COMMENT OF THE DAY: DOWNTOWN IN THE DARK “. . . Yes, before the recession the downtown buildings were ablaze all night. It was striking, if quite wasteful. Nowadays we can enjoy the contrast. The Houston skyline darkened at night continues its daytime conversation with sky, light, color and atmosphere. Our glass skyscrapers are our mountains — they reflect the changes in light and color and haze and brightness every day of the year. Dark at night, the effect is a continuum instead of a contrast. It’s subtle, and it’s nice.” [Miz Brooke Smith, commenting on What the Wells Fargo Tower Downtown Is Really Trying To Tell Us]
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Downtown
Blog-about-town InnerLooped notices the new pay-by-phone signs that have gone up on Downtown parking meters, including this one near Frank’s Pizza on Travis St. The service should be convenient for drivers who are short on change but have extra capacity in their mobile phone text-messaging plans. Here’s a little surprise included in the terms of use for the service posted online (though not mentioned anywhere on the signs): notice that mobile meter payers may receive mobile application, SMS, or email ads from the company that runs the service — Atlanta’s Parkmobile — or “other affiliated, third-party companies” when they park.
- Park here and we’ll send you junk mail [InnerLooped]
- Finally, a Smarter Way To Park [Parkmobile]
Photo: InnerLooped
FREE CNG BUSES WILL CRISSCROSS DOWNTOWN 
Beginning next spring, a new free shuttle service called Greenlink will connect the George R. Brown Convention Center to City Hall — and about 20 stops along the way. The fleet of seven 30-ft.-long buses running on compressed natural gas is being paid for by the Downtown Management District, Houston First (the new corporation that now operates the convention center), and British gas company (and new Downtown tenants) the BG Group, with help from a grant from the Federal Transit Administration. Buses will run every 20 minutes along the 2.5-mile route from 6:30 am to 6:30 pm on weekdays only, and every 7 minutes at lunchtime and other peak traffic times. Update: Stops haven’t been chosen yet, but here’s a route map. [Houston Chronicle] Photo: George R. Brown Convention Center
THE PLUMBERS SURE WORK FAST AT LENNY’S IN THE TUNNEL According to the Houston Press‘s latest roundup of city Health Dept. inspection reports, the dowtown Lenny’s Sub Shop in the tunnel beneath 1001 Fannin St. was cited recently for not having the minimum number of handwashing sinks available for workers. Not to worry, though: The inspection report indicates the violation was “corrected on site.” [Eating Our Words]
Next month, real estate brokers Randy Fertitta and John Nguyen plan to reopen the former Zula Restaurant spot at 705B Main St. Downtown as a 250-600-seat concert venue. The Capitol at St. Germain will include a bar, a restaurant, and jazz, R&B, and “old-school” country performers. Coming to the Main St. streetfront at Capitol St. (next door to the Flying Saucer): a sidewalk cafe and a new neon marquee, subsidized in part by a $20,000 grant from the Downtown Management District. The 8,400-sq.-ft. space will include an elevated reserved seating area called the Vintage Lounge and a “floating” VIP booth next to the 320-sq.-ft. stage.
- Downtown gaining upscale restaurant/music venue [Houston Business Journal]
- Capitol at St. Germain
Photo: Capitol at St. Germain
Twitter correspondent Emily Hurst sends this from-the-train-window view of the shuttered Byrd’s Market space at 420 Main St., at the corner of Prairie, as seen this morning. The owners of Georgia’s Farm to Market — the outsize buffet venue and natural-foods grocery store in that former Kmart space on the I-10 feeder near Dairy Ashford, formerly known as Sandy’s Market — are planning to open a second location here in November. Georgia’s Downtown will include a restaurant, a small grocery store (featuring many of the same products Georgia and Rick Bost pull from their farm and ranch in Waller, their own meat-processing plant in Bellville, and other local sources), and a beer and wine bar in the building’s basement, called “The Cellar.” They’ll also be renting out the basement for events. Behind the craft paper and signs on the windows, the interior is ready for its remodel — designed by Ziegler Cooper Architects.
- From farm to downtown [Prime Property]
- Georgia’s Farm to Market has downtown on its mind with Main Street location [Culturemap]
- Georgia’s Farm to Market and Georgia’s Downtown
Photo: Emily J. Hurst
YOUR NEW DOWNTOWN PARKING HANDICAP That borrowed disabled parking placard trick you’ve been using to get free parking all day in metered spaces Downtown? It won’t work for much longer, Mayor Parker announced today, calling the abuse of the hanging tags an “epidemic.” That’s right: After October 8th you’ll only be able to park free with a placard for about 2 hours, or whatever the posted limit is. After that, you’ll have to feed the meter, or face a $30 fine. Downtown has 4,200 metered spaces; parking officials say as many as 500 of them are occupied for most of the day by vehicles displaying the disabled placards. [Houston Politics]
SKANSKA HELPING HOUSTON CLUB TO EARLY EXIT
A year after Downtown’s Houston Club Building fell into foreclosure, the U.S. division of Swedish construction firm Skanksa has at last bought the 63-year-old building at 811 Rusk. But the new owner isn’t saying yet whether it plans to tear down the 18-story property. A company representative tells Nancy Sarnoff, though, that it will be “very difficult†to update and repair the structure. In any case, Skanska is letting tenants’ leases expire, and is helping the Houston Club itself relocate to “another downtown building†in February 2013, 2 years before its lease is up. [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo : Silberman Properties
Judges and their staff from the 1st and 14th state courts of appeals won’t move in until next month, but a restored and rejiggered version of the 1910 Harris County Courthouse at 301 Fannin St. downtown was opened yesterday for a rededication ceremony after 5 years of construction. PGAL and Vaughn Construction directed a $65 million renovation that undid all sorts of alterations to the building begun in 1953. The original building was designed by an architect from Dallas, Charles Erwin Barglebaugh, on the site of 4 previous county courthouses. Swamplot photographer Candace Garcia brings back this photo tour:
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THAT THEATER SPACE IN THE NEW HOUSTON BALLET BUILDING REALLY CHAPS MY ASS 
“I have been going to the theater for nearly four decades, which means at the very least that I’ve encountered every possible sort of venue. I’ve sprawled on dirty gymnasium floors while watching modern dance, perched in rickety folding chairs during community Shakespeare productions, and squeezed into wooden fold-downs from the 19th century for long Mahler symphonies.
I’ve languished in some of the oldest opera houses of Europe, where the seats are notoriously awful. I am sorry to say that even paint-chipped baseball bleachers are more comfortable than the seven rows of upholstered benches in the Margaret Alkek Williams Dance Lab at Houston Ballet’s new Center for Dance.
. . . The seats are exactly one foot deep, with “backrests” only one foot high. Place two rulers in an “L†shape on your backside and you’ll get the idea: no support at all. You might be thinking that I should just lose some weight, and I won’t argue the point. However, a female friend told me recently that I have ‘no ass,’ so I don’t think it’s merely a matter of my size. I looked around and noticed everyone else shifting as well. There were several large people in the audience, and they looked positively miserable.” — Theodore Bale, reviewing a pair of Woody Allen plays put on by the Back Porch Players. [Culturemap; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Michael Coppens [license]
DIGGING OUT FROM HEAVEN ON EARTH 
Updated task list for the investor group that bought the dilapidated and long-vacant Heaven on Earth Plaza Hotel at 801 St. Joseph Pkwy. at Travis St. Downtown 3 years ago: 1) Pay off $4.2 million mortgage on property; 2) work way out of bankruptcy (declared just last week, to avoid foreclosure); 3) close on $22 million construction loan to redevelop the 31-story former Holiday Inn (and later Days Inn) into an “as economy class as possible” hotel. Meanwhile, New Era Hospitality — the group that bought the property in 2008 from a fund connected to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi — recently spent around $30,000 to secure the building, after receiving a stream of municipal citations for “dangerous building parts, visual blight, unsecured entrances, and signs of urine and bodily fluids.” The project’s general contractor tells Purva Patel that plans to turn the gutted property into an “upscale” hotel have been scaled back. [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo: arch-ive.org
THE 5 PLACES IN HOUSTON WHERE YOU’RE MOST LIKELY TO RUN INTO PEDESTRIANS The intersections of Milam and Dallas, Milam and Prairie, and San Jacinto and Congress St. Downtown; Westheimer and McCue near the Galleria; and Bellaire and Corporate Dr. just inside Beltway 8 in Asiatown rank as the top locations for auto-pedestrian accidents, according to a Chronicle review of city records. A grand total of 2,204 collisions involving cars and people traveling on foot have taken place in Houston since 2008, resulting in a total of 174 pedestrian deaths. The deaths were concentrated differently, “along the U.S. Highway 59 corridor near West Park and along Interstate 45 North and I-10 East,” with 43 percent of them taking place on freeways or major highways. [Houston Chronicle]
DOWNTOWN BREWERY CAN’T GET THE TAPS FLOWING San Antonio’s Freetail Brewing Co. has announced an “indefinite suspension” of its plans to build a 3-story, 20,000-sq.-ft. brewery, store, and restaurant in an unidentified existing building near the corner of Main and Prairie St. The problem: plenty of hops, not enough yeast: “I began to run into an increasing level of resistance in capital markets,” brewery owner Scott Metzger politely explains in a press release. He tells beer blogger Ronnie Crocker he wasn’t willing to scale back the $4.2 million project, and will keep fiddling with the company’s San Antonio operation instead. [Beer, TX; previously on Swamplot]
The almost here, the already here, and the soon-to-be-departed:
- Opening Soon: City inspection issues having been conquered, Hubcap Grill‘s new Heights-ish outpost in Shady Acres is now aiming for an opening “mid/late” next week, tweets burger-slinger Ricky Craig. The converted drive-up at 1133 W. 19th St. is just around the corner from Cedar Creek. Plenty more patio seating in back.
- Already Open: So sorry you missed the christenings, but the nightclub, restaurant-bar, and wading pool carved out of the former Settegast Kopf funeral home at 3320 Kirby, have been open and holding events for a week or 2 already. That place wearing its paneling on the outside is Hendricks Pub and Eatery. Roak is the nightclub; the atrium pool has its own name: Rush. The bars and their neighbors in the David Crockett subdivision immediately to the west will have plenty of time to become acquainted with each other before their court date next May. Some local residents have filed suit against the bars’ owners, claiming the clubs are in violation of local deed restrictions:
A local engineering firm is buying the original 1967 model of AstroWorld listed for sale recently on Craigslist — and plans to donate it to the Houston Public Library’s Metropolitan Research Center, so that it can be put on display in the newly expanded Julia Ideson Building. I.A. Naman + Associates president and “very regular” Swamplot reader Thomas G. Barrow says he learned about the model from our post yesterday: “My accountant happened to be walking by my office and I asked if I could have some money. He looked at the piece and said ‘That’s cool!’ and a few minutes later we did the deal.” Barrow says he’s already spoken with library officials about the installation, and that they’ve already begun looking for an interim home for the model before it goes on display to the public. Naman was the mechanical and electrical design engineer for AstroWorld, the Astrodome, and several related facilities.
- About Us [IAN+A]
- Domed Stadium Air-Conditioning Design (PDF) [IAN+A]
- Previously on Swamplot: Now on Craigslist: Original AstroWorld Model, For Sale: Early Model AstroWorld
Photos: Bill Davenport
