04/24/17 11:00am

Demolition of Houston Chronicle Building 801 Texas Ave., Downtown Houston

That’s pretty much it for the surface-dwelling sections of the Houston Chronicle‘s former bundle of headquarters structures at 801 Texas Ave. — a reader captured the minor dustup above on Friday, and activity on the site is now mostly at or below ground level. Work to shore up the section of basement the district court ordered Hines’s Block 58 to leave behind (for tunnel use by Linbeck-controlled neighbor and plaintiff Theater Square) was mostly wrapped up last fall, according to some December court filings.

Other documents filed as part of the case show that the legal compromise set up last summer (which allowed the demo of the Chronicle building to go forward after all) has hit a few bumps since then: Theater Square filed a motion to find Block 58 in contempt of court late last year, and a trial appears to be scheduled for June.

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Texas Ave. Tunnel Tussle
04/21/17 2:00pm

Former Holiday Inn, Days Inn, and Heaven on Earth Plaza Hotel, 801 St. Joseph Pkwy. at Travis St., Downtown Houston

Artist and regular neck craner Bob Russell took a moment this week to capture the various works currently on display to Pierce Elevated drivers on the south side of the 30-story highrise at 801 Saint Joseph Pkwy. (former host of a variety of hotels and Vedic teaching initiatives before the building entered its more recent era of abandonment and creeping decrepitude). The uptick in broken windows in the last few months doesn’t appear to have much of a connection to the most recent plans for the stripping and remodeling of the building back into some flavor of hotel, as proposed this time around by SFK Development. As far as other signs of change, the name scrawled across the facade’s central panels has been edited since another tipster’s drive-by back in February:

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04/20/17 12:30pm

Former Highpoint North Campus, 11902 Spears Rd., Spring, TX, 77067

The 20,000-sq.-ft. building at 11902 Spears Gears Rd. is getting cleaned up for a new gig as a school for Harris County students in recovery from addiction and substance abuse. The spot formerly housed the county’s Highpoint School North, one of several campuses around town that took in expelled students, but has been shut down since 2015. The county Department of Education signed off on the new use for the building this week, and says the school should open in September with capacity for up to 30 post-rehab students for now. The building sits just north of Davis High School, tucked next to the 2-acre lot that’s been built up since 2014 into the grounds of Cá»±c Lạc Buddhist Temple.

Photos: Harris County Department of Education

New Paths Near Greens Bayou
04/19/17 4:30pm

2241 Richmond Ave., Upper Kirby, Houston, 77098

Pothole in Parking Lot for Hobbit Cafe, Blue Fish House, and Yelapa Playa Mexicana, 2241 Richmond Ave., Upper Kirby, HoustonThe folks at Rim Tanon (the Thai place that recently replaced the former Blue Fish House sushi spot on Richmond) send word that the hole-spangled brick, asphalt, and rubble parking lot at the center of the Portsmouth Square restaurant clump has been freshly paved over. The spot, which won top honors on a 2011 list of Houston’s worst restaurant parking lots, was resurfaced from Richmond to Portsmouth St. just in time for Tax Day. Above and below are a couple of damp shots of the lot circa some 2010 gawking:

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Flattening the Competition
04/19/17 12:30pm

801 W. 11th St., Houston Heights, Houston, 77008
Here’s a ghost-dotted sketch of what may soon inhabit that empty lot at the northwest corner of W. 11th and Nicholson streets; Adolfo Pesquera notes over on VBX that the project’s developers may break ground soon. (That’s both figuratively and literally — there’s a fair bit of concrete and asphalt removal involved in the job.) The medical-themed project is catty-corner from the 2-story building already housing the Heights Clinic (along with a Stewart Title office). There should be some kind of grassy buffer between the 31,010-sq.-ft. building and and the rail-turned-trail Heights hike & bike path running along Nicholson to the east, as well as a bit of open to the west toward recently opened Presidio:

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Doctoring Heights
04/18/17 11:30am

Demo of Elysian St. Viaduct, Near Northside/Downtown, Houston, 77002

The rapidly disappearing elevated segment of Elysian St. pointing north out of Downtown is the latest aging roadway structure to be crumbled apart, though it won’t be the last. But death is a natural part of the Houston roadway cycle! And a healthier, brawnier replacement viaduct is planned to take its place along roughly the same right-of-way — this one with broad shoulders and a sidewalk. TxDOT spokesman Danny Perez told Houston Public Media‘s Gail DeLaughter last month that work on the new structure, which connects Downtown to Near Northside by funneling drivers over Buffalo Bayou and I-10, should start before the demo of the mile-and-a-half-long original wraps up.

A hunched excavator was spotted helping to bring the aging bridge down from above:

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Traffic Cycles in Near Northside
04/14/17 2:15pm

FM 518 at Leisure Ln., Friendswood, TX, 77581

“I don’t think Friendswood needs to become East Pearland,” Eddie Carpenter told the Friendswood city council last week during a public comment session — responding to another speaker’s references to the chain-rich bustle of FM 518 and Pearland Pkwy. as an example of what Friendswood is lacking. What sparked the pair of assertions? A push to rezone the above corner lot at FM 518 and Leisure Ln., currently up for a potential switch from office use to commercial — with word being that Chik-Fil-A and Panera Breads are both interested in setting up shop on the corner. The space is just over a quarter mile down the road from Friendswood’s own relatively restaurant-franchise-dense hub on E. Parkwood Dr., near the town’s H-E-B. The lot in question has been cleared since the listing shot above was snapped, in conjunction with various acts of dirt-pushing.

Image of lot at FM 518 and Leisure Ln.: LoopNet

Lot To Think About
04/13/17 1:30pm

Former Tree at Axelrad Beer Garden, 1517 Alabama St., Midtown, Houston, TX 77004Swapping in for the tubelight-bedecked elm that’s been standing in the middle of Axelrad Beer Garden at the corner of Almeda Rd. and Alabama St.: this way-past-sapling Shumard red oak, carefully trucked, tipped, and dropped into place earlier this week, as captured in the Yakety-Sax-tracked video montage above. The changeover comes at the end of the original tree’s years-long shuffle toward death, per the bar’s telling: the group was advised to evict the tree when they first started setting up the space — as it was already old, and had been hit pretty hard by that tire-revealing 2011 drought — but opted to keep it around for a few years instead.

Following a recent lightning strike from which it would never quite recover, the tree finally lost enough branches that the bar owners opted to put it out of its misery:

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Series of Tubes in Midtown
04/13/17 11:00am

Design Options for Jennie Elizabeth Hughes Park, 6446 Sewanee St., West University, TX, 77005

6446 Sewanee Ave., West University, TX 77005Sunday’s the deadline for giving the city of West University some honest feedback on which of 3 proposed park layouts you think would best flatter this residential lot at 6446 Sewanee Ave. — along with any specific details you like about the other 2 options. The home’s former owner, architect James M. Hughes, passed away just over a year ago; Hughes bequeathed the property and some funds to West University for conversion into Jennie Elizabeth Hughes Park (named after his mother, who bought the empty lot back in 1928).

Option A of the choices highlights the corner lot’s time as a residence by adding a rocking-chaired, freestanding front porch as an entryway (though of a totally different design from the existing front porch). That option would also include a partial outline of the house’s foundation:

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Sewanee Ave. Parking
04/12/17 5:15pm

Westheimer Plumbing & Hardware, 3600 Kirby Dr., Upper Kirby, Houston, 77005

Westheimer Plumbing & Hardware, 3600 Kirby Dr., Upper Kirby, Houston, 77005Michael Morrow (that’d be the -morrow in kinneymorrow architecture) sends along this update from his latest visit to Westheimer Plumbing & Hardware’s showroom at 3600 Kirby Dr., which turned out to be still closed in the wake the February incident that shut it down temporarily. (You know — the one where a driver hit the wrong pedal and fell off the 7th story of the nextdoor River Oaks Tower’s parking garage, landing on and through the roof of the strip mall.) A somewhat incredulous but friendly note on the door from the hardware store’s owner says that, though the 17-year-old driving luckily sustained surprisingly little injury, the showroom has been pretty roughed up, including severed water, sprinkler, and electrical lines (not to mention the hole). The note says that the business is currently operating out of its warehouse on E. T.C. Jester Blvd., and will be back in its spot on Kirby as soon as possible. (Neighboring sugar pusher Dessert Gallery, however, reopened just a few days after the accident in early March.)

The damage to the parking garage itself is still visible from ground level:

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Upper Kirby Progress Report
04/12/17 4:00pm

9011 Breckenridge Dr., Magnolia, TX, 77354

The 5.38-acre estate at 9011 Breckenridge Dr., taken up in large part by the manufactured lake wrapping 360 degrees around the property’s 6-bedroom main house, is up for sale (with $2,999,900 as the current asking price). Digging on the water feature started around late 2005 and lasted for a few years — seemingly as the large pond next door was starting to get filled in and smoothed over. (That’s the spot where the Estates Woodlands apartment complex has since been constructed, curled loosely around a new, smaller detention pond):

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Moats of Magnolia
04/12/17 12:45pm

Super Bowl Alcohol Sales Boost Map

“I can’t explain how a Chili’s got on the list, but that Chili’s must have been pretty lit,” writes engineer and bar aficionado Ian Wells. Wells just wrapped up his latest data-crunching escapade: a dive into how much extra alcohol sales revenue was actually pulled in by Super Bowl LI (as well as where that boost was distributed and who bagged most of the excess). The map above gives an idea of how the $8.9 million in extra alcohol sales (plus or minus a couple million) were spread out around town during February; Wells notes that probably only 5% of establishments saw more than a $25,000 boost above what they would have made in a normal February, though there’s lot of uncertainty in modeling any given bar’s expected “normal” revenue.

So who got the biggest percentage sales bumps? Here’s the rundown through the top 10, and some highlights from the top 100, plus more on where all those numbers come from:

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Crunching the Numbers
04/11/17 1:15pm

Planned Retail Strip at 403 W. Gray St., Fourth Ward, Houston, 77019

Ship & Shield at 403 W. Gray St., Fourth Ward, Houston, 77019The yet-unbuilt retail strip planned for the empty land next to Ship & Shield (the Viking-themed restaurant and bar that replaced Byzantio’s last fall) is now fully leased out, Katherine Feser notes. The planned 4,316 sq. ft. are set to be occupied by a second location of Houston restaurant Viet’s Express and a second location of Hawaiian animal hospital Feather and Fur. The project is another show of new construction from serial adaptive reuser Braun Enterprises, which bought both the restaurant space and the adjacent lots from Byzantio’s previous owners over the summer.

If the retail strip turns out to look much like those leasing fliers that’ve been floating around this spring, the layout will be mostly business in the front, parking in the back — plus a strip or 2 of pervious paving off to the sides:

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2 Tenants for North Montrose
04/11/17 11:00am

1410 W. Mt. Houston Rd., Charleston Gardens, Houston, 77038

The current pallor of the departed Whataburger #292 (on Mt. Houston Rd. between the Veterans Memorial Dr. Fiesta shopping center and the Templo Aposento Alto) offers a stark, ethereal contrast the structure’s previous traditional getup of What-a-Orange stripes. The restaurant has stood in the spot since the early eighties, surrounded by a heavy salting of auto garages and related businesses; it appears to have been operational through at least November of last year before blanking out. Will the peaked bones of the fast food joint be reanimated to new purpose? Or is the new coat of whitewash merely a shroud, applied before the building is allowed to rest in pieces at last?

Photos: Swamplot inbox

Late Fast Food on W. Mt. Houston
04/10/17 1:45pm

Bayou Wildlife Zoo, 5050 FM 517, Alvin, TX 77511

Bayou Wildlife Zoo, 5050 FM 517, Alvin, TX 77511The 500 or so animals on display at the Bayou Wildlife Zoo on FM 517 east of Alvin are still up for grabs along with the zoo itself, Ralph Bivins notes recently in Realty News Report. Bivins writes that owner Clint Wolston has been shopping the 80-acre property around since deciding to retire last November, but so far hasn’t found a buyer who can pull together financing for a $7 million purchase. Wolston’s goal is to sell the place and its myriad exotic creatures to someone who will keep the gang together, either continuing to run the place as a zoo or turning it into a private ranch with periodic public visit opportunities.

On top of the variety of imported and domestic animals featured in the zoo’s listing photos, the property’s perks include a living space for a couple of humans or so:

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Hunting Buyer for Bayou Beasts