Almost all the metal siding that covered up the Midtown Sears building at 4201 Main has now been taken down, leaving behind rows of metal brackets used to mount the outer shell. Mayor Turner announced 2 months ago that the building would be turned into a startup incubation headquarters, and work to pull down the cladding began shortly after.

A few decorative details are now visible from the street, as shown below from Fannin:

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06/13/18 10:45am

Step up here for stamps 4080 Breakwood Dr., a 2-bed, 2-bath structure in the block-long row of townhomes that sits between Lakeland and Fordshire drives, just off the South Loop West. Not many interior walls divide the open space you step into upon entering the house, and the one that does is done up as the service counter you’d find in an old post office.

On its employees-only side, the previous owners finished the bedroom floor with pennies. Here’s a closer up view of their investment:

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by Dan Singer
06/12/18 4:45pm

A construction permit filed yesterday reveals that Astral Brewing — the new beer venue headed to 4816 N. Shepherd — is beginning renovations to turn 9,208 sq. ft. of the 27,575-sq.-ft. warehouse building once home to Southern Truck Pros into a hub for brewing and drinking. The structure’s parking lot off Shepherd is shown full of trucks in the photo above, taken back before the auto shop shuttered.

A site plan posted on the brewery’s Facebook page indicates a combination of public amenities and mission-critical brewing facilities included in the redo:

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06/12/18 2:00pm

FIRST SEASIDE TEXADELPHIA SLATED FOR FORMER OCEAN GRILLE & BEACH BAR ON SEAWALL BLVD. Unobstructed Gulf of Mexico views,” will complement the food at the newest nearby location of Texas cheese-steak chain Texadelphia, situated right on the corner of Seawall Blvd. and 13th St. in Galveston, reports the HBJ’s Jen Para. The restaurant is picking up where Ocean Grille & Beach Bar left off in that spot when it shuttered 2 years ago, leaving behind a main building as well as the outdoor bar pictured above — and an even beachier Tiki hut structure with patio seating beneath it. How will Texadelphia make use of the existing amenities in this, its first ocean-adjacent spot? Its one corporate-owned, landlocked Houston location sprung up in Briar Meadow at 8383 Westheimer last October, bookending a 2-year hiatus the brand had taken from the city and its surroundings. It’s now mounting a three-pronged return: Earlier this year, it signed another lease for the spot in the Hawthorne Square Shopping Center that Yucatan Taco Stand vacated last year. [HBJ; previously on Swamplot] Photo of Ocean Grille & Beach Bar’s bar: Katya C.

06/12/18 11:00am

NEW RESTAURANT COMES KNOCKING AT WAREHOUSE BY BBVA COMPASS A TABC flyer up on the front door of 612 Live Oak signals some impending action for the brick warehouse building, one block east of BBVA Compass Stadium’s frontage on Emancipation and south of the light rail line along Texas Ave. Brass Tacks Workspace LLC is applying for both mixed beverage and late hours permits. Residential developer Bercon bought the 5,000-sq.-ft. parcel on which the building sits — along with almost the entire rest of the block — in early 2017. However, there’s nothing residential about the new owner’s plans for this particular structure: a permit filed for it last month — 10 days before the liquor sign appeared — included plans to turn the building into a yet-to-be-named restaurant. Photo: Swamplox inbox

by Dan Singer
06/11/18 2:15pm

Spotted from Canal St. just east of Navigation: signage for Southside Flying Pizza’s fifth location and first in Houston. The Austin restaurant chain is making its way into the southeast corner spot of the right-angled Shops on Navigation strip center that Ancorian Hunington Properties built over the last 2 years. It’s mapped out in the image above from Ancorian, the developer behind another property just east of the corner strip. Aside from Southside’s next-door neighbor 9Round kickboxing gym, other existing cohabitants include Maldives Nail & Spa, Bottles Wine & Spirits, EaDo Dental, Go Cleaners, Cajun Town, and the largest of the bunch — a corner Frost Bank branch:

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06/11/18 12:15pm

I-45’s new, longer flyover is creeping steadily west toward 59 north following about 7 months of work to get there. The farther-away photo above looks south from the corner of Hutchins and Jefferson streets to show where the partly built roadway currently drops off, about 2 blocks east of its planned merge with 59.

The existing ramp toward 59 north — which diverges from the Gulf Fwy. just east of Emancipation — shut down last December 1. Its soon-to-be-built successor branches off from 45 a few blocks further east, giving drivers more time to swerve onto it than they had previously:

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06/11/18 11:00am

Mounds of dirt are stacked high next to the West End Roofing building off Ella between 12th St. and Grovewood, which the developers of the Broadstone Heights Waterworks midrise a mile and a half away are using as a dumping ground for earthen debris involved in their project. A TCEQ notice posted by the dirt piles states that a plan was in place to prevent too much stomwater from running off the property between January 9 and June 1.

The new 8-story Broadstone building is planned on a portion of the original Heights Waterworks at the northwest corner 20th and Nicholson streets that Alliance bought from the city a few years ago. It’ll go up, catty-corner to the development Braun Enterprises has planned on the neighboring soon-to-be reworked waterworks parcel, as indicated in the map below:

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06/08/18 4:30pm

When Paws Pet Resort finishes renovating the 2 warehouses south of its current one on Couch St. — east of Ella and in between 34th and 34th 1/2 streets — its total paw-print will include over an acre and a half of continuous land. Following about 5 years in the 6,000-sq.-ft. Garden Oaks warehouse building pictured above, the boarding house is expanding to the nearly twice-as-big former industrial building behind it at 3415 Couch St., as well as another smaller adjacent structure further south. The owners of Paws Pet Resort bought the soon-to-be-converted spaces last year — both of which sit off camera to the left.

Photo: Cortney K.

06/08/18 12:00pm

Enter stage east in the video rendering above Gensler published of the new HOPE Clinic planned for 13800 Bellaire Blvd., a block west of Eldridge Pkwy. After a look around the fountains bubbling up in the L-shaped building’s plaza right along Bellaire, you’ll be ushered through the doors to its cafe-like intake center on first floor (no need to open them).

No buildings stand in the way of the soon-to-be built structure; it’s slated east of an auto shop on a never-before-developed tract abutting Alief’s Metro Blvd. that the Asian American Health Coalition of the Houston Area has owned since 2016. This health center — serving uninsured and unable-to-pay patients — would be its fourth in Houston. An existing Alief location sits less than a mile down the road, in the Presidio Square shopping center off Hwy. 6.

Video: Gensler Houston. Image: HOPE Clinic

06/07/18 2:30pm

The final page of the Harris County Flood Control District’s final report on Hurricane Harvey includes the map above, with orange indicating where bayous, rivers, creeks, and gullies set new high water marks between August 25 and 29. Aside from Sims Bayou and a handful of smaller waterways, every other liquid landmark in the county outdid itself along some portion during the storm. Several — such as Cypress Creek and Carpenters Bayou (shown in detail above) — set new flood records along their entire lengths.

Less distinguished are White Oak and Little White Oak bayous, which broke records along only tiny stretches near Buffalo Bayou:

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by Dan Singer
06/07/18 9:45am

Here’s where the neighbors of the soon-to-be filled and graded Stanley Park subdivision will go, in a larger, adjacent 207-home community dubbed Palisades Park that’s also planned by the floodable rail yard west of T.C. Jester and south of Timbergrove Manor. Unlike the tract next door, it’s almost entirely outside White Oak Bayou’s 100-year floodplain (but still almost entirely inside the 500-year).

Its current occupant: the complex of industrial buildings eyed from the sky at top — which sits behind Grace Bible Church and adjacent to Better Bags, Inc.’s facilities off 11th St. In order to connect to that street, a new roadway would be built through what’s now the church’s parking lot, as indicated in the subdivision map below:

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06/06/18 5:15pm

Current and proposed views from high above Lyons Ave. show what the St. Elizabeth Hospital would look like repurposed as a 110-unit housing complex, as the Fifth Ward CRC proposes. The biggest change architect Van Meter Williams Pollack has in store for the place is a teardown of the central wing that runs back behind the 3-story north face — pictured above — to make room for a new parking courtyard.

Behind that lot, a newly-constructed, 3-story building would front Chisum St.:

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06/06/18 3:00pm

Asbestos abatement crews are on the scene at the former Houston Post building on the corner of Polk and Emancipation that Lovett Commercial plans to redevelop. The photo at top from St. Charles St. looks east to show the building’s parking lot — now serving as a staging area for contractors that have been there all week, according to a Swamplot reader. The other shot views the building’s corner at Polk and St. Charles, which — according to a site plan put out by Lovett last May — would be demolished to make room for more parking.

Fronting all those parking spaces would be a CVS at Polk and Emancipation and a newly-constructed Sprouts Farmers Market off Bell St.:

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06/06/18 10:00am

Hillocks of dirt dot the landscape west of T.C. Jester, adjacent to the train tracks near the end of Shirkmere Dr. where Lovett Homes is now elevating some of the 77 lots that’ll make up its new Stanley Park subdivision. Since receiving a commercial fill permit from the city in April, the developer has stacked soil across the site — which lies entirely within White Oak Bayou’s 100-year floodplain and has never before been built on.

Also included in that flood-designated realm: the Timbergrove Manor neighborhood just north of the development. Its southernmost street, Queenswood Ln., had it up to here during Harvey:

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06/05/18 2:00pm