11/24/14 11:59am

315-fairview st, Hyde Park, Montrose

315 fairview st, Hyde Park, MontroseUpdate: 3:45 p.m. Eater Houston reports that the name of the sushi bar will be Akamaru.

According to the permit in the window at 315 Fairview, the next occupant of the mixed-use building’s downstairs will be a restaurant named Sushi Bar. 

Most recently that area had been home to a lounge called The Fairview.

Prior to its incarnation as the Fairview, the building had housed the short-lived Montrose outpost of downtown institution Dean’s Credit Clothing.

Sushi Bar will be situated about halfway between Uchi and the Bluefish.

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Montrose Eats
11/24/14 10:30am

HOUSTON CHRONICLE COMPLEX DOWNTOWN GOING ON SALE — A YEAR OR 2 TOO LATE? Houston Chronicle Building, 801 Texas Ave., Downtown HoustonThe Houston Chronicle‘s former real estate reporter says Hearst is putting the Chronicle complex at 801 Texas Ave. up for sale at a less-than-ideal time. Ralph Bivins reports that the newspaper’s parent company has just selected brokerage firm HFF to market the building, on the block surrounded by Milam, Travis, Texas, and Prairie, and its separate parking garage. But “Hearst would have met stronger demand by putting the Chronicle property on the market a year or two ago,” Bivins writes. “Hearst moved too late to catch the crest of the wave. The price for the Chronicle property is expected to be less than $50 million.” In July, the company announced the newspaper’s offices would be moved to revamped facilities in the former Houston Post complex at 4747 Southwest Fwy. [Realty News Report; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Ralph Bivins

11/21/14 2:15pm

THE SHIP CHANNEL’S FOLK HISTORY ON VIEW Vest-photo-boatman-300 Houston Arts Alliance’s Stories of a Workforce: Celebrating the Centennial of the Houston Ship Channel, an exhibit running through January in the Houston Public Library’s Julia Ideson building, focuses on the Houston Ship Channel’s second 50 years, a half-century that saw the port utterly transformed by the advent of the containerization of cargo.  The centerpiece of the exhibit is a John Biggers mural of African-American dockers hoisting cargo, and the room is dotted with the photographs and timelapse films of working Channel pilot and photographer Lou Vest. Newspaper clippings shine a light on the Channel’s occasional outbreaks of labor strife,while in an alcove across the hall, viewers can take in a collage of portraits of typical houses in harborside neighborhoods such as Fifth Ward, Magnolia Park, Clinton Park, and Denver Harbor that many dock workers have called home for generations.  Via overhead speech domes, you hear the pilots, stevedores, and boatmen tell their own stories in their own words. The exhibit is less a standard, top-down institutional retelling of the Ship Channel story than it is a Studs Terkelesque folk history. [Houston Arts Alliance] Photo: Lou Vest.

11/21/14 12:00pm

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In Memorial Bend, a neighborhood known for its operatic street names and steadily dwindling collection of midcentury modern inventory, one of the homes designed by architect William Norman Floyd has landed stylishly on the market, asking $798,900. A “California contemporary” in its day, the 1956 property features banks of clerestory windows and sloping, beamed ceilings throughout open, light-filled spaces.

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It’s Spatial
11/21/14 11:00am

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Demos appear to be ready to commence on a good-sized swath of Independence Heights surrounding Booker T. Washington High School at 119 East 39th St.

“Seems everything between Yale and Main is about to be bulldozed… an entire neighborhood vanishing,” writes a reader. “It’s really kinda spooky looking — like an abandoned ghost town”:

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Independence Heights
11/20/14 4:15pm

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Lake Livingston laps near the lazy river meandering within a whopper-scaled waterfront pool (top) at a 2006 property that also boasts a “barndominium” (above) with its own 15-car garage, a pool house, a boat house, but no house house. Does it matter? The existing structures come with kitchens and bedrooms, and there are 6 acres of grounds to tend. Price? $2.995 million. That’s down from the $3.4 million asked in previous listings back in 2013 and 2012.

Ready for a flyover?

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And a House, Someday
11/20/14 3:15pm

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As of December 1, Galleria tenants and workers who park in the Blue Garage fronting Westheimer (labeled “Construction Zone” in the above site plan) will have to find another place to stash their rides. Explains an official “communiqué from the management office” of Unilev, operators of Galleria Tower II: “This relocation is to due to impending construction by Simon Properties of a free-standing retail structure that will be erected on the surface lot directly above the Blue Garage.” That structure will be going on the 14,000-sq.-ft. pad site in front of the portals to the Cheesecake Factory; it’ll be known colloquially as the “luxury jewel box.” Simon Properties intends the building to house up to 3 high-end retailers.

A user going by the name of JJ18 posted these renderings of the proposed structure to HAIF back in March:

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Bling!
11/20/14 12:45pm

Damaged Oak Trees, 2803 Yale St., Houston Heights

Damaged Oak Trees, 2803 Yale St., Houston HeightsFresh off receiving a $300,000 settlement for the unauthorized removal of 6 oak trees in the city right-of-way from Ali Dhanani and Haza Foods, owner of the Wendy’s franchise at the corner of Kirby Dr. and North Blvd., the city of Houston’s legal staff has turned its attention to 2 other oak-tree-hacking incidents at neighboring Burger Kings — one a couple blocks to the south at 5115 Kirby Dr. at the corner of South Blvd., and the other at 2116 W. Holcombe Blvd. at Main St., next to the Medical Center. At each location, according to a report from the Chronicle‘s Mike Morris, landscapers pruned an oak tree on surrounding public property excessively, making it “likely to die.”

Both Burger Kings, it turns out, are owned by Dhanani’s brother, Shoukat Dhanani, whose company, Houston Foods, happens to be the second-largest Burger King franchisee in the country. (And with a just-announced purchase, his Dhanani Group is about to double the number of U.S. Burger Kings it owns, to more than 450.) But this latest scuffle with the city is not Shoukat Dhanani’s first experience with aggressive limb-cutting of city-owned oaks. Two and a half years ago, Swamplot readers reported on the mysterious beheadings of oak trees surrounding 2 other Burger Kings, both of which also happen to be owned by Houston Foods.

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Fast-Food Landscaping
11/20/14 11:30am

DEVELOPER BUYS OLD CITY CODES BUILDING 3300-main-main.300dpiPM Realty Group is under contract to purchase the city’s old code enforcement building at 3300 Main St. in Midtown. In 2011, facing a $21 million budget shortfall, the city sold the 50-year-old building to the Midtown Redevelopment Authority for $5 million. PM Realty’s purchase price has not been made public, but yesterday city council voted unanimously to waive a restriction written in to the earlier sale that any net profits would be turned over to the city’s general fund. Now the money is free to flow toward council-approved improvement projects in Midtown. Chronicle reporter Katherine Driessen speculates  that some of the money could go toward the nearby “superblock”: that empty savanna undisturbed by cross streets for 6 full blocks, on which there are plans to build a park and apartments. 3300 Main is sandwiched between the future site of the MATCH arts complex to the south and an HCC parking garage to the north. [Houston Chronicle ($); previously on Swamplot] Photo: Allyn West

11/19/14 3:00pm

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1300-n-post-oak-sueba-signcloseup Here is a close-up view of an upcoming apartment complex that eastbound Hwy. 290 travelers might see to the west as they enjoy that new short-cut to I-10. Sueba Development’s Residences at North Post Oak is going up at 1300 N. Post Oak Rd. a little north of Awty International School and a smidge south of the Hempstead Hwy. and the creaky remnants of Northwest Mall. This project is almost catty-corner to another Sueba development — the North Post Oak Lofts, at 1255 N. Post Oak, tucked away behind Prince’s Diner.

A two-story office building and warehouse complex was demolished in 2012 to make way for the project.

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Spring Branch East Redo
11/19/14 1:00pm

THE NEXT BIG EVENT PLANNED FOR THE ASTRODOME WILL BE A WASH Pressure Washers from Green Team Services, HoustonWhen was the last time anyone bothered to clean the exterior of the Astrodome? Long enough ago to merit media coverage for word that the Dome’s caretakers have now decided to do something about the building’s growing exterior grunge. The Harris County Sports & Convention Corporation, having presided for 15 years over the former sports stadium’s steady decay, is about to embark on its first notable Dome maintenance operation since firefighters used fans to blow smoke out of the building in the aftermath of a 2011 transformer fire in the vacant facility. With approval from the Texas Historical Commission, reports Fox 26’s Mark Berman, the agency will award local building restoration and pressure-washing practitioners Green Team Services $63,800 to clean the outside of the structure. [My Fox Houston; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Green Team Services

11/19/14 12:00pm

DAYS AFTER $300K TREECUTTING SETTLEMENT, WORKERS ARE BACK ON THE JOB AT THE KIRBY DR. WENDY’S Workers at Wendy's Restaurant, 5003 Kirby Dr., Upper Kirby, HoustonThe snapper of this story-in-an-image pic taken of the construction site at 5003 Kirby Dr. tells Swamplot that construction crews went back to work on the stalled renovation of the Wendy’s Tuesday morning. Last Friday Mohammed A. Dhanani and HAZA Foods, the franchise owner, agreed to pay the city of Houston $300,000 for the 6 oak trees removed late last month from the city right-of-way in front of the fast-food franchise along Kirby and North Blvd. A permitting logjam had halted work on the ongoing renovations after city officials learned of the street-tree chop-downs. What’s the worker’s gesture in the pic supposed to mean? “I think it was a ‘right on’ fist pump,” reports the photographer. [Previously on Swamplot] Photo: Swamplot inbox

11/19/14 10:45am

Minus the crew of bearded lookalikes with whom he toured the Galleria earlier this year, Houston Rockets guard James Harden shows off a pizzeria-ized Siphon Coffee in this just-released ad spot for Foot Locker. The coffee shop at 701 W. Alabama St., which normally features no boxed items on its menu, was transformed into a pizza spot for a day-long shoot on November 9th.

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Rocket Redo
11/18/14 3:15pm

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Wendell Price has been a Food Network star and a partner with Olympic legend Carl Lewis at Houston’s Cafe Noir. He has catered Hollywood sets, cooked for the likes of Larry Flynt and O.J. Simpson, and served as executive chef in a restaurant co-owned by Denzel Washington. More recently, after his 2012 conviction on tax-related crimes, Price was an inmate in a Memphis jail. And now Price is back in his hometown, trying to get his career back on track via Rustic Oak, a restaurant slated to open at 511 Richmond Ave in January. Rustic Oak is taking root in a restored Montrose home near Spur 527; Price tells Culturemap’s Eric Sandler he “prayed for a unique spot instead of a strip center,” — and lo, there appeared this bungalow, right next door to the Brooklyn Athletic Club and directly across Richmond Ave. from the Post 510 apartments.

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Comebacks
11/18/14 2:15pm

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A cul-de-sac in Woodside is exhibiting some fall color — in the golden tones of a 1955 Ranch home updated a decade ago. Or maybe that golden glow is from the skylights found in many of the rooms. Groomed ivy (appearing to end at the ivy clipper’s shoulder height) adds texture to the painted brick exterior, which is slightly recessed beneath the roof’s overhang. The home faces east on one of 6 lots fanning ’round Latma Ct., which is located off Latma Dr., a main street sloping diagonally through the neighborhood found east of Stella Link Rd. halfway between S. Braeswood Blvd. and the South Loop. In its listing a few days ago, the property-with-pool attached a $495K price tag and a very basic description. Is the midcentury property ripe for remuddling?

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With Red Stripes