06/19/12 2:24pm

The half-empty strip center left over from a series of unfortunate redos of City Hall architect Joseph Finger’s 1937 Tower Community Center (which once served as an art-deco companion piece to the former Tower Theater across the street) is now under contract to a new owner, along with the entire 2.86-acre block at the southwest corner of Westheimer and Montrose. That’s the word from a posting on the property’s listing site noted by Going Up! City, but the listing brokers at HFF aren’t providing any additional information.

Unless someone wants to spill the beans on the purchaser’s identity or any plans for the current home of Half Price Books, Spec’s, Papa John’s, and 3-6-9 China Bistro (along with the standalone Jack-in-the-Box at Montrose and Lovett) before then, you’ll have to wait until the seller issues a press release — which will happen sometime next week, a source tells Swamplot — for additional details. The property went on the market in early March.

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06/01/12 8:43pm

Do you miss the old Galerie Mado Chalvet building at 1706 Westheimer? And, um . . . another question: Do you need a backpack? Designer Julia Gabriel has just the thing for you, then: Your very own handmade 1706 Westheimer Rd. backpack, modeled after photos she took of the hulking duplex-turned-antique-store after it burned last July. It’s since been torn down — along with the neighboring structures on the corner of Dunlavy and Westheimer — for a new development. The HSPVA grad watched the building’s demolition from across the street at Domy Books, but she’d already decided to memorialize the building as a backpack. Yeah, she does that sort of thing: “My backpacks are what I imagine these abandoned buildings were like in their prime: fresh and new with a dash of color,” she writes. “They include a stitched map that shows the buildings original location so it can always find its way home.”

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04/26/12 10:27am

Fresh off its work transforming the former Monarch Cleaners/Fox Diner/Cafe Serranos Cantina/Crome/Pravada building on Shepherd into Triniti Restaurant (with the help of some colorful perforated metal), Houston’s MC2 Architects is now designing its second restaurant — this time from scratch. It’s a “contemporary building with a rustic farmhouse feel” that’ll take the place of the shuttered and soon-to-be-dismantled Ruggles Grill at 903 Westheimer, just east of Montrose. Inside will be a new (yes) rustic American restaurant for the same owners — called Brande, Triniti chef Ryan Hildebrand announced yesterday. All that rusticity will take time, of course: The scheduled opening season is a far-off fall 2013.

Photo: Candace Garcia

04/19/12 1:48pm

THE LOWEDOWN ON LOWER WESTHEIMER? Travel + Leisure “Best, Most, Least” linkbaiter Katrina Brown Hunt tries out a little practical joke on Montrose-bound gullible types in her brief writeup of Houston, ranked a slackin’ No. 26 in the magazine’s accounting of America’s Best Cities for Hipsters: “Like many cities, Houston gives nicknames to its trendy neighborhoods. Case in point: LoWe, short for Lower Westheimer, where you can hang out at Mediterranean-themed coffee shop Agora, dive lounge Catbirds, or El Real Tex-Mex within a historic 1930s theater.” LoWe? Further tourist-oriented insight: “Houston also has two seemingly incompatible draws, according to readers: it ranked well for both luxury shopping and for being affordable.” [Travel + Leisure, via Hair Balls]

04/18/12 1:56pm

ANOTHER TURNOVER IN THE HOUSE OF LA STRADA The Don Julio’s in Montrose will serve its last margarita this Sunday before retreating to a new but more familiarly suburban location in Missouri City, reports b4-u-eat. The Mexican restaurant took over last year from Caffe Bello, which took over the previous year from La Strada in that restaurant’s custom-built building at 322 Westheimer, at the corner of Taft St. Taking over this summer at the same spot, reads the report: “a steak house.” According to Eating Our Words, though, it should be a “high end Mexican” steakhouse, run by Don Julio’s investors. [b4-u-eat; Eating Our Words; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Don Julio’s

08/30/11 1:38pm

Over at the Houston Press, food critic Katharine Shilcutt and chief mapmaker Monica Fuentes have traced the history of locally owned restaurants on the stretch of Lower Westheimer from east of Taft all the way to Dunlavy way, way back — to the long-ago days of 1997. Sure, the sequence of maps (see below for the latest) leaves out bars, coffee shops, and fast-food joints, but culinary additions are color-coded (after the start date) by year of appearance. Featured appearances between now and next year: Underbelly, the Hay Merchant, Uchi, and L’Olivier. Your guide to eating the strip and curve:

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08/04/11 8:13pm

Who’s going to lease those small retail spaces being developed along with Uchi’s takeover of the former Felix Mexican Restaurant space in Montrose? Here’s one answer: Opening later this year just behind the restaurant will be Southside Espresso, a new retail coffee house venture (and beer-and-wine bar) from Sean Marshall, the proprietor of Fusion Beans. The 714-sq.-ft. space has an address of 904B Westheimer, but the front door faces Grant St. The coffee shop will be open from 7 am to 11 pm and allow customers to use the same bathroom facilities as Uchi patrons.

Also helping to tip Westheimer’s boiling point a little further east: another new coffee shop, just announced for the recently re-muraled former Mary’s, Naturally space at 1018 Westheimer. Picky caffeine prophets David Buehrer and Ecky Prabanto will be moving up from their popular perch at Greenway Coffee & Tea in the basement food court of Greenway Plaza building number 5. (They plan to keep that small but popular shop running, though.) Their new Montrose venture, Blacksmith, will likely include “a small, but full kitchen” when it opens next spring, Buehrer reports.

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07/18/11 2:33pm

ONE’S A MEAL NO MORE “People have weddings here. They don’t want to put One’s A Meal on their wedding invitations. ‘Ted’s’ sounded corny . . . like a diner. [Besides the name] I haven’t changed one thing. The employees didn’t change, the menu didn’t change.” — New owner Ted Mousoudakis, who’s changed the name of the Lower Westheimer 24-hour joint to “Theo’s.” Also new: the beer and wine license. [Eating Our Words; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Candace Garcia

06/02/11 12:49pm

Thank you, readers, for all the pix you’ve been sending of the ongoing strip show on Lower Westheimer just east of Montrose. Why are the outside walls now gone from the former Felix Mexican Restaurant? Termites ate ’em — or at least polished off enough lard-laden cellulose to require the entire exterior wood structure to be rebuilt. And really, how could the new walls going up for Austin sushi import Uchi — which will reportedly have “many of the same exterior features” as its Tex-Mex predecessor — taste any better?

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05/16/11 3:20pm

Is that just an old wall going the way of all stucco on the vacant former Felix Mexican Restaurant space at Westheimer and Grant? Or is architect Michael Hsu’s rehab of the space — which will turn it into a Houston outpost of Tyson Cole’s Uchi and Uchiko juggernaut from Austin, plus a few other lease spaces — already in progress? Candace Garcia’s brief photo report on one piece of the Great Lower Westheimer Restaurant Rejiggering, below:

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03/11/11 10:53am

Two immigrants from El Salvador who survived what they describe as a “precarious existence” as undocumented workers in Houston for several years plan to buy the 3 Ruggles Grill buildings at 903 Westheimer, tear them down, and build a new 7,500-sq.-ft. restaurant on the site just east of Montrose Blvd. Jose and Gloria Fuentes met each other in Houston after fleeing their war-torn native country in 1978. Their Salvadorian restaurant chain, Gloria’s, now has 12 locations in the Dallas area and one in Austin. The Ruggles purchase hasn’t been completed, the HBJ‘s Allison Wollam reports. But the company also plans to open 3 additional locations nearby: in Sugar Land, The Woodlands, and West U. Ruggles chef and co-owner Bruce Molzan hinted last month that he’d reopen the Ruggles flagship in a new location if the building sold. The 26,812-sq.-ft. property was listed for sale at the end of last year.

Photo: Moody Rambin

12/28/10 12:30pm

Here’s a first look at the not-so-distant future of Lower Westheimer, just a block east of Montrose, where sushi chef Tyson Cole and the owners of Austin’s Uchi and Uchiko restaurants plan to open a first Houston venture. The new Houston Uchi won’t be taking over the whole corner. The neighboring spaces will instead be available à la carte: The new owners are picturing as many as 3 separate businesses (one with a second floor and rooftop deck) leasing the 4,700-sq.-ft. building that used to house Caffe Den and Privé at 908 Westheimer. Also available, around the corner on Grant St.: a little 714-sq.-ft. structure with the address of 904B Westheimer. It’ll share restrooms with Uchi, which will be taking over the former Felix Mexican Restaurant space on the corner, at 904A. The left side of the Grant St. rendering above is the only view we’ve seen so far that shows any part of Uchi itself, but it contains a few clues about how Austin architect Michael Hsu (creator of the original Uchi on South Lamar as well as Houston’s Sushi Raku in Midtown) plans to transform a vintage Tex-Mex classic into something sushi-worthy. It looks like at least a few of those arched windows will stay:

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10/14/10 4:46pm

A few pix from around town, in our occasional photo feature: First, a reader sends in this view of the curious paint job now in progress on the original Ruggles Grill on Lower Westheimer.

Next, we discover the just-opened new home of I-10 refugee Las Alamedas, on the simulated Main Street of Katy’s LaCenterra shopping center in Cinco Ranch:

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09/17/10 1:56pm

WHO WANTS NUMBERS NOW? The Press‘s Katharine Shilcutt passes on the latest: “And in perhaps the strangest news this year, rumblings are coming from reliable sources that Numbers (314 Westheimer) — recently put up for lease — is being eyed by the Pappas family. Yes, that Pappas family. But wait — it gets weirder. The rumors also indicate that they plan to open either a chicken and rice or shrimp and rice joint in the spot where so many … unsavory … activities have taken place over the years. If the rumors prove to be true, would you eat at Numbers’ Chicken & Rice?” [Eating Our Words; previously on Swamplot]