and a $1MM+ Price Bump) on That Stern and Bucek Mod in Southampton

by
Southampton
9 Comments

2115 Wroxton St., Southampton, Houston, 77005

As of yesterday, the home at 2115 Wroxton is on the market again — this time for $4.5 million, and with some zoomy new angles among the listing photos.  When last we left the home in February of this year, the Southampton property had been listed (for the second time) for just under $3.5 million, and was bracing for auction with a minimum bid of $2.9 million. But the property was pulled from the market at the end of May, with no recorded sale. (The mod was first listed for $3.75 million in September 2013, but was pulled the following July.)

The new listing allows prospective buyers to peer across 1 of the 3 courtyards to Wroxton St. out front (above), and to gaze down into the pool through the solar screen (below):

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Third Time’s The Charm
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Attractions
12/09/15 11:30am

Flying Over the Typhoon Currently Under Construction Next to Katy Mills Mall

by
Katy, New Construction
2 Comments

Typhoon Texas, 555 Katy Fort Bend Rd., Katy, TX, 77450

No need to evacuate the area, but aerial footage from the developers shows the Typhoon Texas waterpark currently brewing at 555 Katy Fort Bend Rd, just south of I-10 on 43 acres of Katy Mills Mall-adjacent land. Ground was broken on August 20, and the park (pictured conceptually above) is slated to make landfall on May 27, just before the start of Atlantic hurricane season.

Aquatic amusements will include a 1,500-ft. lazy river, facilities for slideboarding (which turns going down a waterslide into a competitive sport), facilities for regular sliding, a 48-foot-tall play structure, and a 27,000-sq.-ft. wave pool. (That’s larger than the one at the New Braunfels Schlitterbahn, for those of you keeping score.) Typhoon backers hope that the park will become a regional draw along the lines of the 3 Schlitterbahns, Spring’s Splashtown, and Astroworld (RIP).

This oddly-soothing drone video captures the sense of calm over the developing theme park:

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Suburban Hurricane Hunting
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Ellington Field
12/09/15 10:30am

A Look at the Houston Spaceport’s New Office-Park-Style Campus Plan

by
Proposed Developments, Transportation
2 Comments

Proposed Spaceport as of November 2015, Ellington Airport, Houston, 77059

Renderings presented for the first time at last month’s Spacecom convention show the latest round of updated designs for the first phase of the planned spaceport campus that will nestle between the existing Ellington Airport runways and Space Center Blvd. in Clear Lake. The images show a campus that is notably more conventional than what might have been suggested by the curvilinear designs released in 2013. The new plans most resemble a suburban office park version of Thomas Jefferson’s plan for the University of Virginia, complete with surface parking lots tucked behind 2-story buildings stepped back from a central roadway axis.

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Ellington Swing
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Condos
12/08/15 3:30pm

Those Not Sold on the Ivy Lofts Tiny Condo Concept Can Buy 2 Tokyos and Stick Them Together

by
East Downtown, Highrises, Lofts for Sale, Proposed Developments
30 Comments

Ivy Lofts Rendering, Leeland at Live Oak, East Downtown, Houston

“Some buzz” has made its way back to the Ivy Lofts developers since news of the plans for Houston’s tiniest condos began to spread — so much buzz, in fact, that Novel Creative Development is responding to the pushback with a change in sales tactics. The group announced in an email that Ivy Lofts buyers will have the option to lump 2 adjacent units together and customize the floorplan, giving residents more space if needed.

The promotion team is also working hard to rebrand the proposed floorplans with the names of famously dense cities, instead of describing the units by their size.  “It’s not fair to label these spaces by square footages,” says marketing director Brandon Vos in a RE/MAX press release. “We had to come up with new names since so many rooms double in usage.”

The newly internationalized units include The Tokyo, the project’s itsy-bitsiest floor plan, which measures in at 300 sq. ft. and will be priced starting at $119,000.

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Doubling Up at Ivy Lofts
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Development Regulations
12/08/15 12:30pm

City Inspector Gives Thumbs Down to Texas Direct Auto’s Main St. Building Billboard

by
Downtown, Signage
7 Comments

Billboard, 312 Main St., Downtown Houston

Were you kinda liking that new billboard installed on the second story of the building at 312 Main St. — the one that posed serious, possibly life-changing questions to passengers exiting the Preston St. light-rail station? Well, you’ve got less than 10 days to enjoy it, depending on long fast used-car-dealer Texas Direct Auto wants to take to comply with a city citation posted to the building yesterday — unless it can get those pesky inspectors to back off.

A notation on the red tag declares that the facade-smothering sign is in violation of the city’s sign code — namely that it was not erected in connection with a “business purpose”: “A business purpose shall not include any property, building, or structure erected or used for the primary purpose of securing a permit to erect a sign,” the note reads. (That echoes a portion of the definition in section 4602, in case you’re following along at home with regulations in hand.) Here’s a snapshot of the documents stuck to the building’s ground floor, as submitted to the Twitterverse by Houston Chronicle writer Evan Mintz, whose employer last week declared in an editorial that the sign should be illegal:

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A Red Tag Downtown
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Demolitions
12/08/15 9:45am

Tyvek Ghost of Lucky Burger Rises at the Corner of Richmond and Mandell

by
Houston Landmarks, Montrose, Retail
5 Comments

Oui Banh Mi, 1601 Richmond, Montrose, Houston, 77006

Lucky Burger, 1601 Richmond Ave. at Mandell St., Montrose, HoustonHere’s a photo of the new construction underway on the now-barrel-bereft lot at 1601 Richmond, future home of drive-thru Vietnamese sandwich shop Oui Banh Mi. The new structure, shown above from Mandell, is currently shrouded in housewrap. (The historical photo of Lucky Burger is taken from the Richmond side.)

The Lucky Burger barrel, which stood on the corner for more than 40 years, was demolished on Halloween under the cover of citywide flood warnings.

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Oui Banh Mi, No Barrel
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Featured Posts
12/07/15 4:15pm

Fly High Little Bunny Touches Down in the Heights

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Houston Heights, Openings and Closings, Retail
No Comments

Fly High Little Bunny, W. 19th St., Heights, Houston, 77008

The sign isn’t up yet, but sales are already taking off: Fly High Little Bunny commenced regular business hours yesterday at its new location on W. 19th St. and Rutland, following Saturday’s opening for the Holiday in the Heights shopping event. The former Shepherd landmark left its old storefront at the corner of W. Alabama earlier this year to make way for a CVS and pad site.

Photo: Swamplot inbox

Flight From West Alabama
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Featured Posts
12/07/15 11:30am

Gilley’s To Be Revived as a Family-Friendly Entertainment Center in La Porte

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La Porte
4 Comments

Proposed Gilley's, SH 146, La Porte, TX Urban cowboys, hold your horses: A Gilley’s rebirth is in the works near the Ship Channel, but it will be neither as rootin’ nor as tootin’ as its world-famous Pasadena ancestor. Last month La Porte’s city council approved a proposed general plan for the La Porte Town Center, a $55-million mixed-residential-and-retail-and-sports-and-entertainment district anchored by a Mickey Gilley’s Family Entertainment Center.

Modern-day Wes Hightowers would best look elsewhere to shoot mezcal and brawl — a floorplan for the dancehall shows that the 50,000-sq.-ft. facility is geared towards more wholesome pastimes, offering “Branston-type stage performances”, roller skating, laser tag, billiards, video games, boutique bowling, bumper cars, a Western duds shop and a cafe. The inevitable mechanical bull is located by the entrance to the restrooms:

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East Side Town Center
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Featured Posts
12/07/15 9:15am

Fairway Prepping To Pump Oil Back into the Ground at the Pierce Junction Salt Dome

by
Geology, Pierce Junction, Storage Facilities
9 Comments

Map of Oil Wells in and Around Pierce Junction Salt Dome, Houston

Right next door to the fairways of the Wildcat Golf Club, Fairway Energy Partners is moving forward with plans announced this summer to put nearly half a billion gallons of crude oil back into the ground, right in the center of the once-wild Pierce Junction oil field just south of the Inner Loop between S. Main St. and Highway 288. (The field, which a 1956 Time Magazine article called the site of “the biggest of all Gulf Coast oil booms,” still pumps out oil.) Fairway announced in November that they’ve picked engineers to help them retrofit 3 of the 8 man-made caverns dissolved into the Pierce Junction salt dome for crude storage.  A dense ring of current and closed oil wells (mapped as green dots above) traces the uppermost reach of the migrant salt, buried approximately 950 feet below the surface and extending several miles deep to its source layer.

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Partners in Brine
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Featured Posts
12/04/15 9:15am

The Best Views of the New UT Houston Campus Are Available Now from the Fairway on the 5th Hole, Above a Trash Heap

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Houston History, Lakes, Landscape, Parks, Pierce Junction, Pipelines, Uncategorized
10 Comments

Wildcat Golf Club, 12000 Almeda Rd., Pierce Junction, Houston

Looking for an overview of the new site of UT’s recently-announced Houston campus? Your best bet may be to stop in at the Wildcat Golf Club, located directly across Holmes Rd. from the site of UT’s planned purchase. Native Houstonians may experience a touch of vertigo trekking up the club’s grassy peaks to catch the view of NRG Park and downtown (see above) — hills on the site reach more than 115 feet above sea level in places. (Downtown, for comparison, stands at roughly 50 feet, and the big hill at Miller Outdoor Theater tops out around 65.)

The golf club’s topography is a byproduct of its original gig as a major municipal landfill, operating for nearly two decades until 1989; clay and topsoil were imported to sculpt the waste heaps into today’s smoothly rolling hills and water features:

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Houston Hill Country
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Downtown
12/03/15 2:15pm

Down on Main St., Where an Auto Billboard Has Moved In Next to the Home of Easy Credit

by
Retail
12 Comments

Preston St. Station, Main St., Houston, 77002

Downtown light-rail riders: Your patronage of public transit isn’t enough. A giant billboard covering most of the facade of the 2-story building at 312 Main St. now urges passengers emerging from the northbound Preston stop to get rid of their vehicles altogether. The unassuming Houston Site Acquisitions storefront has scrapped its own above-door signage in favor of a story-high ad for Texas Direct Auto, complete with oversized doggie in the window.

Large-scale advertising for businesses not currently in the building is nothing new for this block of Main St.: Just next door, the sky-high neon above perpetually hungover neighbors Dean’s and Notsuoh still heralds the days of credit clothing retail. But the Texas Direct Auto ad incorporates the structure of the building itself, placing the large image of a small dog behind an actual window visible through a cutout in the wrap:

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Sell Your Car! No Money Down!
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Cypress
12/03/15 10:45am

Cypress’s Tin Hall To Be Boot-Scooted Up the Road or Into Oblivion

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Historic Preservation, Houston Landmarks, Music, Nighlife
5 Comments

Tin Hall Dancehall, 14800 Tin Hall Rd, Cypress, 77429

Cypress may be losing a piece of its history: 126-year-old Tin Hall, Harris County’s oldest and largest country dancehall (and perennial first listing among area attractions on the Cypress community’s Wikipedia page). The venue is slated to close its doors on New Year’s Day.

The 24,000-sq.-ft. facility sports a 4,400-sq.-ft. dance floor on the second story, and sits on 40 ac. of wooded land surrounded by suburbs on two sides and the Longwood Golf Club on another. The property was sold last December to an entity that shares a Woodway address with McGuyer Homebuilders.

A New Year’s Eve bash is billed as Tin Hall’s last public gathering — at least in its current locale. A spokesperson for the dancehall said on Facebook that they hope the hall can be moved in pieces and rebuilt:

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Dancehall Blues
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Bars and Clubs
12/03/15 9:15am

Peek Inside the Latest Reincarnation of Leon’s Lounge in Midtown

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Houston Landmarks, Interiors, Midtown
5 Comments

Leon's Lounge, 1006 McGowen St., Midtown, Houston

Leon’s Lounge is back in business: following an abrupt January shutdown and months of rustling behind closed doors, the undisputed reigning oldest bar in Houston (comma, sorta-continuously-operating-under-the-sameish-name, comma, that-was-not-a-restaurant-or-ice-house-first) is once again serving drinks beneath those signature chandeliers. Leon’s closed in January with the colorful severance of the leasing relationship between building owner Scarlett Yarborough (daughter of Leon himself) and then-operator Pete Mitchell (proprietor of Under The Volcano on Richmond Bissonnet), including the swift dismantling of the outdoor patio.

A new patio is now in place, and service resumed following the bar’s soft opening in the weeks before Halloween. An official Grand Reopening under new operators Duane Bradley and Jim DeFoyd (joint owners of The Davenport, purveyor of “quality lounging” on Richmond just off Shepherd) took place last Saturday. While many of Leon’s familiar features remain intact following this round of renovations, the updated interior may no longer qualify the longtime Midtown dive for full dive status.

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Back To Lounging Around
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Featured Posts
12/02/15 1:00pm

How It Came To Be That 2 Separate Mattress Stores with the Same Name Are Now Open Side by Side on Westheimer

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Franchises and Chain Stores, Montrose, Neartown, Retail, Signage, Strip Centers, Uncategorized
7 Comments

Twin Mattress Firms, 1003 Westheimer Rd, Montrose, Houston, 77006

The strip mall at the corner of Westheimer and Montrose now sports two “Mattress Firm” storefronts right next door to one another, operating independently. The western Mattress Firm, on the right in the photo above, has been converted from a Mattress Pro through the subtle but definitive application of a small banner, filling the gap left by the removal of the word “Pro”. All Mattress Pro stores had until November 6th to convert signage, following a mid-September announcement that Mattress Firm would be discontinuing the subsidiary brand.

What exactly has changed? Not the Mattress Pro logo, which still bounces along in contrast to Mattress Firm’s aggressive yellow swipe. The relabeled store, now styled as a Mattress Firm: Final Markdown facility, will sell Mattress Firm products at a bargain-bin discount, while the regular Mattress Firm next door will continue to sell those products at full price.

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Doubling Down
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Demolitions
12/02/15 11:15am

What’s Going Down Behind Teala’s on West Dallas

by
North Montrose
1 Comment

Building behind Teala's, 3210 W Dallas, North Montrose, Houston, 77019

A reader sends this photo of an excavator at work yesterday on a house behind the former Teala’s Mexican Restaurant at 3210 W. Dallas in North Montrose. Teala’s — not to be confused with nearby Tila’s Restaurante and Bar on the Shepherd curve — changed hands in mid-September. Teala’s closed around the same time.

The new owner of the 20,000 sq. ft. parcel underneath the restaurant is an entity connected to NewQuest Properties, which specializes in retail development.

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Making Way
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