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Demolitions, Redevelopment, Rice Military

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The Memorial Club apartment complex at the Westcott St. roundabout is down to its final quarter following weekend deconstruction activity that left the 4-building, not-yet-redeveloped half of the complex itself cut in half. (Across the street, a 5-builidng portion of Memorial Club has been missing since new apartments dubbed Elan Memorial Park replaced it in 2016)Â By Saturday morning, the whole southern section of Memorial Club’s remaining half was gone according to a Swamplot reader, who sends the photo at top looking west to show that vanished portion, visible behind the oak trees.

Taking note of the demo, Google Maps has replaced its old photo of the apartments with one more indicative of current events:

At the Roundabout

77007, Apartments, Demolition, Redevelopment, Rice Military

Bars and Clubs

02/08/19 1:00pm

New Third Ward Bar Brewing on Emancipation, Across from an Old Standard

New Construction, Third Ward

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Construction appears to have picked up lately on the not-yet-named bar going up on the corner of Emancipation Ave and Rosewood St., according to the photo at top sent in by a Swamplot reader. The new structure is across the street from longstanding Third Ward watering hole Dbar and its adjacent parking lot. (Formerly known as Dowling Street Lounge, Dbar did away with that name around the same time that Dowling St. became Emancipation Ave.)

The new build on the west side of the street looks to include a few parking spots of its own on both Emancipation and Rosewood. One casualty of the work so far: the sign shown above telling truckers not to use Rosewood as a thru-street to the 288 feeder, which runs one block west of the construction site.

Photos: Swamplot inbox

4420 Emancipation

77004, Bars and Clubs, New Construction, Third Ward

02/07/19 1:00pm

What’s New About a Sunset Heights Bungalow

Homes for Sale, Sunset Heights

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After decades of conformity, the house at 415 Aurora St. recently set itself apart from the other old bungalows on the block between Arlington and Columbia streets. So long to the pale green paintjob that left it camouflaged in with the lawn and the landscaping; the house wears all black now. And in the spots where typical siding once finished off the roof gables, big glass openings have taken over.

The view they afford, from the loft at the top of the spiral staircase:

In the Black

77008, Homes for Sale, Sunset Heights

02/06/19 3:30pm

Buc-ee’s’s First Out-of-State Location Sued for Selling Gas Too Cheap

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BUC-EE’S’S FIRST OUT-OF-STATE LOCATION SUED FOR SELLING GAS TOO CHEAP Well, that was fast. Two weeks after opening, Buc-ee’s first out-of-state location in Robertsdale, Alabama has become the target of a federal lawsuit brought by a rival travel center chain that claims the newcomer has been violating the Alabama Motor Fuel Marketing Act, reports John Sharp of Al.com. The 35-year-old law prohibits gas stations from selling fuel for less than it costs to buy and transport it to a retailer. Between the store’s grand opening on January 21 and the end of the month, its regular gas prices have fluctuated between $1.80 and $1.87 per gallon, according to the plaintiff, Oasis Travel Center (whose location 4 miles east of the Buc-ee’s on I-10 features something it calls the Derailed Diner, a Southern-style restaurant built to look like a train car that crashed into the rest of the building). According to AAA, the average price of gas in the area has stayed much closer to $2 flat since Buc-ee’s arrived. [Al.com; previously on Swamplot]

Buying and Selling

02/06/19 12:45pm

Randall Davis Condo Digs Hit the Market, But the Highrise Is Still in the Works

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The 0.4-acre property on Westheimer a few blocks ~~west~~ east of Weslayan St. where developer Randall Davis hopes to build a 20-ish-story condo tower has been listed for sale on commercial real estate portal CoStar, however, the highrise project is still in the works, a representative of the broker tells Swamplot. In the meantime, the site remains home to the closed-down Krispen furniture store pictured at top, whose owner, Pamela Parker, sold it back in late 2017 and vacated it after the new year.

The rendering shown above of what Randall Davis wants to do the site emerged early last month as part of a variance request that the developer submitted, seeking permission to build the tower closer to Westheimer than is typically allowed. Before the city planning commission could weigh in on the request, however, documents outlining single-family deed restrictions for the site turned up, and Davis withdrew his petition. A public hearing, at which the commission would consider getting rid of the deed restrictions, hasn’t yet been scheduled.

Previously on Swamplot: Dusting-Off of Old Deed Restrictions Prompts Westgrove Court Highrise Hopefuls To Plan for a Public Hearing; Randall Davis Wants To Put This 20-Story Condo Highrise on Westheimer Just East of Weslayan St.

Photo: LoopNet. Rendering: Houston Planning Commission

Where Krispen Left Off

77027, Buying and Selling, Condos, Highland Village, Proposed Developments, Redevelopment

Audubon Place

02/06/19 10:30am

A Worn-Out Audubon Place Pioneer Braces for Impact

Demolitions, Montrose

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The yellow excavator pictured above showed up yesterday in the driveway behind 912 Marshall St., a roughly 100-year-old home that’s been empty since its previous owners moved out December, according to a neighbor. Its new owner, an entity known simply as Montrose & Marshall LLC, also holds the deed to the vacant third-of-an-acre field next door that ends at the corner of — as you might expect — Montrose Blvd. and Marshall St.

Formerly home to a lowrise building, the deserted lot more recently served as a parking lot and is now doing time as a grassy backdrop for Bacco’s Wine Garden’s boozy patio next door:

912 Marshall St.

77006, Audubon Place, Demolitions, Montrose

02/05/19 1:00pm

One Woman’s Massive Collection of AstroWorld Hardware Is Getting Auctioned Off Online and at an East Fwy. Lucha Libre Bar

AstroWorld, Houston History

Houston History

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Local AstroWorld debris hoarder Maria Medeles has listed nearly 400 pieces of park merchandise including giant ride entrance decorations, fiberglass statues of cartoon characters, concession menu boards, bathroom signs, and other whatnots on an online auction portal where the current bids range up to $2,300 for the item pictured at top. It’s only a fraction of everything she’s got, though: According to the auctioneer she’s engaged to get rid of the stuff, the list of items available will at least double in the days leading up to February 23, when Medeles and SITE Auction Services plans to hold a live, in-person auction at Emiliano’s, a sports bar and pool hall at I-10 and Wayside with a fighting ring out back where frequent lucha libre matches go down.

What other goodies could be made available at the event 2 and a half weeks from now? Probably some considerably large props and signs, but also some more mundane memorabilia as well. According to KHOU’s Jason Miles, “Medelesâ€™ Astroworld obsession began with buying a bench when the theme park closed in 2005.”

New AstroWorld auction is your chance to own vintage entrance sign, Bugs Bunny and more [Houston Chronicle]
Astroworld memorabilia auction features hundreds of items [KHOU]

Photo: SITE Auction Services

Going Once, Going Twice

02/04/19 3:00pm

Is Something About To Go Down at the Upper Kirby Building on Bissonnet?

77005, Office Buildings, West University Place

West University

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The arrival of chain link fencing outside the arched office complex at 2715 Bissonnet known as The Upper Kirby Building last week caught the attention of several Swamplot tipsters, who’ve sent in photos looking across the street at the new perimeter and the vacant scene beyond it. The image at top looks southwest to show the complex’s largest building, an L-shaped structure that fronts the central parking lot on 2 sides. In the second photo, you can see where that building abuts its neighbor, a smaller, rectangular structure that runs along the east side of the parking lot on its way out to the curb. Not depicted: a pair additional small 2-story buildings and their adjacent parking lots to the west, which take up the rest of the block ending at Wakeforest St.

An entity connected to Cornerbrook Development bought the whole 1.56-acre tract housing the 4 buildings last December and since then has filed a few permits to disconnect the plumbing, but it hasn’t laid a hand on the structures themselves yet. They all went up in late ’60s and early ’70s and — though currently vacant — recently played host to Montage Bridal, Synergy Day Spa, an Allstate insurance office, and an assortment of hairdressers.

Photos: Swamplot inbox

West U.

02/04/19 12:37pm

A Sign That Sushi May Return to the Empty Storefront at Silver St. and Washington

Restaurants, Signs, Washington Corridor

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A Swamplot reader sends the photo at top showing a bright yellow permit notice for something called Kubo’s Sushi and Washoku up in the window next to Tacodeli’s storefront at 1902 Washington Ave. The portion of the building now sporting the sign — designated suite C — most recently housed a different sushi restaurant dubbed Kukuri, but not for long: It closed last March after just over 6 months in business.

The new Kubo’s sushi spot is backed by the same team behind former Japanese restaurant Kubo’s Sushi Bar & Grill, which closed its second-story spot in the former Rice Village building between Kelvin and Morningside drives in 2016 after about a decade and a half in business.

Photos: Swamplot inbox (sign); Kukuri (restaurant)

Raw Fish Redo

77007, Renovations, Restaurants, Signs, Washington Corridor

02/01/19 4:00pm

The Continuing Story of Where John Biggers’ Scenes from Ship Channel History Wound Up After He Painted Them

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Probably the oldest thing hanging in the International Longshoremen’s Association Local 24 building in Pasadena is the 24-ft.-long mural shown at top, depicting — from left to right — the way black workers’ jobs at the Ship Channel evolved from the early 1900s to 1957 when the painting was completed. How the artwork made it from the banks of Buffalo Bayou to brand-new union building at 4060 Red Bluff Rd. is a story that spans about the same number of decades:

In the late ’50s, members of Houston’s black longshoremen’s union, I.L.A Local 872, commissioned an artist named John T. Biggers to paint something they could put on the walls of their meeting hall at 75th and Memphis St. Biggers — who after founding Texas Southern’s art department nearly a decade prior would go on to become one of the century’s most well-known black muralists — was pressed for time: “A UNESCO grant that I applied for two year earlier, to study traditional life in Africa, had come through. I was told be in Ghana by July 1, 1957 — three weeks away,” he recalled in a later interview. So he got to work like crazy in a studio at TSU, painting, “from 3 a.m. until classtime and after classes until midnight,” with the aid of sketches he’d made at the Port of Houston and the Ship Channel, writes historian Ollie Jensen Theisen. He met his deadline and turned over his work,Â History of the International Longshoremen’s Local 872, chronicles decades of history — from the heavy lifting of days past to a present moment in which a group union bosses foreground a few men on forklifts.

By order of a federal court in 1983, Local 872 merged with its whites-only counterpart Local 1723 to become Local 24. Biggers’ painting wound up in the second-floor auditorium of the new joint union’s building, which sits at 7811 Harrisburg Blvd. — between 78th and 79th streets — but received a demolition permit late last week.

Local 24 officials have already moved into their new home in Pasadena, completed following about 2 years of construction:

Houston Art History

Houston History

Demolitions

02/01/19 1:00pm

3000 Richmond Will Come Crumbling Down in April

Redevelopment, Upper Kirby

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Tenants have been filing out of the 5-story office building shown above at the northeast corner of Richmond Ave and Eastside St. in anticipation of its planned collapse 2 months from now, according one employee who’s still inside but won’t be for long. Building management gave all occupants — includingÂ Imparali Tailor, luggage retailer Kipling, and dozens of other business and medical groups — notice last year that they’d need to hit the road.

Designed by Wilson, Morris, Crane & Anderson, the building is one of a dozen vertically-windowed mid- and lowrises that then-not-yet-famous Houston developer Gerald Hines built along Richmond in the early 1960s to accommodate businesses looking to spread out away from Downtown for the first time. (3100 Richmond, on the other side of ~~Weslayan~~ Eastside, was his work too, as well as 3101 Richmond, which sits catty-corner to the soon-to-be demolished building.) By the time the Richmond Ave corridor of similar-looking office structures was complete from Kirby to Weslayan, it had served as a sort of “MBA course,” write Houston architect Barry Moore and preservationist Anna Mod, “for Gerald Hines and arch-competitor Kenneth Schnitzer [of Century Development],” the 2 of whom soon graduated to designing taller and more notable Houston buildings inside and outside of Downtown.

The Richmond Corridor [OffCite]
The Business Strip [OffCite]

Photo: Capital Realty

Richmond Ave Adieu

77098, Demolitions, Redevelopment, Upper Kirby

01/31/19 12:45pm

Renderings Show Midtown Sears Building Donning Upper Story Glass Cap, Welcoming In Both Tech Stars and Wannabees

Midtown, Proposed Developments, Renovations

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The first illustrations of what Rice University wants to do with the Midtown Sears building it bought 2 years ago and has since stripped down emerged yesterday, casting a glance across Fannin St. to show what the northeast corner of the building — to be renamed The Ion — could look like once it’s been reworked into a nexus for tech entrepreneurs and students of various academic institutions who want to be like them. Among the Art-Deco-era bells and whistles shown intact are the sets of vertical mosaic tilework that flank the building’s corner entrance; they’ve got some new shine going on courtesy of light fixtures that appear to be installed directly above and below them. Up above the original late 1930s structure, the 4 architecture firms at work on the building (Gensler, James Carpenter Design Associates, James Corner Field Operations, and SHoP Architects) propose adding a 2-story glass-curtain-walled topping that’d help funnel sunlight into a whole bunch of empty space they’re calling a “central light well.” It would run vertically through the building’s interior, from the roof down to the lobby.

Work and meeting areas would go along the perimeter of the abyss:

Midtown Growth Spurt

77002, Midtown, Office Buildings, Proposed Developments, Renovations

01/31/19 9:30am

Transportation Buffs Are Staking Out Houston’s Most Dangerous Intersections To Better Understand What’s Wrong with Them

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TRANSPORTATION BUFFS ARE STAKING OUT HOUSTON’S MOST DANGEROUS INTERSECTIONS TO BETTER UNDERSTAND WHAT’S WRONG WITH THEM A handful of intersection inspection personnel were out at Long Point Rd. and Gessner on Tuesday for their second round of roadside surveillance at what they’ve deemed one of the city’s most dangerous crossroads for pedestrians. The team — made up of an engineer from Houston’s public works department, a Federal Highway Administration rep, and members of local advocacy groups LINK Houston and Bike Houston, reports News 88.7’s Gail DeLaughter — has been scrutinizing what goes on out there and at 5 other intersections where a 2017 map showed pedestrians take a beating from cars: Fondren and West Bellfort, Bissonnet and Wilcrest, Shepherd and Allen Pkwy, Taylor and Spring St., and Spur 527 and Holman St. What they’re paying attention to: traffic counts, the times of day that crashes occur, the usefulness of pedestrian traffic signals as well as “how long it takes to safely cross the street, and how cyclists use the roadway,” reports DeLaughter. After wrapping up observations at the end of this week, the group will submit a report to the city recommending changes that’d make each intersection safer. [Houston Public Media] Photo: LINK Houston

01/30/19 11:00am

What the Timbergrove H-E-B Looks Like on Its First Day of Retirement

Openings and Closings, Retail, Timbergrove

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And that’s a wrap over at the 18th St. H-E-B, closed since yesterday so as not to distract from the new, double-decker H-E-B that opened today at 2300 N. Shepherd Dr. between 23rd and 24th streets. The photos above show the old store’s front entrance stripped of all red, hyphenated signage, blockaded by shopping carts, plastered with closure notices, and — in case that wasn’t enough — fronted by stack of wooden pallets with a blaze yellow flyer addressing anyone who’d still hoped to get inside. A few weeks ago, workers inside stopped restocking the aisles, slapped a few discounts on what they had left, and watched as the store’s inventory dwindled up until it shut down.

By 5 p.m. yesterday, reports a Swamplot reader, the parking lot was mostly empty: