HOUSTONIANS THINK HOUSTON IS 63 PERCENT URBAN, KINDA 
In a guest post for ESPN’s FiveThirtyEight, Trulia’s chief economist trots out a bunch of maps and charts that purport to show that Houston, unlike the other 5 most populous U.S. cities, is actually only 63 percent urban. But among the lower-downs on that list, Houston isn’t the big suburban metropolis standout. Phoenix and San Antonio rate half of Houston’s urbanity, and even San Diego comes in at a sprawling 49 percent. Of course, there’s the small question of how anyone determines whether a place is urban. Trulia went with the old “know it when I see it” rule, rating a Zip Code urban if its residents called it urban, suburban if they called it so, and rural otherwise. But with only 2,008 responses to their online survey, the company had to resort to other measures to fill out its maps for Houston (above) and several other cities, including figures for the density of households within a particular Zip Code. [FiveThirtyEight] Map: FiveThirtyEight
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Beer and trucking: 2 great Texas pastimes will unite under one roof this September, once the brand new SpindleTap Brewery opens up its brewing operation and tavern inside the brand-new tilt-up warehouse at 10622 Hirsch Rd. built for trucking company Lightning Logistics (pictured here under construction in a photo from February). SpindleTap’s facility is taking up 10,000 of the building’s 70,000 sq. ft., reports the Houston Business Journal‘s Joe Martin. (It’ll also include an outdoor patio space and possibly a dog run.) Much of the remainder of the building, which is located just south of Little York, a superblock east of I-69, will serve as headquarters for Lightning Logistics’s 250-truck fleet.
SpindleTap
Can’t get enough of that old-shopping-center-knock-down action? Here, courtesy of the Brays Oaks management district, is a view of the carnage currently in progress at the Robindell Shopping Center, where the empty hulls of a slew of colorfully named businesses arrayed from 6711 to 6755 Bissonnet St. are meeting dusty ends. Hello to a new Aldi and company. But before that, a goodbye to Bigwick Liquor, Libreria Cristiana El Resplendor, Ana’s Multi Services, La Sultana Pupuseria, Delta X-Ray, Cute-Cut Salon $5, Eyebrow Threading Salon, and Trudi’s Birria de Chivo. Your ice cream at neighboring Baskin-Robbins will be spared.
- Construction at Robindell Plaza [Brays Oaks Management District]
- Previously on Swamplot:Â Aldi in, Birria de Chiva Out, Baskin-Robbins Safe at the Corner of Beechnut and Bissonnet
Photo: Brays Oaks Management District
Make Way for Aldi
If you’ve been staking out the demolition action around the Starbucks drive-thru at the corner of Buffalo Speedway and S. Main St., a block north of the South Loop, you’ll know crews have now knocked down the entire vacant strip center at 9714 Buffalo Speedway as well as the former America’s Best Value Inn at 9604 S. Main St. behind it. For the rest of us, a couple of pics sent in by a reader will help you catch up on what’s been going down to make way for a rumored townhome development from InTown Homes.
America’s Best Value No Longer
METRO KEEPING NEW BUS ROUTES UNDER WRAPS UNTIL AUGUST 16 
Every route sign at every bus stop in Metro’s service area should now have a plastic bag over its head, the transit agency says. Printed on those bags: the same old bus route numbers that’ve always been there, along with a couple of helpful phone numbers. Info on how the route will be changed come late summer should appear on vertical add-on signs lower on each pole. The great citywide bus-stop-sign unbagging (revealing the sign makeovers hidden underneath) is scheduled to take place just before August 16, the day Metro’s revamped route network debuts. [Metro; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Metro
SUB-BOURBON REVOLVER GUNNING FOR OUTLAW DAVE’S WASHINGTON AVE SPOT 
The owners of fellow just-shut-down Willowbrook Mall bar Revolver are now in possession of the remains of Outlaw Dave’s Worldwide Headquarters, Houstonia’s Katharine Shilcutt notes. And a reader tells Swamplot the new owners are already busy making changes for an in-town Revolver revival: “Someone is doing outside renovations (tore down wood fence and pouring slab for patio) right now, and a truck with an exterior logo that reads ‘Revolver sub-BOURBON social’ has been parked outside for a week.” Revolver, which may or may not upgrade from sub-Bourbon to the hard urban stuff, is now aiming for a summer opening. Outlaw Dave’s went dark at 6502 Washington Ave just south of I-10 earlier this month, leaving a lit-up “Adios Bitches” signoff on its marquee. [Houstonia] Photo of Outlaw Dave’s patio: Outlaw Dave’s Worldwide Headquarters
A banner for Manhattan Construction is flying on the side of the Wortham Tower parking garage, just south of the Wortham Tower itself at 2919 Allen Pkwy. The company is adding on a few floors of parking to the massive structure. A Swamplot reader sent in these views, taken from the adjacent parking lot for the Whole Foods Market on Waugh Dr.
Wortham Tower Parking
SAVING UPTOWN, HOUSTON’S MASTERPIECE, FROM THE SCOURGE OF DEDICATED BUS LANES 
The Uptown Property and Business Owners Coalition is out today with a new website (portrayed here) meant to drum up opposition to the Uptown District and Metro’s plans to install dedicated bus lanes down Post Oak Blvd. The lanes, the last vestige of what was once a plan for an Uptown light rail line, would run from dedicated bus lanes linking to the Northwest Transit Center all the way to the proposed Bellaire/Uptown Transit Center near U.S. 59 and Westpark, where they might someday intersect with a University Line traveling eastward from that point. But the team behind the website wants none of it: “Uptown is a Houston masterpiece. Why do they want to ruin it?” reads the copy on the home page. Meanwhile, an introductory blog post on the site encourages readers to attend a friendly “town hall” meeting, tomorrow night at the Uptown Hilton, in the company of “hundreds of angry business owners and Uptown area residents.” [Save Uptown; previously on Swamplot]
THE GREATEST CONCENTRATION OF NEW HOUSTON APARTMENTS IS IN AND AROUND MONTROSE 
The Susanne, the Lofts at Mid Main, 3400 Montrose, Camden McGowen Station, The Carter, Broadstone Skyline, The Southmore, Alexan Midtown, Encore CC&G (pictured here), the Axis, and the DLC at Midtown. That’s Catie Dixon’s list of 11 multifamily complexes with more than 200 units each now going up (or about to). Together, they add up to 3,195 new apartments — but a bunch of smaller buildings brings the total number of new apartments now scheduled to debut this year and next in Montrose, Midtown, and the Museum District to just under 4,400, she calculates: “That’s almost one-third of multifamily development underway in Harris County, PMRG director of research Ariel Guerrero tells us.” [Real Estate Bisnow] Rendering of Encore CC&G apartments: Encore Enterprises
This is what “European sensibility” means in The Woodlands — at least to the Woodlands Development Company people marketing Treviso at Waterway Square, a 23-story condo tower planned across Waterway Square Pl. from the Woodlands Waterway itself, right behind the construction site of the 302-room Westin hotel now going up along the waterfront. The view down the waterway above shows the new tower at center, in front of an existing multi-story parking garage (whose cheese and bicycle shops at the base face Lake Robbins Dr.), and just east of the 24 Waterway Ave. office building and its ground-floor restaurantage. The completed Westin is at right center.
In the language of the development firm, this setting is “not unlike a European village.” So the name? “Treviso is a medieval Italian town near Venice that shares its combination of peaceful canals and iconic Piazzas but on a smaller scale, and just slightly off the beaten path,” declares a marketing brochure.
23 Stories
Heavy equipment is back on the scene — and a metal plate on the way, a reader tells us — at the corner of White Oak Dr. and Beauchamp in Woodland Heights, adjacent to White Oak Bayou, where a hole suddenly appeared in freshly spread asphalt just hours after the street was resurfaced yesterday.
That Sinking Feeling
Click2Houston is now reporting that the garage at Elgin and Milam streets behind the 24 Hour Fitness at 3201 Louisiana St. “sustained heavy structural damage” after 3 cars parked inside caught on fire this morning. The confusing sounds of popping tires had some bystanders running for cover as flames were blazing, a reader tells Swamplot; with the fire out now, police are on site, along with 3 fire marshal Priuses now parked along Milam.
The Fire Mix at Midtown
Kahn’s Deli was open at 2429 Rice Blvd. for more than 30 years. Now it’ll be closed at that location for at least the same amount of time. The deli’s history stretches back well before the move to that spot in 1984, though: The original Kahn’s opened in 1948, a few blocks away. The last pickles were served yesterday.
Helen Launching Next
Landscape crews last week chopped down 16 live oak trees lining the west side of Yale St. just south of White Oak, along the eastern border of the second of Trammell Crow Residential’s Alexan Heights apartment complexes. A similar scene took place last year in front of the Alexan Heights north of White Oak and 6th St. (at right in the above photo).
A reader sent in pics of the recent street-tree sawfest:
Chop ’n Plant
Here’s a rendering of the new employment services and care center Midtown-based nonprofit SEARCH Homeless Services is just about ready to start building on a 10,000-sq.-ft. vacant lot at the northwest corner of Congress and St. Emanuel. The site is one block east of the Hwy. 59 overpass, at 2015 Congress Ave. Arch-Con Construction will begin construction on the design by Studio Red Architects after a groundbreaking ceremony next Monday. The nonprofit plans to leave its current HQ in the fifties Mod building at 2505 Fannin St. in Midtown for this new East Downtown perch. In addition to offices, the smaller, 27,105-sq.-ft. facility will include a chapel, training rooms, workspaces, and a terrace.
Rendering: Studio Red Architects
Congress & St. Emanuel
