EXXONMOBIL’S HUMBLE GIFT TO THE CITY? 
What will happen to its well-shaded 44-story downtown headquarters building at 800 Bell St., once ExxonMobil decamps for the new campus the oil giant is building at Houston’s northern reaches? The company “has not announced what will happen to its downtown building,” writes longtime real estate reporter Ralph Bivins about the iconic 1963 tower that houses at its top the storied Petroleum Club. “One of the most interesting rumors we’ve heard about it is that Exxon Mobil will donate the building to the City of Houston for municipal offices. You know, we can’t sell it, so let’s just give it to Annise Parker instead.” [Culturemap] Photo: Flickr user lc_db
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Downtown
THE DEEP RETAIL DISCOUNTS AT HOUSTON PAVILIONS 
Four years after its opening, the troubled Downtown mall-office complex known as Houston Pavilions may sell for $50 to $75 million below the cost of its construction. To avoid foreclosure on a loan valued at $130.7 million, the developers turned the property over to a receiver late last year; Transwestern is now marketing the project for sale. Offices are fully occupied, but the big problem is the 59-percent-vacant retail portion of the project, says Real Estate Alert: “More than half of the retail tenants haven’t been paying full rent because the overall retail occupancy rate remains below the prescribed threshold cited in their leases. A buyer could convert about 42,000 sf of vacant retail space into offices to exploit downtown Houston’s booming office market . . . However, a conversion of all the retail space isn’t an option, because doing so would make it impossible to meet the retail occupancy threshold necessary for the existing tenants to pay full rent.” [Real Estate Alert; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Flickr user cjt3
No photos of it, but there is this sketch from 1898, showing a 24-ft.-by-24 ft. pier-and-beam structure intended to house the fledgling Rice Institute vocational school. Rice University historian Melissa Kean says it was on 6 1/2 acres of property on Louisiana St. downtown — apparently somewhere near the YMCA building torn down last year. (A construction invoice, detailing the completed price of $498.71, references a fence facing a now-vanished Frederick St.) 14 years later, the Institute got a restart on a swampy 295-acre campus southwest of town.
REPAIRS DONE, WEDGE AS IT WAS 
The Swamplot reader who noted a color change in the panels at the top of the WEDGE International Tower at Louisiana and Bell St. downtown last week informs us that they’ve since been returned to their original appearance, and submits this pic from a perch at the Tellepsen YMCA a couple of blocks away to prove it: “Presumably, as one of the commenters surmised, they were just running through some routine maintenance.” We now return to our regularly scheduled Swamplot programming. Photo: Swamplot inbox
The reddish steel structure shown here is UH architecture grad Neil Denari‘s design for the new light-rail transfer station on Main St. between Capitol and Rusk downtown, where the new East End and Southeast Lines currently under construction will intersect with the existing rail line. Besides Denari, whose firm is based in LA, 3 New York and 1 local architecture firm were invited to dream up schemes for the long open-air, 11-ft.-wide rail platform. A jury selected by Metro will pick the winning design, but Metro is still asking for rider comments on each of them.
A SECOND RUN AT GROCERIES FOR DOWNTOWN 
Today is opening day for Georgia’s Market Downtown at 420 Main St., the same space where Byrd’s Market shut down last summer. The opening of Phoenicia Specialty Foods at One Park Place across from Discovery Green in the meantime means Georgia’s won’t be Downtown’s only grocery store. Like Phoenicia, Georgia’s is a second location of a more suburban operation (Georgia’s Farm to Market, in the former Kmart on the I-10 feeder just east of Dairy Ashford), and includes a cafe and bar (The Cellar, underground). [Eater Houston; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Eater Houston
Is some sort of paint job underway on the WEDGE International Tower at Louisiana and Bell St. downtown? Or is some new material being installed on the building exterior? A reader who wants to know sends in these spandrel surveillance pics from a perch at the new Tellepsen YMCA.
It looks like large portions of the 2.8-mile-long Heritage West Bikeway connecting Stude Park to UH-Downtown are close to completion, but the path along portions of the former UP railway won’t open until summer, according to the city. One important still-missing link: a pedestrian bridge over Little White Oak Bayou. Past the University, the 10-ft. wide trail will connect to the Heritage East Bikeway, which continues along White Oak Bayou to Lockwood.
The new western portion will hook up with the MKT hike-and-bike trail both at Stude Park and at Spring St., providing an alternate along-the-bayou path for bicyclists headed downtown from the Heights. One highlight of the journey: a close-up view of the 17.3 acres of swampland Hakeem Olajuwon flipped to Metro back in 2005 for a cool $15 million:
Will the Decentralized Dance Party scheduled for Houston this weekend even happen? Not if fundraising goals aren’t met in time, declares the event’s Facebook page, and with less than 10 hours left only $591 of the required $999 has been raised on Kickstarter. What’s a Decentralized Dance Party? Exactly what it sounds like: a portable event made possible by a radio transmitter, lots of boomboxes, and at least dozens — and in most cities it’s been thousands — of committed partygoers ready to travel wherever the party takes them and all moving to the same synchronized beat. Begun in Canada a few years ago, the event is hitting Houston at least in part because one of the event’s originators, Gary Lachance (on the right wearing sunglasses in the above video), was also part of a small group of people that bought the entire contents of a small grocery store in New York’s West Village last year — on credit, just for kicks:
DOWNTOWN PARKING LOT PLAYLAND 
The 4 full-block surface parking lots along the rail line just east of the ExxonMobil building bounded by Leeland, Fannin, Clay, and Travis streets downtown will soon have a small blot on their perfect cars-and-asphalt-only record: a 10,000-ft. childcare center for JPMorgan Chase employees. The new owner of the easternmost block, Skanska USA Commercial Development, plans to build the center on a third of it to replace the facility currently housed in Skanska’s other recent downtown purchase, the 18-story (soon-to-be-former) Houston Club Building at 811 Rusk St. Moving the tenants out of that building, which the company is considering demolishing and replacing, would give Skanska “more options,” a company spokesperson tells Nancy Sarnoff. [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Bill Barfield
Over the weekend, volunteers placed reclaimed clay tiles next to the I-45 overpass at the northern end of Downtown to create raised beds for a new city garden, Houston’s third. The garden is meant for employees of the city’s new permitting center at 1002 Washington — there’ll be one raised bed for each floor.
- How to Build a Raised Garden Bed: City of Houston Edition [East End Escapades]
- Houston Permitting Center Employee Garden (PDF) [Houston Permitting Center]
- Previously on Swamplot: Pods Appear on Downtown Building, Grab Solar Panels with Wrench and Garden Hose
Photo: Lauren H.
Reader Heidi Hagen’s photos of construction on the North Line along N. Main St. north of UH-Downtown show the new bridge that’s “popped up outta nowhere” around Hogan St. No, there’s no rainbow at the north end of Downtown, but if you look carefully from the right far vantage point can see the elevated concrete and steel construction that’ll be carrying an extension to the existing rail line over the Union Pacific railroad tracks to further points north: Lindale Park, the Northline Transit Center, and 6 other newly named stations. More bridge pix from earlier in the month:
Yesterday was moving day for 2 unusual Downtown buildings: The 1905 Cohn and 1904 Foley (above) houses cattycorner from the George R. Brown Convention Center. Leftover single-family homes from an area once known as Quality Hill and now strangers in the land of skyscrapers and stadiums, they’d be notable Downtown residents even if they weren’t designated historic structures. The city is moving them across the street and a block closer to Minute Maid Park, where they’re intended to become add-ons to a mysterious Regional Tourism Center proposed for the 600 block of Avenida de las Americas. According to plans flashed at the last public meeting for the Downtown/EaDo Livable Centers Study, this new building dedicated to Upper Texas Gulf Coast vacationers would face the westbound light-rail line along Capitol St. and sit at the bottom of an unidentified residential tower:
Here’s what you’ll want to know about the new Sundance Cinemas taking the place of the shuttered Angelika Film Center in Bayou Place downtown: First, you’ll still get 3 hours of free parking underground. Seating is by single-seat reservation only, but you’ll be able to pick your preferred movie-watching spot (and print out your tickets) from the comfort of your own computer if you want to avoid lines. Adult tix for evening shows are $10.50 ($3 less for matinees), but there’s a tacked-on “amenity fee” that varies from nothing to $3 depending on the time of day and day of the week of your showing. What amenities will you be receiving in return for that little upcharge? Well, there’s the parking, the seat-reservation system, and the facility’s cost of maintaining “as green a facility as possible.” Plus, the 8-screen theater promises no TV-style advertisements before movies start.
And how’s the place looking so far?
Hey, wasn’t there one of those first annual art fairs at the George R. Brown just last month? Art retailer and barkeep Bill Davenport teases out the differences between that one and the smaller Texas Contemporary Art Fair that took place over this past weekend:
