COMMENT OF THE DAY RUNNER-UP: WHEN RANDALL’S WAS SWANK “It sounds crazy nowadays but I remember back in the ′80s when this store opened up and they had valet parking under their porte cochere with valets wearing tuxedoes. We were very impressed by the little restaurant inside, too. It was so ritzy! Sad to see the prosperity all gone now.” [AW, commenting on Yes, the Voss Rd. Randall’s Is Closing]
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Memorial
Update, 3:30 p.m.: Randall’s president Paul McTavish confirms that this store will be closing. No date was mentioned.
A few readers are reporting that they’ve heard from Randall’s employees here that the store near San Felipe and Voss will shut its doors by the end of the month. One reader even has a date: May 23. County records show that the 56,511-sq.-ft. building sits on 157,149 sq. ft. of pricey Memorial property across Voss from the new Trader Joe’s — the parking lot of which appeared a bit less barren than the Randall’s lot in this photo taken this morning. Attempts to contact Safeway haven’t been returned.
- Previously on Swamplot: The 3 Trader Joe’s Grocery Stores Coming to the Houston Area, Pix of Trader Joe’s Lonely Voss and San Felipe Landing Site, Sure Looks Like a Trader Joe’s Is Headed for Voss and San Felipe
Photo: Allyn West
Note: Story updated with new photos.
An update comes in from reader Nicole Sherman, who saw this bare facade-to-be and fruity Sprouts Farmers Market sign at the end of last week and snapped these photos: Filling in for the former Sports Authority in the Kirkwood Shopping Center at 11940 Westheimer, this will be the 4th Sprouts in Houston and the farthest in, only 2 miles beyond the Beltway. In October, the green grocer revealed the first 3 locations it would open in Houston this year:
A Swamplot reader sends in this photo of the shuttered Rice Epicurean on Memorial, 1 of 4 stores (of 5) that the longtime Houston grocer said it would close and lease to North Carolina-based The Fresh Market this year. (The location on Fountain View at Inwood will remain open.) Those splashy signs say that the store’s liquidating its fixtures and “supermarket equipment.” So, you know, act fast! While supplies last!
- Previously on Swamplot: Rice Epicurean Giving Up the Groceries, Leasing 4 Locations to Fresh Market, Why the Aisles Were Empty at Rice Epicurean
Photo: Swamplot inbox
Brick-fired, you think? Swamplot tipster Ryan Lankford says that when he convinced his mom to add this tantalizing topping to her sign, the 2-story, 4,700-sq.-footer in Memorial that she’s standing in front of was shown 18 times and received 3 offers on its first day. Listed at $1.5 million, the house went option pending not 24 hours later.
- 19 Hibury Dr. [HAR]
Photo: Ryan Lankford
- 11942 Briar Forest Dr. [HAR]
- 9207 Hudson Ct. [HAR]
Developer Gerald Hines added a lake to a 32-acre slice of woodsy Memorial back in 1978. Around it, he built Ethan’s Glen, a townhome community with 288 units divided into 2-building clusters of quadplexes. One of the enclave’s larger units came on the market earlier this month, asking $275,000. The 2-story townhome, which has east and north exposures, retains some of that seventies style, such as rough-hewn cedar siding outside and a living room with walls of rustic planks installed in a herringbone pattern. But it also has new paint, new bathrooms, and new, as in last month, carpet upstairs.
Trader Joe’s has at last confirmed the second and third of the 3 stores that’ll constitute the idiosyncratic grocer’s Houston invasion. If you’ve been following Swamplot, you already know about these locations: In addition to the already announced shopping-center add-on in The Woodlands (recent construction photo at top), there’s another to be constructed in suburban-style big-corniced splendor (midde photo, above) on Voss just north of San Felipe. And yes — the company is now ready to admit — one in the just-decimated hollows of the once-grand Alabama Theater, last known as the Alabama Bookstop bookstore (bottom photo above).
Is this the right address? As Swamplot noted last week, Trader Joe’s received a sales-tax permit for a Memorial-area location at 1440 S. Voss at the end of last year. But the company hasn’t officially announced the locations for its Houston stores yet. Swamplot photographer Candace Garcia poked around the scene on Voss between San Felipe and Woodway over the weekend, to scope out any preparations going on there for a TJ’s landing. There didn’t appear to be any.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: INSIDE THE KNOWLES FAMILY’S WALMART HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS “That sitting area by the fireplace looks familiar — is that where they filmed the commercial with the band members/family opening up all their gifts from Wal-Mart?” [Hellsing, commenting on Is This the House Behind the House of Deréon? Beyonce’s Mom Tina Knowles Selling Farnham Park Mansion]
Fashion designer Tina Knowles put her Houston estate on the market this week — just days after the London Fashion Week launch of her and daughter Beyonce’s House of Deréon International Collection at Selfridges. Coincidence? Yeah, more than likely. The fashion line of women’s clothing and bedding is named after Knowles’s mother and Beyonce’s grandmother, Galveston seamstress Agnèz Deréon (later Agnèz Beyincé). Knowles founded the House of Dereon line with her daughter in 2004 — the same year she bought this property in the gated Memorial-area neighborhood of Farnham Park off San Felipe, west of Voss.
Boasting 5 bedrooms, 5 full and 2 half baths, and the sort of charming, quasi-institutional exterior that could only have sprung from the 1970s, the home is listed at a dollar under $3.5 million. Inside, it’s been done up this way:
Tucked into the Memorial townhome ghetto in the upper left armpit of the West Loop and I-10, you’ll find this 1970 number designed by Preston Bolton. Bolton, who believed in tall ceilings way back when they were stuck in last place and nobody thought they had a chance, stuffed 3 courtyards into this 2,616-sq.-ft. single-story townhouse plan, and placed it on a street where everybody knew his name. The home went on the market last week, listed at $325,000. Interested in a brief tour?
WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN YOUR JACK SACK SOON Bankrupted weight-loss guru Shaun Kelley, who abruptly shut down his fitness center on Voss near San Felipe last month and announced plans for a new business venture with “a major food company,” is also gone from Donald Trump’s multi-level-marketing scheme, where he had planned to promote “custom pharmaceutical-grade vitamins”: “Kelley says he’s no longer working with the Trump Network, but instead is moving yet another concept. ‘I have a new investor who didn’t want me to have anything to do with the gym anymore and we’re solely focused on the food industry,’ he says. ‘We’re currently in negotiations with Jack in the Box to offer a low fat healthy food for $3 to $7.’†[Houston Business Journal; previously on Swamplot]