02/15/17 4:30pm

glen-forest-detention-site

glen-forest-stormwater-detention-basinJust south of the Earthman Resthaven Funeral Home and Cemetery on I-45 — and just north of Greens Bayou — the Harris County Flood Control District is in the process of digging up more than 2 million cubic feet of soil from the Glen Forest Stormwater Detention Basin-to-be. (That’s the purple shaded area in the map shown here, right upstream from the cluster of bayou-side apartment complexes that flooded on Tax Day and helped spur the pre-dawn conversion of Greenspoint Mall into an emergency shelter.) If the name “Glen Forest” strikes you as a bit mid-century-suburban-neighborhood, that’s because it is: the 160-acre site is named after the sixties-era Glen Forest subdivision formerly constructed on the property. The neighborhood was purchased and demolished as part of HCFCD’s buyout program in the early 2000’s, but the roadways and signs had mostly stuck around, at times serving as a convenient backdrop for unsanctioned motor sports, as demonstrated in the video below:

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Greens- and Grave-side Digging
02/15/17 1:30pm

Planned Spring Pines Shopping Center, Spring Cypress Rd. at Holzwarth Rd., Spring, TX 77388

Planned Spring Pines Shopping Center, Spring Cypress Rd. at Holzwarth Rd., Spring, TX 77388

The tree evictions appear to have begun on the 14 acres of wooded land near the intersection of Holzworth and Spring Cypress roads marked for that Kroger Marketplace announced last year. A reader snapped some shots of spread gravel and a log stackup on the site (a piece of the larger 50-acre tract outlined in red in Read King’s leasing flier, as shown here). Preliminary plans for the broader Spring Pines Shopping Center include a slew of new retail spots near the Kroger; leasing plans for the soon-to-be-former forest note that the Kroger is almost directly across Spring Cypress from the area’s H-E-B, itself right across FM 2920 from the Aldi grocery store that moved into the area a few years ago:

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Groundwork in Spring
02/14/17 5:30pm

Beaver traces by Buffalo Bayou, Allen's Landing, Houston, 77002

More splinters and shredded bark are the latest clues turned up by Allen’s Landing beaver scrutinizer Christine Wilson. The most recent denudation (shown above) occurred off the park’s walking trail, not far from the aftermath of the last rodent-related incident Wilson documented, just east of the Travis and Milam street bridges over Buffalo Bayou. Another shot from over the weekend provides a wider view of the increasingly sparsely-forested bank:
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Mammals of Allen’s Landing
02/14/17 1:45pm

A diner catty-corner from Bagby Park yesterday evening captured the slow drama that unfolded as an in-transit temporary building was backed slowly up Bagby St. (at least maintaining the suggested orientation of the 1-way street, if not the intended direction of travel). The video above shows the building as it backs through the signalized intersection (to the audible distress of a would-be oncoming sedan), squeezes through the cars parked curbside (seemingly avoiding all vehicular scratches, but grazing a tree), then turns east down westbound Gray St. toward the eternally shining beacon of the St. Joseph Professional Building, accompanied in its wrong-way progress by an entourage consisting of a police escort, a tow truck, and and a small excavator hitching a ride.

Video: Swamplot inbox

Temporary Night on the Town
02/14/17 11:00am

Tornado Damage near Bridlewood and Tara, Fort Bend County, TX, 77469

HISD and some of the southern swath of the Houston region have so far spent Valentine’s Day under a patchwork of school district shelter-in-place orders, this time in response to the tornado warnings that rolled through the upper Texas coast this morning (all since downgraded back to mere watch levels). A funnel did touch down near Needville around 8:30 and move roughly northeast toward First Colony, causing a number of structural rearrangements like the ones above (captured along Crabb River Rd. by the documentarians at the Fort Bend County sheriff’s office). The agency took a few more shots of the area’s roughing up:

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Fort Bend Unfenced
02/13/17 5:00pm

houston-isd-outline

A letter up on the website of the Texas Education Agency — addressed to the HISD Board of Trustees and dated to last Thursday — provides what the state organization says is a preliminary list of the high-value Houston properties that might be detached from the district and tacked onto Aldine ISD. The transfer is the proposed response to last fall’s election by HISD residents not to authorize that payment of over-the-per-student-cap property tax revenue to the state for redistribution to other districts. Campaigners had hoped the “no” vote on the resolution would cause the Legislature to look at reforming the state’s education funding scheme (which the state high court raised an eyebrow at last year, but left in place).

On the same day the letter was issued, the HISD board voted to call a new election on the recapture/detachment question; the TEA has also set a lower figure for the district’s initial required payment to the state, in light of the fact that HISD doesn’t collect some potential property tax revenue because of homestead exemption rules. The letter tallies up the marked-for-snagging properties at more than $8.024 billion in total assessment value, and includes the Galleria, the Williams Tower, a slew of downtown office buildings, the CityWestPlace complex near Beltway 8, and 2 refineries. The list itself mentions only addresses and parcel numbers, connected mostly to the buildings below and a number of their associated parking garages:

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Election Rerun
02/13/17 10:00am

2 Tiel Way, River Oaks, Houston, 77019

2 Tiel Way, River Oaks, Houston, 77019The remodeling permit issued last fall for 2 Tiel Way (shown above in its previous listing portrait) was augmented by a demolition permit at the end of January, as Diane Cowen reports in this weekend’s Chronicle. The 1960s house (designed by Karl Kamrath, like a few others of the not-yet-demolished original houses on the street) was bought last July after a 10-month stint on the market; Cowen writes that the new owners had planned to restore the home, but structural issues including uncovered termite and water damage boosted cost estimates to around twice the likely cost of a rebuild.

The house was torn down to the slab and fireplace late last month, and some of the interior redwood paneling and light fixtures were salvaged. The new home designed for the site will purportedly mimic the old one to a significant extent — here’s a rendering from Robertson Design, the architecture firm of the new owners’ son:

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Theseus’s Ranch
02/10/17 4:45pm

Urban Bricks Pizza Co., 5650 West Grand Parkway South #100, Richmond, TX 77407

The finishing touches have been applied to the first Houston-area outpost of Urban Bricks Pizza Co., in time for the location’s end-of-January grand opening. The Boerne-based pizza place has squeezed in next to Zesty Cleaners and James Avery in the newest piece of the growing strip center puzzle known as the Shops at Bella Terra, itself sandwiched between the Lakes of Bella Terra and Parkway Lakes subdivisions south of the EZ TAG-only intersection of Westpark Tollway and the Grand Parkway. The most recent add-on to the center is near the bottom left corner in the detention-pond-spangled siteplan below:

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Lakeside Pizza Views
02/10/17 2:45pm

Former City of Houston Code Enforcement Building, 3300 Main St., Midtown, Houston, 77002

Those Swamplot commenters who’ve been taking particular and unabashed pleasure in the long, slow demise of the former city code enforcement office at 3300 Main St. may also enjoy the shot above of the flooded pit spotted recently where the Mod office building once stood. Reader Diaspora (who sent in the photo late last week) suggests the site as potential competition for the folks behind the Houston Needs a Swimming Hole campaign, which Kickstartered a feasibility study a few years ago (and also passed around an illustration of an optimistically blue-watered bayouside beachfront, shown below):

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Lakes of Main St.
02/09/17 5:00pm

Grass fire near Guy, TX

Yesterday’s wind-exacerbated grass fire (pictured above) near Wolfgang and Barek roads near Guy, TX, was put out as of late last night, per the Needville Fire Department’s social media team’s recounting of events. The late-night snuff-out wrapped up around 10:30 and reportedly took crews from Needville, Damon, Richmond, Fairchild, Rosharon and the U.S. Forest Service about 6 hours. The fire occurred about 10 miles west of Brazos Bend State Park, itself scheduled to be partially set ablaze on purpose this morning.

The Needville department (which last August had to petition Nintendo to remove its building from the area’s list of Poké-stops) snapped these shots of last night’s blaze:

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Guy on Fire
02/09/17 11:45am

Walmart Augusta Pines, 25800 Kuykendahl Rd., Tomball, TX, 77375

A relatively sleek new style of Walmart Supercenter (rendered above) is set to open next week, hugged on 2 sides by the Timbercrest Village RV Park just north of Hufsmith Rd., Beth Marshall notes this week. The prototypical “smart Walmart” at 25800 Kuykendahl Rd. appears to have taken over part of the property that was previously part of the trailer park’s land, and will take the name Walmart Augusta Pines in reference to its east-west cross street (August Pines Dr.).

The new store will include a health clinic, a means of checkout-line-free purchasing mitigated by phone app, and that previously noted first Chobani Cafe to open in Houston (or outside of New York, for that matter). The clinic is also the first in the Houston area since Walmart began its pilot program to move into broader healthcare and disease management services in 2014, with an initial focus on Texas, Georgia and South Carolina — 3 states that didn’t accept federal money to expand Medicaid  and also have a high concentration of uninsured residents. 

Rendering of Walmart August Pines: Walmart

 

Rolling Out in Tomball
02/08/17 5:00pm

3003 Dover St., Berry Court, Houston, 770173003 Dover St., Berry Court, Houston, 77017

Technically, that’s just $499,423, cash sale, only — but you get the idea. The former Monta Beach Boy Scout Lodge at 3003 Dover St. was build in 1937 and converted into a 2-bedroom house in the early 1950s. The 1,400-sq.-ft. home sits a few blocks from the east-facing armpit of I-45 South and the 610 Loop, on a 21,600-sq.-ft. property backed up against a drainage channel leading to Sims Bayou. The home was featured by the Chronicle in 2007, after the current owner (turned current listing agent) redid the wiring and chinking between logs; that article is now featured prominently in the listing, too, with a few other write-ups:

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Pining Near Sims Bayou
02/08/17 12:30pm

Beaver traces by Buffalo Bayou, Allen's Landing, Houston, 77002Beaver traces by Buffalo Bayou, Allen's Landing, Houston, 77002

Downtown cellphone naturalist Christine Wilson sends some shots this morning of unauthorized tree remodeling on the banks of Buffalo Bayou east of Travis St. by Spaghetti Warehouse (across from the University of Houston Downtown building shown up top). Wilson says a chat with some Buffalo Bayou Park rangers confirmed the identity of the anonymous tree hackers as likely beavers. That aligns with a report from earlier this month from the folks at Save Buffalo Bayou of other activity in the same area by rodents of unusual size. More closeup shots of denuded trees below:

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Stumping Downtown
02/07/17 4:15pm

Demoltion of Richmont Square Apartments, 1400 Richmond Ave., Menil, Houston, 77006

The remaining segments of the Richmont Square apartments are on their way down — a reader sends a few shots this morning capturing the current state of the disunion. The demo permits for the then-remaining 2 thirds of the storied 1960s apartment complex have been trickling in since December, with a few more issued late last week; the associated flattening work on the Menil-owned property started late last year as well. The view from the Richmond Ave. parking lot and former entryway shows the empty space formerly occupied by the complex’s main entrance:

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Clearing Rooms on Richmond Ave.
02/07/17 10:00am

Owl Sculptures by Dan Mabry, Kelvin St. at University Blvd., Rice Village, Houston, 77005

Rice Village, Houston, 77005The sculpted birds above are now staring intently in various directions from just south of the entrance ramp for the Rice Village’s rooftop parking lot between University Blvd. and Amherst St. The new bird-studded cage hangs around the upper half of the Kelvin St. access staircase for the lot, previously shielded from prying eyes by a since-removed blinder of brick (as pictured second above at the start of the work last year, before much of the paint-up or knock-out action had taken place on the eastern side of the structure). The birds are the work of Californian metalworker and periodic perched bird sculptor Nathan Mabry. Changes to the building roughly align with the older renderings of the remodel, though the space was previously depicted with an extra new window (along with some ghostly stand-in art): 

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Kelvin St. Bird Cage