- 4405 Wendell St. [HAR]
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Bellaire
Yep. It’s pink, and a sun-baked shade at that. The adobe abode has Sante Fe styling in an age and area more prone to “Texas Tuscan.” Located in Bellaire’s Westmoreland Farms section, this 2000 home was a late work of designer Roger Rasbach, considered a pioneer of energy-conscious home design. The hacienda itself measures 5,454 sq. ft., but its footprint includes another 850 sq. ft. of covered outdoor space containing courtyards, pavilions, a pergola, a pool, and a spa. On its eastern border, the near-acre lot backs up to a utility easement, with railroad tracks beyond. The almost-an-acre lot was up for sale for a spell last year. Re-listed in April by the same agent after 5-month breather — and a price drop of nearly a quarter-million dollars — the home’s asking price has remained steady since, at $2,199,500.
- 5308 Grand Lake St. [HAR]
Even the home staging is staged in this Bellaire listing. Vacant when shown locally, the home’s online profile features several fully furnished, clutter-free rooms. A virtual staging service enhanced photos with an overlay of furniture and accessories from its library of actual decorative components. Thus, the family room just off the kitchen appears in its empty natural state (just above) and its tasteful-but-tame cyber-enhanced version (top). Other life-like rooms created with planted furnishings, such as the combo living and dining room, breakfast nook, and master bedroom, are described as such in the listing for the 4-bedroom, 3 1/2-bath home.
FEEDER FARMERS MARKET 
Houston’s first freeway-side farmers market debuts this Friday at 3 pm in the parking lot of the HCC Southwest College’s West Loop campus. Appropriately enough, the market’s organizers at Urban Harvest are telling visitors this new market at 5601 West Loop Fwy. South “will have more of a ‘street food’ component with more food trucks” as well as locally prepared foods. The HCC campus was created out of what was originally a store for Incredible Universe, Tandy Corp.’s short-lived mid-nineties venture into big-box electronics retailing. Also beginning soon: another Urban Harvest farmers market on Thursdays, in Sugar Land Town Square. [Fort Bend Sun] Photo: WhisperToMe
HIGH SECURITY IN BELLAIRE Yvonne Stern’s home on S. 3rd St. in Bellaire is now equipped with iron gates, floodlights, surveillance cameras, and bulletproof glass; there’s also an armored SUV currently being prepared for her use. Earlier, she had hired off-duty Houston police officers to live in the house around the clock. Still, earlier this week Stern told the jury deciding the fate of a man hired to kill her that she and her 2 children do not feel safe in the home; she would like to move but can’t. Nhut Nguyen was sentenced this morning to 45 years in prison for shooting at Stern and her son through the home’s front door on April 15th. No one was injured in that incident, but a different assailant shot Stern in the stomach a month later as she sat in her car in the parking garage of the Meritage Apartments at the corner of North Braeswood and Meyer Park Dr. — where Stern and her family were staying while their home was being retrofitted with all those security measures. Now back living with her in that home, which she described to the court as “Fort Knox”: her husband, attorney Jeffrey Stern — who along with his former employee and mistress, Michelle Gaiser, is facing trial for soliciting several would-be hit men to kill his wife. Despite prosecutors’ claims, Yvonne Stern says she believes her husband had nothing to do with the murder plots. [Houston Chronicle; more details]
Cities throughout Texas are slowing down the process of knocking down dangerous structures because of fears that angry owners might come back to bite them — even after their buildings have been demolished. By a 5-4 vote, the Texas Supreme Court last month struck a blow for the property rights of rotting, undead buildings throughout the state, giving their owners the right to sue in court for compensation even if a hearing before a city administrative board has already declared a condemned structure a hazard to public safety. If it isn’t overturned in a rehearing, the decision will likely force Texas cities to pick their demolition battles more carefully, and possibly get courts involved in what has traditionally been something handled by city departments.
TEAS NURSERY BUYERS: WE DID IT FOR MOM 
The new public open space on the former site of Teas Nursery will be named Evelyn’s Park, in honor of the mother of Jerry and Bo Rubenstein — the 2 brothers whose foundation bought the 5-acre property a little more than a year ago. The deed to the property at 4400 Bellaire Blvd. between Newcastle and Mulberry Ln. was turned over to the city of Bellaire at yesterday’s city council meeting. Also set up: a nonprofit conservancy to raise funds and develop the space for recreational use. The park’s planners hope to have it open within 4 years, with gardens, water features, and possibly some sort of monument or memorial to Evelyn Rubenstein on part of the property. [Previously on Swamplot]
SETTING UP A NEW PUBLIC PARK THING AT THE FORMER TEAS NURSERY 
Bellaire’s city council approved an agreement earlier this week that makes the future of the 5-acre property that used to be Teas Nursery a little more clear: It’ll be some sort of public space, but the exact details will be worked out by a new conservancy, with input from the public. A foundation controlled by two Bellaire brothers bought the property at 4400 Bellaire Blvd. late last year — after the nursery’s owners announced plans to sell it off piece by piece to homebuilders. The Jerry and Maury Rubenstein Foundation now plans to deed the land to the city. Under the agreement, half of the conservancy’s members will be appointed by the city, and half by the foundation. [Previously on Swamplot]
Got a question about something going on in your neighborhood you’d like Swamplot to answer? Sorry, we can’t help you. But if you ask real nice and include a photo or 2 with your request, maybe the Swamplot Street Sleuths can! Who are they? Other readers, just like you, ready to demonstrate their mad skillz in hunting down stuff like this:
We’ve got some answers to your questions:
- Downtown: The mystery of the missing Houston Pavilions signs (shown — or rather, not shown — above) is solved . . . in rather unexciting fashion. The development’s management office explains the lettering is being painted, and should be reinstalled in short order.
- Bellaire: Noting that other lots just west of Bellaire High School have a similar shape and size, subprimelandguy provides a matter-of-fact explanation for the triple-deep lots on the south side of Maple St.:
Mimosa (and the adjacent smaller lots on the south side of Maple) ends short of the Loop simply because that was the edge of the Bellaire Oaks subdivision when it was developed in the 50’s. The larger lots are in a different subdivision likely developed by a different developer, and of course at that time the Loop didn’t exist for Mimosa to extend out to.
None of you took the bait on the reader’s second question: Should a triple-size lot always command a triple-size price?
And what about that monument to eternal redevelopment at the corner of Washington and Jackson Hill?
Got an answer to any of these reader questions? Or just want to be a sleuth for Swamplot? Here’s your chance! Add your report in a comment, or send a note to our tipline.
- Downtown: A reader wants to know why the backlit signage that used to be attached to those fancy Houston Pavilions multi-story hole-in-the-middle bridges over Fannin and San Jacinto streets Downtown is — gone! “You can see the remains of little black studs that supported the letters. Probably not a big deal at all, just something I noticed the last couple of trips [and] thought I would share.”
- Bellaire: From just outside the Loop, we have interest in the “extremely long residential lots” on the south side of Maple St., just east of S. Rice Blvd. (Map here.) Each property, bounded by a storm drain to the south, is the equivalent of 3 lots deep, a curious reader notes. And asks: “1) Why does Mimosa end before W. Loop? 2) Is a triple lot property 3x the value of single lot? What shapes their value?”
One more puzzle for you to solve:
Come June, promise the owners of SSQQ, the popular social dance studio will reopen just to the west of Restaurant Depot, in the former Kmart beached on the asphalt shores at 20th St. and T.C. Jester near Timbergrove.
Last weekend, SSQQ shut down the Bellaire strip-center site it had occupied for 30 years. Why’d it up and leave? Doctors’ orders, reports the Bellaire Examiner‘s Steve Mark: First Street Hospital, which owns the center on Bissonnet just outside the Loop, is planning an expansion that would slice the center in half, knocking out SSQQ, Sweetwater Pool & Patio, and a Radio Shack. (Not all is lost, though: Charlie’s Hamburgers and that nail salon in the center at 4803 Bissonnet will get to stay.)
Besides easy access to restaurant supplies, what’s in store for students taking a swing at new Bachata and Whip moves at SSQQ’s new location?
The owner of the Dunkin’ Donuts in Pasadena and on FM 1960 near I-45 is renovating the Bellaire location that a previous owner shut down last October, writes Steve Mark:
“I heard they were closing that store and I called the corporate office right away,†[Harshad] Patel told The Examiner. “We don’t have that many Dunkin’ Donuts close to the city, so I asked if I could re-open that one. . . .”
Patel expects the first donuts will be ready later this month — after the gutted building at 5406 Bellaire Blvd. between Bissonnet and Chimney Rock gets outfitted with a new roof, AC system, and kitchen equipment.
- Donut shop returning for more dunkin’ [Bellaire Examiner]
- Previously on Swamplot: Openings and Closings: Down the Donut Hole
Photo: Bellaire Examiner
HAZARDS OF THE WEST LOOP Except for a memorable afternoon of standstill traffic — and the maybe 1,500 gallons of gasoline that made their way through storm sewers to Galveston Bay — no major disaster resulted from that tanker spill 2 Fridays ago on Bellaire Blvd. below the West Loop. That’s better than the last time: “[L]ongtime residents of the area remember an incident in May 1976 when a truck carrying anhydrous ammonia slammed into a bridge railing on the connector from the West Loop to the southbound Southwest Freeway and fell onto the freeway below. Of those within 1,000 feet of the spill, six people died, 78 suffered serious injuries and 100 more were treated for their exposure. That tragedy played out only about a mile from the site of Friday’s accident. Thirty-four years after that terrible day, nothing has changed. The poorly engineered West Loop, as it approaches the 59, is one of the worst sites for accidents in the U.S. — yet it is also designated pathway for some of the most hazardous cargo in the world. More is transported on the vulnerable tracks that run through southwest Houston, divide West University and Bellaire, skirt along Afton Oaks, River Oaks and Memorial Park.” [West University Examiner]
Bellaire’s city council voted this week to shut down its 2-decade-old recycling center on Edith St. near Lafayette Park. The city’s recycling committee attributes the site’s declining popularity to the city’s new curbside recycling program:
When the [curbside] program was expanded in 2008, pickup increased in tonnage from 1,231 to 1,578 tons collected in 2009, a 28 percent increase. During that same time, tons dropped off at the Bellaire Recycling Center has dropped to 347 tons in 2009. As recently as 2005, area residents dropped off 989 tons of recycling.
- City Council votes to close Recycling Center [Bellaire Examiner]
Photo of Debbie Marshall Bellaire Recycling Center, 4402 Edith St: Wikimedia Commons
