03/07/17 11:00am

Tree drama at Allen's Landing, Downtown, Houston, 77002Tree drama at Allen's Landing, Downtown, Houston, 77002

The ongoing saga of the Allen’s Landing trees coming down recently in bits and pieces — apparently the handiwork of an elusive Buffalo Bayou beaver or 2 — has come to a likely end with the non-rodent-assisted removal of the final stumps, Swamplot’s semi-regular Franklin St. correspondent and wildlife tipster notes. But life around the White Oak-Buffalo confluence goes on! Spring is here, which means the ducks have been out and about, while the cranes are busy pulling fledgling parking garage superstructures up into the air:

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Didn’t Leave It To Beavers
03/06/17 5:15pm

Site Plan of Katy Asian Town, 23119 Colonial Pkwy., Houston, 77449

The long-vacant lot above, near the northeast corner of I-10 and the Grand Parkway, is now being cleared and flattened to make room for the Houston area’s third Super H Mart, according to leasing materials a larger retail development being marketed as Katy Asian Town. Plans for the 16-acre site look to including a pair of smaller strip-style buildings and 2 pad sites, in addition to a long string of retail spots flanking the grocery store:

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Latest Grand Plans
03/06/17 1:45pm

CityCentre Phase III block, 908 Town and Country Ln., CityCentre, Houston, 77024

The duo of 1970s midrises and their parking garage companion on the I-10 block edged by Town and Country Way, Ln. and Blvd. has gotten the ol’ chain-link wraparound in the last few weeks, a reader notes. Midway bought the office park a few years ago to assimilate it into the northern side of the CityCentre complex; since the purchase, 15-story office highrise CityCentre Five has been completed, across Town and Country to the south (and visible on the left above).

Plans for the freshly barricaded block appear to include those 2 planned office towers Midway started trying to lease out last year; previous renderings of the spot also include a residential highrise:

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Pushing North to I-10
03/03/17 5:00pm

Gas Station at 1st Food Stop, Durhill St. and Buffalo Spdwy., Knollwood Village, Houston, 77025

A contemplative moment for the end of the week: the large excavator above was spotted bowing its head at the corner of Durhill St. and Buffalo Spdwy. as cement poured down from the sky next to the 1st Stop Food Mart, currently undergoing what appears to be Valero conversion. The portraitist notes that new glass and some signage structures have gone up at the site since the Saturday visit during which the scene above was captured; workers also appeared to have made progress on flattening out the new pavement on the Durhill side of the property, which was first crunched up late last fall:

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Tank Now In Hiding
03/03/17 11:30am

Encampment removal at Louisiana St. and Congress Ave., Downtown, Houston, 77002

Among the flurry of in-the-works policies Mayor Turner announced yesterday related to reducing the number of homeless folks in Houston: some staffed bare-bones shelters consisting of at least a fence, a roof and a bathroom, either under overpasses or on private land. Just where would those be set up? The city says they’ll be looking for suggestions from city council members and communities of spots in their own districts where shelters and services might be a good fit.  Per Rebecca Elliott’s report, Turner told the Chronicle this week that he thinks it’s “important for people who are saying ‘we don’t want them here’ to join in with us in helping to identify acceptable locations.”

Here’s a list of other plans floated yesterday, none of which yet come with an expected price tag:

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Scrounging for Change
03/02/17 3:00pm

2901 S. Shepherd Dr., WAMM, Houston, 77006

1618 Westheimer Rd., Montrose, Houston, 77006The body-oriented retail strip across from the recently browned-out Alabama Theater has just swapped second-or-more-hand clothing retailer Buffalo Exchange into the spot by Kipling St. last occupied by Centre Fitness Fusion, a reader notes. (Centre Fitness took over from Orange Shoe Fitness, which itself succeeded bike shop and implicit fitness purveyor Cycle Spectrum.) Buffalo Exchange joins Epique Massage next to Darque Tan, separated only by a driveway and some parking spots from Demeris Bar-B-Q.

And what of the old Buffalo Exchange spot, recently spotted sporting a variance request notice out front?

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Fashion Recycler Recycling
03/02/17 11:30am

Renderings of 2401 N. Shepherd, Houston Heights, Houston, 77008

Renderings of 2401 N. Shepherd, Houston Heights, Houston, 77008The skewed look of the retail center planned by Braun Enterprises for 2401 N. Shepherd Dr. comes in large part from the misaligned footprints of the upper and lower stories of the eastern building, each twisted in opposite directions off of the right angles of the Heights street grid (though the lower layer appears to get mashed flat up against a setback line on the north side). Renderings of the site posted recently by Tipps Architecture show the twisty building paired with another single-story structure stretching west along W. 24th St., with some hangout space wedged between the 2. Some bent vertical strips and boxcutter window angles add that sat-on-the-delivery-box touch to the upper story of the eastern building, tentatively labeled with spots for retail, a café, and an upstairs fitness studio. 

How does one stray from the straight-and-narrow of classic Houston strip mall design while still fitting in all those required parking spots? Braun’s leasing flier shows a parking lot behind the 2 buildings, some angled-in street parking along W. 24th, and — perhaps taking a hint from the double-decker design of the H-E-B planned catty-corner across N. Shepherd — an additional level of parking tucked away on the roof:

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Rising Above on N. Shepherd
03/01/17 5:45pm

UT Houston Campus Site, Buffalo Lakes, Houston

All that booing over the last year and a half from Houston’s most expansive university system and its legislative friends looks to have paid off: UT has cancelled its plans for a new research campus south of the Astrodome, citing fears that continuing to press for the project could throw a wet blanket on projects at its other campuses. The school’s press office announced the pivot this afternoon, adding that UT’s real estate office will look into how to sell the 307 acres they’ve spent the last year collecting, though it might take some time to put together a sale that makes sense.

UH Board of Regents chairman and reality real estate TV star Tilman Fertitta said today that the sustained backlash to UT’s land buy was really a team effort, assisted by elected officials, administrators, and other folks aiming to prevent what Fertitta calls an unnecessary duplication of state resources. UT had previously announced that the campus wouldn’t have been a 4-year university; chancellor Bill McRaven suggested this afternoon that plans for the land might have shaped up to include a big data science center with a focus on health care, energy, and education, and that the ideas from the task force put together to plan for the land could be put to use elsewhere instead.

Conceptual rendering of UT Houston campus: Houston Public Media

Higher Ed Shutout
03/01/17 3:45pm

Former Luke's Locker at 1953 W. Gray St., River Oaks Shopping Center, Houston, 77019

It may not come as much of a surprise to the city’s more meticulous athletics outlet trackers that the Luke’s Locker at the corner of W. Gray and Driscoll streets has taken off: on January 20 the Texas chain announced via Facebook that they would be temporarily closing their Houston store, among others; a follow-up post a few days later clarified that the company had filed for Chapter 11. As of late last week, the name markers were coming down from the store’s exterior, a couple of “For Lease” signs were up, and the space had been emptied out.

The company still lists 1953 W. Gray address as a store location, complete with an image of the shop wrapped up in a bygone era of River Oaks Shopping Center aesthetics, when everything was more black-and-white:

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Run Off on W. Gray
03/01/17 1:30pm

Texas RRC Map of oil wells around Pierce Junction

Update, 6pm: UT announced this afternoon that the Houston campus plans are cancelled — more here.

UT system chancellor Bill McRaven objected in letter form this month to senator and Astrodome scrutinizer John Whitmire’s characterization of the 300 acres UT’s been buying in Houston as “a dump,” the Austin American Statesman’s Ralph K.M. Haurwitz reports. Excerpts from the letter assert that the property, nestled amid the industrial-residential jumble south of the Astrodome, has never in fact been a landfill. Sure, there’s a little bit of contamination from an old polymer facility that needs to be mopped up.  And sure, there may be a healthy smattering of old oil wells from the Pierce Junction boom days, as illustrated by the Rail Road Commission’s map of current and former wells drilled in the area. (UT’s new parcels are just inside the crook of the Holmes Rd.-S. Main St. elbow, to the northwest of the ring of wells drilled around the salt dome’s buried upper reaches.)

But Whitmire’s comments, McRaven’s letter notes, might “lead a listener to conclude that the property and the surrounding area are blighted and unlikely to ever be developed. In fact, the property is adjacent to apartments, neighborhoods, and commercial buildings, and it is highly likely that these adjacent developed lands had similar characteristics.” Meanwhile, the Wildcat Golf Course directly across Holmes Rd. from UT’s campus-to-be actually was a bona fide landfill; the only giveaway is all those rolling hills.

Image: Texas RRC Public GIS Viewer

What Lies Beneath
03/01/17 11:30am

Signage at Kroger, 239 W. 20th St., Houston Heights, Houston, 77008

Signage at Kroger, 239 W. 20th St., Houston Heights, Houston, 77008The removal of the “Right Store Right Price” sign tacked onto the side of the Kroger at 239 W. 20th St. briefly revealed long-buried evidence of the building’s long-hidden relationship with Weingarten, a parking lot cruising reader notes. Yes, that Weingarten (which currently owns the shopping center): the company’s account of its own history notes that the Weingarten family started out in the grocery biz, then got into real estate to build its own stores. The company dropped supermarkets altogether in the early 1980s and went into real estate full time.

By mid-afternoon yesterday, the newly unearthed traces of the company’s former association with the building had already been beiged out:

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Uncovered on W. 20th
02/28/17 5:15pm

4211 Bellaire Blvd., Southside Place, TX, 77025

Black Eyed Pea, 4211 Bellaire Blvd., HoustonBankruptcy and, today, demolition — so ends the journey for the Black-eyed Pea at 4211 Bellaire Blvd. Swirling rumors and previously filed variance requests suggested that apartments would go up on the site, and an actual design for a multifamily midrise was even floating around as early as last year — but the property changed hands again in the fall, as a reader noted.  The new plan for the site, evidently part of Dallas-based serial apartment developer Ojala Holdings’s bid to cash in on the Texas big-box storage market, looks to be a 4-story storage facility. And permitting reviews look to have started in the fall, not long after Ojala’s Uncle-Bob’s-turned-Life Storage got wrapped up across from the no-longer-listed-for-lease Wabash Feed Store:

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Clean Plat in Southside Place
02/28/17 12:45pm

Decorated Metro stop, W. Gray St. at Waugh Dr., North Montrose, Houston, 77019

A few wee-hours shots of the bus shelter at the southwest corner of W. Gray St. and Waugh Dr. show the stop’s short-lived cosplay as a thatch-roofed, mask-encrusted tiki hutch before the Friday morning rush last week. The shelter’s ensemble included carpeting, some upgraded bench upholstry, and flora of varying degrees of believability. The stop, directly in front of the orange-faced units of the W. Gray Public Storage facility, was purportedly back in standard business attire by 9am — though a tipster suggests that more such evanescent redecorating jobs may pop up around town in the future.

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Catching Waves the 32
02/28/17 11:30am

Former Exxon Upstream Facility, 3102-3120 Buffalo Spdwy., Greenway/Upper Kirby, Houston, 77098Former Exxon Upstream Facility, 3102-3120 Buffalo Spdwy., Greenway/Upper Kirby, Houston, 77098

Pieces of the fencing surrounding the MacKie and Kamrath-designed ExxonMobil Upstream Research facility on Buffalo Spdwy. were spotted sprawled out on the grass yesterday along the campus perimeter after being plucked from their stations; more barriers are getting yanked up this morning, as seen in the second shot above. The property (which appears to have been transferred to the nonprofit Exxon Foundation in 2015 after the oil giant’s plans to offload the site were announced) was  sold this month to an entity directing its mail to real estate investment and development firm Spear Street Capital. A couple of readers report that other major shuffling around and cleaning out appear to have been going on at the facility for at least the last few weeks, with vehicles bearing the Precision Demolition logo making periodic guest appearances on the scene.

Across W. Alabama St. from the building’s more curvaceous end, the spot occupied until early last year by the empty shell of honky tonk Blanco’s has since been filled in with athletics stuff for St. John’s School:

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Exxon Exit
02/27/17 11:15am

 under-construction Kirby Collection, Kirby Dr. at Colquitt St., Upper Kirby, Houston, 77098
 under-construction Kirby Collection, Kirby Dr. at Colquitt St., Upper Kirby, Houston, 77098

Rendering of under-construction Kirby Collection, Kirby Dr. at Colquitt St., Upper Kirby, HoustonAn extra crane was spotted standing around in oncoming Kirby Dr. traffic on Saturday morning just north of Richmond Ave., helping to disassemble the tower crane that’s been used to lift pieces of the Kirby Collection’s under-construction office building into place over the last year-and-a-few-months. A representative from Thor Equities tells Swamplot this morning that the office midrise should be wrapped up by the end of 2017. The ellipse-footed residential tower (peaking over the top of the rectangular office building’s frame in the shot above) hit its full height earlier this month as well:

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Down To Earth