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10/12/16 4:00pm

Scott St. Block Bought Up by Frenchy’s Gets Cleared Out by Cougars Fan

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Third Ward, University of Houston
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Hadley at Scott streets, Third Ward, Houston, 77004

The legal entity that has recently taken control of this block of Scott St. — located between Hadley and Bremond streets just off I-45 — appears to have been named in honor of the University of Houston’s early September football defeat of the Oklahoma Sooners. The previous owner of the land, a corporation called 3919 Scott Street (which, yes, is also the address of the up-for-eventual-demo original Frenchy’s restaurant down the road), transferred the property shown above over to an entity called UH33-OU23 near the end of last month, after putting in a request to the city to turn the 1.79 acres of mostly-vacant smaller lots into 1 big unrestricted parcel under the name University Gateway. The land is less than half a mile up Scott St. from the Elgin / Third Ward light-rail stop at the edge of UH’s central campus:

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Sooners or Later in Third Ward
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Featured Posts
10/12/16 11:30am

AirBnB Marks the Houston Zip Codes Where They Think They Can Pay Your Rent

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Maps
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AirBnB Mapping Tool Showing Nightly Income as Percentage of Average Area Rent

This patchy map of the Houston region, from the national tool released last week by Airbnb, shades the area’s zip codes by what percentage of monthly rent could purportedly be covered by a single night of Airbnb rental. The map is the DIY-hotel company’s submission to this spring’s federal call for more public data tools related to housing and economics. And the rental rates used for the comparison come from the so-called small area fair market rates set by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which this summer proposed breaking up the flat city-wide rates currently used for Section 8 housing voucher payouts into smaller pieces (with the intent that offering higher subsidy rates in higher income areas might reverse a trend of concentrating housing voucher recipients into already-high-poverty neighborhoods).

Topping the company’s list in Houston is 77018, the quasi-trapezoid covering much of the Garden Oaks and Oak Forest area; the tool says the federal market rental rate for the zone is $830 per month, but that earnings for renting out a private room in the area via Airbnb average around 22 percent of that amount, or $179 a night:

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AirBnB R&D
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Featured Posts
10/11/16 3:45pm

Memorial Dr. Gas Station Back to Selling Gas After Deadly Memorial Weekend Shooting Spree and Pump Fire

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Wilchester
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Memorial Conoco Car Care, 13202 Memorial Dr., Wilchester, Houston, 77079

The Memorial Conoco Car Care station at Memorial and Wycliffe drives is now fully back in the swing of things following the shootout and subsequent fire at the station over Memorial Day weekend, a reader notes. The station reopened its garage for repair and maintenance services within about a week of the May incident, during which police and a SWAT team faced off with a gunman who had begun to unload an AR-15 on passers by. The shooting spree resulted in 2 deaths (including the gunman), 6 injuries (including 2 officers and an armed guy mistaken for another gunman), and the gasoline fire that burned down the fuel pumps and canopy; the reader reports that the station is back to dispensing gasoline as of last week. That’s a new peaked canopy visible in the background over the sign shown above — here’s what the old one looked like:

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Tanks Full on Wilchester
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Downtown
10/11/16 12:45pm

Where George R. Brown Has Gone Red in the Face from All the Downtown Convention Center Work

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October 2016 look around Discovery Green and George R. Brown Convention Center, 1001 Avenida De Las Americas, Downtown, Houston, 77010

Supercolumn Going Up on George R. Brown Convention Center, Downtown HoustonBob Russell sends a fresh slew of downtown updates, this time checking up on the state of the George R. Brown Convention Center area’s ongoing redo. The structure’s main entrance on Avenida De Las Americas has been getting a major facelift — the supercolumns installed last summer have since turned white, and the glassy  facade has stepped outward and dropped a few stripes, in line with the plans released previously by semi-public city branding organization Houston First:

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Super Bowl Conditioning
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Churches
10/10/16 5:00pm

Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Montrose Prepares To Spread Wings, Raise Roof

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Religious Facilities, WAMM
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Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church renderings, 3511 Yoakum Blvd., WAMM, Houston, 77006

Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church, 3511 Yoakum Blvd., WAMM, Houston, 77006A look at the latest plans for bulking up the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral on Yoakum Blvd. at Kipling St. come from the diagrams submitted with a recent variance request for the project (and a few more now up on the church’s website). For comparison, a reader sends some leafy shots of the cathedral at its current width, snapped a few days before the setup for the annual Houston Greek Festival (which wrapped up on the church’s campus for the 50th time yesterday evening).

The expansion would widen the 1952 cathedral building to the north and south (toward and away from Kipling), about doubling the current seating capacity; the design also adds that big dome to the top (while the smaller dome along the Yoakum-side bell tower would get a new nitrate finish stainless-steel top-off to match). The church submitted the request for a 1-ft. building line setback last month, including this drawing from Philip Johnson/Alan Ritchie architects (which shows a leaf-free perspective from the corner of Yoakum and Kipling):

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Toward the Heavens, To the Curb
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Featured Posts
10/10/16 1:00pm

Next Weekend’s Downtown Dance Performances About the Ship Channel, NASA, and Other Houston Launch Points

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Uncategorized
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DEEP: SeaspaceDEEP: Seaspace

To cap off a series of Houston-landmark-linked performances carried out over the past few years, Karen Stoke’s dance company will put on bayou-and-space-themed DEEP: Seaspace at Hobby Center the weekend after next (that’s October 20th through 22nd). Stokes, whose previous work includes that well-timed dance about flooding in Discovery Green right after Memorial Day last year, tells Swamplot she has been mulling over appropriately grand Ship Channel choreographies since at least 2003, when she cut a related section from her piece Hometown with plans to tackle the topic later in greater depth.

On the list of historical places given a nod in the choreography (or in the short film to be shown during the live performance): Ship-Channel-side spots like the site of Santa Anna’s capture near the San Jacinto battlegrounds (the historical marker for which is located along Federal Rd. where the Washburn Tunnel crosses under the waterway); Allen’s Landing in Downtown; and the area around the former Willow St. Pump Station (just north of where White Oak Bayou meets Buffalo, by the Harris County Jail) — that spot is shown below, with dancers placed for atmosphere:

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Industrial Art
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Featured Posts
10/07/16 11:30am

The Many Faces of Sugar Land’s Veteran Memorial, Stormwater Detention Basin, and Tilt-Up Concrete Demo Project

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Uncategorized
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Sugar Land Memorial Park and Brazos River Corridor, 15300 University Blvd, Sugar Land, TX 77479

A fresh shot shows the veteran’s memorial at Sugar Land Memorial Park last weekend, which has been relatively high and dry since its brief closure following all that June flooding along the Brazos. The park is right alongside the river channel (southeast of the 59 crossing, where University and Commonwealth boulevards meet), and is designed to protect and serve the surrounding neighborhoods by storing excess floodwater in a pinch. The memorial is also designed to showcase tilt-up concrete construction methods (and was the focus of the Tilt Up Concrete Association’s annual tilt-up-related do-gooding project in 2013). Here’s an aerial view from early June from the Sugar Land Parks & Recreation folks, showing exactly why this year’s Memorial Day event at the park was cancelled (and why the neighboring Pawm Springs Dog Park, in the foreground, was closed):

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On Duty on the Brazos
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Featured Posts
10/06/16 5:30pm

H-E-B and Other Would-Be Heights Moisteners Marking Territory, Drawing Lines for Dry Zone Campaign Battle

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Houston Heights
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H-E-B Heights Proposed Dry Zone Site

The marker above (showing a now-officially-proposed H-E-B on N. Shepherd Dr.) is a little out of place, if it’s aiming for the former Fiesta site on N. Shepherd between W. 23rd and W. 24th streets as H-E-B says — but you get the idea, and the Houston Heights Beverage Coalition held a press conference on the site this morning to drive the point home. The red line on the map also only roughly shows the boundary of the nominal dry zone that the H-E-B-backed PAC is hoping to get loosened up a bit via that upcoming local election on take-home beer and wine sales. But you can find out for sure whether or not you’re close enough to be eligible to vote in the Houston-Heights-only election by checking your ballot at at HarrisVotes.com — and also check whether or not you’re registered, which you’ve only got until Tuesday to do. (If printing out a form is too much of a hassle, maybe try your nearest taco truck.)

Map of proposed H-E-B in Heights Dry Zone: Houston Heights Beverage Coalition

Campaign Fiesta
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Featured Posts
10/06/16 11:45am

An Orange and Silver Welcome to Hanover Montrose from the Disco Kroger Parking Lot

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WAMM
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Flag Man by 3400 Montrose, WAMM, Houston, 77006

The Hawthorne-facing apartment highrise at 3400 Montrose is now open for general business, as the orange sign recently added over the door declares in all-caps. Across the street at the edge of the Disco Kroger parking lot, another orange sign is also directing folks toward the entrance, a reader notes — as of yesterday evening, the decked-out flag man above was set up across from the tower’s main entrance as some heavy equipment work wrapped up in the street behind it. Here’s a close-up portrait:

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Hawthorne St. Style
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Featured Posts
10/06/16 11:00am

Former Assisted Living Center Evicted from S. Main to Give Mister Car Wash Some Space

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South Main
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8800 S. Main St., NRG, Houston, 77025

The long-vacant former home of Samaritan Assisted Living was brought to the ground yesterday after demo crews got permission to knock it down, a reader tells Swamplot. The owners of the property at 8800 S. Main St. have been trying to get the scrawny strip (a full 68-by-640-ft. acre) into a new long-term ground-leasing relationship for at least the past year, and appear to have found one in September, per documents filed with the county — including a lease for a smidge less than the next 25 years  for an entity housed in Tuscon, AZ, which shares an address with the converted-church-school corporate headquarters of Mister Car Wash. 

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Car Wash Cleanout
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Featured Posts
10/05/16 5:00pm

Upper Kirby Grass Now Greener On Other Side of Former Corporate Plaza’s New Fence

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Upper Kirby
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Corporate Plaza site, Kirby at Norfolk, Upper Kirby, Houston, 77098

The chain link that has surrounded the former site of Corporate Plazas I, II and III since the wind-down of their protracted demise now appears to be getting augmented by some wooden fencing, a reader notes. The non-paved sections of the 4-ish-acre property bundle have picked up a layer of green since the final demo odds and ends finished up in May, giving that stack of pipes in the foreground something soft to lie down on.

Survey of the surrounding office space scene: That’s the crane at work on the office tower member of the Kirby Collection visible on the far left, over the parking-garage shoulder of the River Oaks Tower at 3730 Kirby (which, like the former Corporate Plaza land across Norfolk St., is owned by California-based Triyar). The 3701 Kirby office midrise is visible on the right from across Kirby Dr.; the kinda-matching 3801 Kirby is just out of the frame above, but visible in the shot below of the new fencing from the other side:

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No Trespassing on Norfolk
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Featured Posts
10/05/16 1:45pm

Little Thicket by Little Thicket Park To Be Plowed Under For Fresh Crop of Townhomes

by
Interiors, Shady Acres, Townhomes
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Proposed Rio Vista townhomes from Titan Homes, Shady Acres, Houston

Check out the first 6 of what Titan Homes says will be 18 townhomes planned for the area alongside Little Thicket Park off W. 25th St. in Shady Acres. The land for the project, which was purchased by the builder in 2014, isn’t technically part of the park, though its leafy coverage runs up to the edge of the property and blends in. The first set of 6 homes — to be called Rio Vista North — appear to come in 3 styles of crinkle-cut top-offs to the facade, and will sit north of a to-be-extended stretch of W. 25th St.

The 6-by-1 arrangement will back up to the property immediately north, which BMRJ Development is seeking to subdivide for a separate 3-by-2 sixpack facing Ohsfeldt. That potential development isn’t shown in this north-facing rendering of the Titan project’s back yard:

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Growing in Shady Acres
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Featured Posts
10/05/16 12:00pm

HCC’s New Health Sciences Midrise Almost Done Rising Along Brays Bayou

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4 Comments

HCC Expansion east of Pressler and Main streets, Texas Medical Center, Houston, 77030

A crane and 2 egrets were spotted on Brays Bayou just east of Main St. by a curious reader, along with the rising superstructure of the new Houston Community College Coleman College for Health Sciences building. The midrise, which will eventually connect to the other HCC buildings across Pressler St. via skybridge, should have 10 stories by the time the building opens (which, per HCC’s current plans, will be next August). The building is going up between the UT’s Sarofim Research Building and the large parking lot where the Shamrock Movie Theater once stood, across Main St. from the currently-also-mostly-a-parking-lot Shamrock Hilton site where the new DeBakey High School campus is going up.

Photo: Swamplot inbox

 

Med Center Operations
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Featured Posts
10/04/16 5:00pm

A Quick Tour of Spots Where FEMA Will Expand Its Flood Hazard Zone In January

by
Flooding, Maps
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Jan 2017 FEMA Special Flood Hazard Zone classification changes

The areas in red above mark some of the new additions to the legally-gotta-buy-flood-insurance zones on FEMA’s recently revised flood maps. The agency’s interactive online viewer lets you mix-and-match a few data sets for Harris County (as well as Galveston, Fort Bend, and Wharton), compare the old mapped flood zone boundaries to proposed new ones, or look only at what would change — a FEMA spokesperson told Houston Public Media that about 8,000 properties have been added to the list in Harris County, while only about 400 were dropped.

Those acid-green highlights are areas that have been removed from the special flood hazard zone by the updated map (while blue shows areas that have just changed floodplain classification some other way. Bits of brown and yellow in other areas of the map show places added or removed (respectively) from the floodway. The updates above to the mandatory flood insurance zone (legally called the Special Flood Hazard Area) are set to go into effect in January, as shown above. Buffalo Bayou and its tributaries are pretty marked up:

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Flood Insurance Ebb and Flow
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Featured Posts
10/04/16 11:30am

Main St. Mod Code Building Under Assault From Rooftop, Ground Level, Interior

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

A gang of smaller machinery is seen spreading out across the roof of 3300 Main St. in the shot above (capturing a reader’s view of the scene from the HCC midrise next door), as a larger excavator works over some of the rubble piling up at the site lately. Also visible behind the former city code enforcement building, to the south: the now-in-full-swing MATCH theater building, and the rising facades of some of the apartment midrises going up on the Mid Main block.

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Midtown Falling Flat, Rising High
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