07/02/18 4:30pm

Residents of the Memorial Club apartments at 955 Westcott St. now have 5 months left to beat it from the complex in order to make way for a new residential building that’s set to rise in its place. According to a letter that landlord Greystar sent out on June 11, the deadline to vacate is December 31. Up until then, the company “is engaging a relocation specialist” to assist tenants with their moves.

The photo at top shows the apartment’s yard sign, with an arrow (since covered up) pointing across Westcott to where its leasing office once sat within the demolished eastern portion of the complex. Greystar tore that section down in 2014, about a year after buying both halves of the complex and announcing a 2-phase redevelopment plan for the land, to include 550 units spread across a pair of buildings.

297 of them are already housed across the street in the 6-story Elan Memorial Park building — pictured below — that the developer put up in 2016:

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Exodus on Westcott St.
07/02/18 2:30pm

Bethany United Methodist Church has officially closed its doors at 3511 Linkwood Dr. after 68 years of services, putting a question mark on the map between Timberside Dr. and Buffalo Spdwy. At the back of the 5.5-acre religious complex, a portion devoted to the Bethany Methodist Weekday School remains open. But the church — which occupies the majority of the structure’s 48,000 sq. ft. — has been shuttered since early last month.

The last time Bethany planned to use its land for non-clerical purposes, it signed off on a 4-story senior living development that would’ve gone right up on a portion of the church complex — but the midrise never got off the ground. Had it risen, it would’ve been the first real shakeup on the block since the late ’90s, when the decades-old Dome Shadows nightclub fronting Buffalo Spdwy. bit the dust and nearly 70 newly-built homes rose up in its place — just east of the church.

Here’s what the club looked like on one of its slower days:

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Latest Religious Relics
07/02/18 12:15pm

From start to finish, the video above fast forwards through about 2 years of construction on the Kinder High School for Performing and Visual Arts’ new building at 790 Austin St. Following an official groundbreaking in late 2014, workers stacked 5 floors atop a 2-story underground parking garage (which took on about 10 in. of water during Harvey) — leaving space in the front face on Austin St. for a multistory jigsaw-like window.

That opening started out as more of a hole:

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Assembly Period
07/02/18 10:00am

TEXADELPHIA’S TAKEOVER OF THE WOODEN BOX ON MONTROSE BLVD. NOW NEARLY COMPLETE With construction on Houston’s second Texadelphia now wrapping up ahead of its planned opening, it appears the restaurant’s remodelers have opted to preserve the woodsy exterior decor originally added onto the end of the strip center just shy of 2 years ago — when the storefront switched over from Berryhill Baja Grill to Yucatan Taco Stand. That gives the restaurant a different outward character than the chain’s only other Houston location — its first step back into the city after and 2-year absence — on the corner of Westheimer and Dunvale Rd. Over there, renovations stopped short of any exterior work as well (save for the installation of the brand’s signage in place of longtime tenant Potbelly Sandwich Shop’s), leaving the restaurant to pick up in a pale stucco endcap that’d been unchanged for over a decade. [Previously on Swamplot] Photo: Swamplox inbox

06/29/18 5:15pm

Both daytime and nighttime players are accommodated at Bingo Paradise Houston, the 38,876-sq.-ft.  gaming hall fronting College Ave. just off the Gulf Fwy. in South Houston. It’s been on the scene for years with its outside appearance unchanged — except for a new paintjob that turned the previously white lettering yellow within the past year.

Before the current business moved in, a discount retail warehouse occupied the space. Now, the building — put up in 1959 — is pushing 60 years on its 4-acre lot at 1520 College Ave.

Photo: Swamplox inbox

Always Game
06/29/18 3:45pm

AN UNDERCOVER BARFLY’S REPORT FROM DOWN THE STREET From the report of former Texas peace office and expert bar witness Darren K. Coleman who recently performed an assessment of Cottage Grove bar Down the Street at 5746 Larkin St.: “On April 20, 2018, Mr. Coleman made an anonymous visit to the Bar to make personal observations. During his visit, Mr. Coleman observed numerous cars parked along the street, some being cars belonging to Bar patrons and some belonging to residents and/or residents’ guests. He observed that traffic was not impeded by cars parked along the street; however, two cars could not pass at the same time. He assessed that this was not uncommon for any neighborhood where cars are parked along the street. Mr. Coleman did not observe litter in the area. Additionally, he observed the patrons to be well-behaved and polite. No one was intoxicated or displayed belligerent, loud, aggressive, or lewd behavior. The indoor music was at a moderate volume and was not loud enough to interfere with normal conversation.” Coleman’s report was included in testimony presented to a state judge after a group of neighbors protested the bar’s request to renew its TABC license. Based in part on Coleman’s outside opinion, the judge found Wednesday that the bar wasn’t violating any TABC rules and recommended the TABC approve its requested renewal. [Texas Office of Administrative Hearings] Photo: Down the Street

06/29/18 2:45pm

Pacific Poke is the latest newcomer to Houston’s booming raw fish restaurant scene, and it’s taking over the empty 1,802-sq.-ft. spot on Richmond once occupied by Starbucks, next to what’s now Roostar Vietnamese Grill. The Starbucks location — shown above —  closed down shortly before a brand-new Starbucks showed up across the street from it, just east of Chimney Rock in early 2016.

That left the building briefly vacant before Roostar arrived the following year in the spot next door to the abandoned coffee shop — now slated for a redo. Its Vietnamese restaurant space is shown below, done up with the 2-location chain’s abstract poultry-like logo:

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Raw Seafood Chaser
06/29/18 11:30am

A view from up in the U.S. Home building at 1177 West Loop South shows the white house originally home to architecture firm Caudill Rowlett Scott — and for the last couple decades home to Gulf Coast Veterinary Specialists — now getting crunched along Buffalo Bayou. The properties now occupied by 1177 and its nearly-demolished neighbor at 1111 West Loop South were bought together as a single tract by CRS in the late ’60s.

A 1997 feature on the iconic (and difficult to photograph) building in Cite magazine by architect Jay Baker explains that prior purchasing the land, the firm had been working out of the Dow Center at the corner of Richmond and Edloe — but having become the largest architectural practice in Houston, its execs wanted to get into a more eye-catching workspace. The 8-acre, largely-in-the-floodplain property they bought, however — which included a 40-ft. drop-off — proved tough to design on . . . and its tenants tough to design for. In June 1967, CRS founder Bill Caudill wrote to his mother: “Boy what a week I am having . . . In my twenty years of practice I have never had such a terrible client. Imagine an architect doing a building for 15 other architects.”

The completed building went as much into the site as on it: Two office levels were fitted facing bayou-side greenery, low enough (and ultimately beneath the 100-year-flood level) to allow a 50-ft.-long bridge from the 610 feeder road to access the roof-deck parking lot that was placed on top.

Here’s a closer-up view of the ruins:

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The Final Photo
06/29/18 9:30am

Caffé di Firenze is the name of the coffee shop now on its way to the 127-year-old Henry Brashear building at 910 Prairie St., across from El Big Bad and Local Foods’s downtown location. Despite a renovation in 2016 that added red face-paint to the building’s formerly-black façade, its first floor has remained vacant for the past several years. Plans now call for that story to include a sidewalk seating area that’ll hang out in front of it.

Meanwhile, the building’s longtime owner is still working to get one or more tenants in the upper 2 floors — which include this outdoor patio:

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Coffee Grounds
06/28/18 2:15pm

THE 2021 WORLD TRANSPLANT GAMES ARE COMING TO HOUSTON After 41 years abroad, the World Transplant Games will be returning to the U.S. — and their location of choice, as announced by the city yesterday: Houston. When the international competition for those who’ve undergone organ swaps made its last stateside stop in New York, it was a young tradition: just 2 years old. Since then, the annual tournament (originally biannual before the introduction of the every-other-year winter games in 1994) has hit every continent and now features more than 50 events including cycling, swimming, racquet sports, and bowling — open to any body-part recipient age 4 to 80. Earlier this year, the competition’s winters games wrapped up in Anzere, Switzerland with nearly 70 member countries in attendance. Before that, the coastal Spanish town of Málaga played host to last year’s summer events. [City of Houston; more info] Photo of crowd at 2017 games in Málaga, Spain: World Transplant Games

06/28/18 12:15pm

Here’s what’s now being stabbed onto the vacant Midtown block bounded by Gray, Austin, Webster, and LaBranch streets catty-corner to the parking lot fronting St. Joseph Professional building and its recently-fallen cross: a 216-unit apartment building. The 5-story brick-and-stucco structure — pictured in the rendering above from architect Steinberg Dickey Collaborative — rests on 2 stories of parking. Its developer Winther Investment bought the full block along with the adjacent one southeast of it in 2013, where it plans to plant another residential building once this current cube is complete.

Rendering: Steinberg Dickey Collaborative

Stack of Bricks
06/28/18 10:00am

And just like that, the next Houston warehouse-to-doghouse conversion is underway at 1029 W. 26th St. — just over two thirds of a mile away from that other pet project near 34th and Ella. Unlike the outer-Loop facility however, this latest post-industrial vision foresees a “dog training and enrichment center” dubbed Believe in Dog Training on its property — pictured at top a quarter mile west of Durham — as opposed to just a place that looks after the animals. A building permit was just filed yesterday for the job, but interior work — pictured above — has been going on inside the 4,500-sq.-ft. structure since at least April.

Photos: LoopNet (exterior); Believe in Dog Training (interior)

Shady Acres
06/27/18 2:15pm

WHAT TXDOT’S TINY 2-YEAR PUBLIC TRANSIT ALLOWANCE ADDS UP TO Transit-focused fact-finder Allyn West pulls out this nugget from the Texas Tribune’s report on regional transit development: “While the Texas Department of Transportation has a budget of more than $26 billion for the 2018 and 2019 fiscal years, less than 1 percent of that is earmarked for public transit.” That puts the burden squarely on county and local agencies — including metropolitan planning groups like the Houston-Galveston Area Council — to dig up funding for non-car-catering projects. [Texas Tribune via Allyn West] Photo of Preston St. METRO stop: telwink via Swamplot Flickr Pool

06/27/18 12:00pm

Buc-ee’s scored a sweeping victory in Texas federal court last month when a judge found rival rest stop chain Choke Canyon guilty of 4 wrongs: trademark infringement, dilution, unfair competition, and unjust enrichment. But the battle might not be over: “Choke Canyon is expected to appeal,“ reports Law360, “and Texas intellectual property experts say the store has a strong case that it was wrongly barred at trial from presenting key defense evidence.”

Among the facts unheard during the 4-day trial: findings from an expert Choke Canyon commissioned to ask 300 people what they thought of the logos’ similarity. 99 percent of them “said there was no likelihood of confusion,” between the two.

Then there are the images that went unseen during the jury’s deliberation. Within that 6-hour period, jurors’ first question to Judge Keith P. Ellison was whether they should compare the set of logos pictured above — which includes the brands’ names — or picture-only versions, like the ones shown below:

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Anatomy of the Case
06/27/18 9:30am

A Swamplot reader reports that construction vehicles have started pushing dirt around on the east side of 610, opposite the Northwest Mall. That marks some down-to-earth progress on developer David Weekley Homes’ plans to turn the 5.4-acre northeast corner (indicated at top) into something homelier than what its encompassing 33.6-acre tract (indicated above) is now: vacant.

Weekley filed plans last month to create a new subdivision dubbed Heights at Minimax that’s entered where Salford Dr. now terminates in a roundabout. Those whereabouts set the neighborhood back some from the West Loop, beyond an undeveloped buffer zone.

You can see where the west end of that zone butts up against the highway behind the Miller Lite billboard in the photo below, taken back before construction wrapped up on 610’s elevated northbound feeder lanes above Hempstead Dr. last March:

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Heights at Minimax