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Braeswood Place
05/03/17 10:00am

Sixties Ex-Dry Cleaning Spot To Be Made Over as a Brays-Side Wine Bar

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Renovations, Restaurants, Retail
14 Comments

The scenic view from behind the former Pilgrim Cleaners building at 4005 N. Braeswood Blvd. will reportedly belong soon to a second location of West University-adjacent wine lounge Bacco. The 1966 building (northwest of the Stella Link Rd. bridge over Brays Bayou) operated as a dry cleaner prior to its conversion to a clothing donation drop spot for the Shriner’s Hospital for Children.  Ralph Bivins notes this week in Realty News Report that the location may encourage traffic from Bayou Greenway hikers and bikers; a reader’s photos from the scene show that the trail on the north side of the bayou in this section is still sporting the au naturel look, though the trail on the south side is fully paved:

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Reborn on the Bayou
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Featured Posts
05/02/17 10:00am

Yes, Canino Market Is Being Sold, But It Probably Won’t Be Shut Down Any Time Soon

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Stude, Sunset Heights
7 Comments

Those rumors Swamplot has been hearing lately about an impending changing of hands of Canino Produce farmers market at 2520 Airline Dr. have finally been clarified a bit by Nancy Sarnoff over at the Chronicle: a sales deal is currently in the hammering-out stage between the Farmers Marketing Association of Houston and MLB Capital Partners (the company that owns the Houston Design Center, as well as some other office-y holdings). A rep for the would-be buyers tells Sarnoff that the plan is to keep the market intact, but make it more tourist-worthy, starting with an upgrade to the parking areas and the bathrooms (and maybe later by adding a butcher, a baker, and a candlestick maker brewery to the mix).

Photo: Canino Produce Market

Setting Terms near Sunset Heights
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Featured Posts
05/01/17 3:00pm

What’s Going Into the Garden Oaks Box the Yoga Collective Is Being Kicked Out Of?

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Garden Oaks, Leasing, Retail
7 Comments

Update, 5/2: Yep, it’s an ALDI. More here.

The end of the 95,000-sq.-ft. N. Shepherd Dr. strip mall just south of Garden Oaks Blvd. is being cleared out shortly, a handful of readers tell Swamplot. Endcap tenant Yoga Collective announced recently that the studio’s lease is being terminated at the end of June, and has been hinting on social media that something bigger is taking over the space (and possibly a few other adjacent spaces in the row). The nearest spot in the strip appears to have been vacant since about 2015, when the domestic-minded shop next door (apparently operating now as A&B Vacuum and Sewing Machines) moved further up N. Shepherd, and out from under the since-removed VACUUM & SEWING CANDLES signage:

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N. Shepherd Swapout
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Featured Posts
05/01/17 12:45pm

It’s Hiring Time: Seeking an Editor To Lead Swamplot

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No Comments

Help WantedAre Houston’s peculiarities something you’re passionate about? Do you enjoy delving into this city’s neighborhoods, architecture, and strip-mall secrets? Would you like an editorial position that puts you in prime position to sift through, explore, and explain the latest happenings in the local real estate landscape? Would you enjoy interacting with a dedicated and highly engaged fan base of tipsters, readers, and commenters — as well as other site contributors?

Good news for you, then: Swamplot is looking for an editor!

This is the perfect gig for someone who can research, report, and write quickly and well; who’s attentive to detail, careful with facts, and has a good sense of humor; who can work independently but also bring out the best from collaborators in a small editorial team; and who can produce accurate and entertaining posts at a steady clip. We’re seeking someone who understands this site and how it works (or can come up to speed on that quickly) — but who also has the vision, ideas, and energy necessary to help Swamplot evolve into something better.

This is a full-time position; salary will be commensurate with experience. (If you are a real estate professional, though, this is not the job for you.)

Here’s how to apply:

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A Job Posting
Avondale
05/01/17 11:30am

New Cantilevered Retail Strip Shown Hanging Out in Michaelangelo’s Westheimer Spot

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8 Comments

A double-decker strip center appears to be planned for 307 Westheimer Rd., which for just shy of 5 decades has been home to Avondale Italian restaurant and house-with-a-tree-in-it Michaelangelo’s. Michaelangelo’s, Inc., sold the property in March to an entity tied to the CEO of Habitat Construction, and a 2,000-sq.-ft. space in the proposed replacement building is currently for lease. Renderings for the strip label the over-the-edge top floor as set aside for a fitness business, and call for a restaurant to take over most of the street level (noting that another tenant has already staked out a small section of the ground floor floorplan):

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Rising Above Parking Requirements
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Featured Posts
04/28/17 4:15pm

For Lease: The Quasi-Abandoned Freeway-Side Classic Car Display Case Once Owned by the Guy Who Owned the Oilers

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Sharpstown
4 Comments

A reader alerted Swamplot back around February to the removal of that the cluster of classic cars generally visible inside the mysterious former Southwest Lincoln-Mercury dealership on US 59 a block southwest of Hillcroft Ave. — you know, the one with the glassy peaked showroom that’s often illuminated but usually empty except for the lone security guard (as the Houston Press’s Aaron Reiss documented in 2014). Some of the cars made a brief reappearance soon after — but as of early April the whole property is now up for lease.

Colliers International is listing the mid-sixties building and its 7.44-acre surrounding lot complex, previously owned by late Oilers owner Bud Adams (and still owned by the corporate entity that now owns the Titans.) The Lincoln-Mercury dealership itself — which opened as Southwest Dodge — shut down some time after it filed a 2002 lawsuit against nextdoor amusement park and unskilled minigolf hotbed Celebration Station, alleging thousands of dollars in property damage caused by multi-colored golf balls flying over the fence. (The offending minigolf course is now part of Zuma Fun Center, visible on the bottom right in the top photo.)

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Revving Back Up in Sharpstown
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Carlton Woods
04/28/17 2:30pm

Is This the Most Glorious Promotional Video Ever Produced for a Vacant Lot?

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Real Estate Marketing
4 Comments

Sure, nervous economists and friends, go ahead and fret about how the coming robot revolution is likely to decimate the availability of middle-class jobs. But the likely wide-ranging effects of technological change are notoriously difficult to predict. For example, after viewing the dramatic promotional video above, which brings to the treed expanse of a 0.78-acre vacant lot in The Woodlands the full power of remote-controlled robot-camera cinematic glory, does another possibility come to mind? With this marriage of drone footage, music-video-intro aesthetics, desktop video software, and soundtrack punch, has a Woodlands-area real estate agent stumbled upon the secret to unleashing desires hidden deep inside us all . . . to feed a new vacant land boom?

As delicate orchestral swells matched to lingering aerial pans and zooms tug at our emotions and the full majesty of 67 N. Glenwild Cir. (conveniently located  between The Woodlands Preparatory School and the entry gate to the Club at Carlton Woods Creekside) comes into view, can we imagine a new — dare we dream? — vacant-lot-buying frenzy, the wider availability of new technologies enabling craftily orchestrated drone footage to surround and tempt us, and transforming this once dowdy sector?

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Flyover Country, The Woodlands
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Briarmeadow
04/28/17 9:30am

The High School Formerly Known as Robert E. Lee About to Swap Buildings, Too

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Schools, Woodlake
7 Comments

6529 Beverly Hill St., Woodlake/Briarmeadow, Houston, 77057

The recently remonikered Margaret Long Wisdom High School is prepping for its scheduled student body transplant as the school year winds down. The shot above shows the main entrance of the school’s almost-ready new building, tucked behind the old one along Hillcroft Ave. south of Beverly Hills St. That older structure, which cut its Confederate ties about a year ago, should be getting erased altogether starting in June, a reader involved with the project tells Swamplot.

Here’s the flip side view of the glassy main entrance above, which should be unlocked in time for fall classes:

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Creeping South on Hillcroft
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Downtown
04/27/17 11:30am

Decapitated Trees by Lyric Centre Now Cautiously Growing Their Leaves Back Out

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Trees
10 Comments

Beheaded Trees at Lyric Center garage site, 440 Louisiana St., Downtown, Houston, 77002
 
A weekend wanderer sends a few photos of the new sprouts now poking out of some recently beheaded trees alongside the Lyric Centre parking garage construction site on Smith St. It’s unclear exactly when the shortening occurred, though a shot taken of the site back in late October seems to show at least a few of the trees still tall enough to peek over the construction fencing:

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Stumped Downtown
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Cottage Grove
04/26/17 5:15pm

Fresh Car Wash Swept Away To Raise a Raising Cane’s in Cottage Grove

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Demolitions, New Construction
3 Comments

Construction at N. Shepherd at I-10, Cottage Grove, Houston, 77007

For now, this is the new order of things on the block between Shepherd and Durham drives along the northern I-10 feeder road. The former Fresh Car Wash, whose owners appear to be the ones behind that combo car wash and hookah bar at the corner of Dallas and Taft now going by the same name, was knocked down some time after it showed up on the demo roster last month (paired with the nextdoor branch of Big 10 Tires). In their places will go what could well be the third Inner Loop incursion of Raising Cane’s, which has now staked out more than 20 spots around Houston for its steadily creeping chicken fingers.

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Nesting on I-10
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Featured Posts
04/26/17 2:00pm

Long-Naked Pasadena Krispy Kreme Now Fully Glazed and Decorated

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New Construction, Pasadena, Restaurants
2 Comments

Krispy Kreme shell, 4601 Spencer Hwy., Pasadena, TX 77504

Krispy Kreme shell, 4601 Spencer Hwy., Pasadena, TX 77504The pointy partially built retail shell spotted last August— empty, glassless, and seemingly left to fallow in the field at 4061 Spencer Hwy. — has since been covered over with the usual Krispy Kreme trappings, Lauren Meyers notes. Construction accessories were still parked on-site as recently as last week, and the grass growing freely beyond the Comerica Bank hedge was fully scraped away some time early this spring, presumably as part of the parking lot growth process. The site has yet to be added back to the company’s list of planned grand openings, however. And that other partially-baked location, just inside the South Loop west of Main St., was still wrapped in little more than its summer Tyvek as of Easter.

Photos: Lauren Meyers

Spencer Hwy. Dressup
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Featured Posts
04/26/17 11:00am

New Gleaming Mixed-Use Visions of a Former Fourth Ward Incinerator Brownfield

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Fourth Ward, Proposed Developments
11 Comments

Rendering of DC Partners Allen Pkwy. Mixed Use Site, Allen Pkwy. at Gillette St., Fourth Ward, Houston, 77019

Rendering of Tianqing Group/DC Partners Allen Pwky. Mixed Use Site, Allen Pkwy. at Gillette St., Fourth Ward, Houston, 77019

New renderings of the hotel-office-condo-retail hodgepodge in the works on the northern segment of the former city park and waste incinerator site at Allen Pkwy. and Gillette St.  were released into the digital wild by DC Partners this week. The buildings appear smoother and sleeker overall than some of the possible early depictions turned up last August (like the Downtown-facing view shown second above for comparison), though some elements of the cluster also appear a bit shorter and stouter. The main tower along Allen Pkwy. has been given a twist in the middle, with a floorcount appearing to number somewhere in the 40-plus range; the lowrise retail complex next door is shown with a bridge over the parkway leading directly into Buffalo Bayou Park.

Perennial rendering sleuth Urbannizer also dug up a different view of the new scene over on HAIF, showing how the whole bundle would fit in amid the Federal Reserve complex, the park, and the section of Fourth Ward surrounding what’s left of the Freedman’s Town Historical District:

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Like a Bridge Over Allen Pkwy.
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CityCentre
04/25/17 3:15pm

Underground Parking Garage near CityCentre Replaced with Garage-Shaped Lake

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3 Comments

Water Main Strike during Demolition of Town & Country, 10565 Katy Fwy., CityCentre, Houston

Following that recent gentle but firm excavator tipover of the last bits of the Town & Country III mod office midrise near CityCentre, demo work on the broader office complex has moved underground — apparently far enough underground to puncture a water main, a camera wielder on the scene speculates this afternoon. As of 2pm, word from the reader was that water was still flowing, “and has made a nice-sized pool,” filling up the footprint of a mid-demo former underground parking garage structure (and providing lakeside views to parts of Trammell Crow’s CityCentre branch of its Alexan apartment chain.)

A fuller sequence of garage take-apart and fill-up over the last few days is laid out below, starting with a rainy Tax Day shot facing the Alexan and the I-10-Beltway-8 tangle:

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Lakes of I-10
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Bellaire
04/25/17 11:30am

Aging Westpark Electrical Transmission Towers Cut Down To Size as Replacements Take Over

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1 Comment

Transmission Line Tower Installation, Westpark Dr., 77081

Transmission Line Tower Installation, Westpark Dr., 77081Bits and pieces of the electrical towers formerly stringing CenterPoint’s transmission lines between 59 and Westpark Dr. were spotted laying around just west of West Loop 610 this weekend, though the feet of at least one of the structures were still standing at the ready. The old towers appear to have been fully relieved of their duties at this point, 3 months or so after the taller, sleeker towers started going skyward. Here’s one of the last full-length portraits featuring both kinds of towers, taken in the final days before the changeover began in earnest:

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West Loop Heights
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Featured Posts
04/24/17 4:00pm

Plan for Med Center Blossom Hotel Has Sprouted New Floors, Filled In Holdout House Corner

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Hotels, Proposed Developments, Texas Medical Center
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Proposed Blossom Hotel on Lehall St. at Bertner Ave., Cecil Street Courts, Houston, 77030

1128 Lehall St., Cecil Street Courts, Houston, 77030The little house on the corner with Lehall St. is no longer standing in the would-be shadow of that hotel planned on the 7100 block of Bertner Ave. (seeing as it’s no longer standing at all). Developers with Zhejiang Blossom Tourism Group Houston had originally sketched up a 9-story hotel with a footprint dipping around the holdout corner lot. Adolfo Pesquera notes over at VBX that the latest plans now show a 16-story structure, and an expanded footprint of the site was okayed for commercial use by the planning commission after the property sold.

Here’s a glance back at what the hotel looked like in its earlier iteration, minus a few floors and motarboards:

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Sprouting South of Brays Bayou
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