EATSIE BOYS SPACE ON MONTROSE WILL GO CREPE 
Melange Creperie will be taking over for the Eatsie Boys at the 1,200-sq.-ft. former Kraftsmen Bakery space in the same ivy-covered Campanile complex that houses the Black Lab at 4100 Montrose Blvd., according to a quartet of local media reports. The Montrose crepe stand raised $52,000Â toward a move indoors in a Kickstarter fundraising campaign earlier this year. After its lease on the property ends at the end of this month, Eatsie Boys will continue to operate its food truck, but the team behind it plans to focus on its other venture, the 8th Wonder Brewery. [Culturemap; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Local Sugar
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Montrose
FORMER WESTHEIMER PLANT HOUSE GOING STEAK 
The building at 224 Westheimer Rd. in Montrose, on the north side of the street between Helena and Mason St., was long ago home to Bistro 224. Then it became the Plant House. A photo sent in by a reader late last week shows the same structure undergoing another metamorphosis as it transforms into its newest incarnation, a return to its food-serving days. According to building permits taken out for the property, the revamped building will become the Bistecca Steak House once construction is complete. Photo: Sylvia Drew
Demolition crews made short work of The Place apartments at 1341 Castle Ct. late last week. A reader reports seeing the 1974 complex largely intact Friday morning, but coming by again that afternoon to see it in this sorry state:
Castle Court Apartments
Here’s the brick-and-splitface-block strip center that the owner of the building housing the Barnaby’s Café on West Gray at the eastern edge of North Montrose plans to construct in the next 6 months. It’ll be right next door to the Barnaby’s parking lot between Stanford and Taft, on a 15,000-sq.-ft. piece of land that long ago held 3 houses. The West Gray Plaza at 504 W. Gray St. would have 6,000 sq. ft. of retail or office space on the ground floor, plus a 1,600-sq.-ft. half story with a deck above.
The site plan shows a row of head-in parking in front of the building, which would be set to the back of the site:
Lower Westheimer is, of course, one of those select “walkable” areas of Houston, but last weekend’s first corporate-sponsored Sunday Streets made it especially so — even in the absence of a traditional neighborhood festival. The Montrose road was blocked off to automobile traffic from Taft to Woodhead for 4 hours.
Video footage of the event from a DJI Inspire 1 piloted by Adam Brackman shows rare scenes of introduced free-range human bipedal and bi-pedal activity in not-so-native habitat — from a few new angles:
Straight Up from the Street
 Wild, Foraging Lower Westheimer... "Pin It")
NOW IT’S 2 MATTRESS STORES MOVING IN RIGHT NEXT TO EACH OTHER AT THE CORNER OF WESTHEIMER AND MONTROSE 
Montrose watchdogs worried about the aura of chain-store sameness about to descend on the center-of-it-all corner of Westheimer Rd. and Montrose Blvd. once the new Mattress Firm store opens in the former Blockbuster Video spot at 1002 Westheimer: The nation’s largest purveyor of all things mattress understands your concerns. That’s why, this time, it’s mixing it up. As reporter Katherine Feser discovers, a separate store for the same company’s lower-priced (and normally outside-the-Loop) chain, Mattress Pro, will be moving in right next door. [Houston Chronicle] Photo: Katherine Feser/Houston Chronicle
- 1212 Fairview St. Unit 1 [HAR]
Is the park-in-back strip center now a certifiable thing in Houston? Here’s the latest rendering of the small shopping center designed by Ziegler Cooper Architects for the corner of W. Alabama St. and Mandell St. in Montrose, across the street from the Menil Collection parking lot. Like the smaller center at the corner of Westheimer and Dunlavy now home to the Common Bond bakery and the slightly larger one developed by Braun Enterprises at 20th St. and Rutland in the Heights, Alabama Row scoots up just about as close to the main drag as the city’s development rules will let it. And it looks like the building’s south face, fronting West Alabama, is meant to be seen as its front:
Alabama Row
OFF-MENU SPECIAL AT GEORGES BISTRO ON WESTHEIMER: THE WHOLE SHEBANG 
Georges Bistro co-owner Monique Guy tells Eater Houston’s Jakeisha Wilmore that the French restaurant in the space formerly occupied by whole-hog-HQ Feast — and before that by Guy’s Chez Georges — is not on the verge of closing. Who could be spreading rumors to the contrary? Well, there is that online listing for the 3,114-sq.-ft. converted foursquare that houses the property at 219 Westheimer that went up a few weeks ago, offering the building, the 5,500-sq.-ft. lot, and the restaurant, including all fixtures, furniture, and equipment, for $1.295 million. Guy, who with her husband, Georges, owns the building and operates Georges, tells Wilmore the couple only listed the property “to see what kind of interest it would generate.” She declined to say if they had received any notable offers. [Eater Houston; previously on Swamplot] Photo: LoopNet
- 1516 Harold St. [HAR]
WHERE MONTROSE’S FAVORITE CREPE STAND WILL GO AFTER SCORING $52K TO MOVE INDOORS 
With $2,215 to spare and a crepeload of promised food orders to fulfill, Montrose food stand Melange Creperie concluded a successful Kickstarter this morning. Meeting the $50K fundraising goal means the stand will be moving to an actual indoor location . . . somewhere. Owner and chief crepe-folder Sean Carroll tells Swamplot he’d like the restaurant to stay as close to its current regular location (403 Westheimer, at the corner of Taft St.) as possible — but exactly how close depends on the amount of additional investment that comes in. As a result of the Kickstarter, Carroll says, the restaurant has received a lot of inquiries about — and promises of — equity investment. “As we stand now with our Kickstarter plus our current equity promises . . . we can open a restaurant but it will be smaller and not in Montrose.” If he finds sufficient additional investment, he says, he’ll aim for a Montrose spot that’s about 2,000 sq. ft. and has a patio. [Kickstarter] Photo:Â Suzanne R.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE CORNER OF HOUSTON WHERE EVERYBODY WANTS TO BE 
“In the late 1980s and early 1990s I lived a few blocks west of this intersection. Since then I visit the area about once a week, usually to eat at one of the restaurants. I’ve often thought someone should fix up that strip center, but I’ve never thought it reflected poorly on Houston’s ‘cityscape.’ This is, after all, the corner of Montrose and Westheimer. This is the place to be for homeless teens. This used to be the place to be to get designer drugs when they were cheaper and safer. This used to be the place to start looking for some sweet ink or other body mod. This is where I was asked to help a gentleman determine the gender of a potential ‘date’ for the evening. The neighborhood didn’t deteriorate around Uchi; the owners of Uchi picked this spot.” [Memebag, commenting on Comment of the Day: The Sights of Montrose] Illustration: Lulu
- 1200 Jackson Blvd. [HAR]
The formerly bedding-starved heart of Montrose can now rest easy: Mattress Firm has arrived. The nation’s largest mattress retailer has snagged a new location in the former Blockbuster Video spot at 1002 Westheimer Rd. in the Westmont Shopping Center — right at the prominent corner of Montrose and Westheimer. With a mere 98 locations in the greater Houston area, and only 14 in the Inner Loop, Mattress Firm was certainly fortunate to be able to find this prominent spot. Now customers in the dead center of Montrose daunted by the long journey necessary to reach the company’s other outlets — at the corner of West Gray and Montrose (three-quarters of a mile to the north), at the corner of Westheimer and Shepherd (1.2 miles west), or at 2625 Louisiana St. (a mile to the east) will have a place they can travel to more easily — and, of course, rest a bit when they get there.
Mattress Firm Scores Again
The asphalt and branches were flying this morning at the storied former South Beach parking lot off Montrose between California St. and Missouri (more recently home to cars whose owners are visiting the nearby Aladdin restaurant). Pelican Builders has begun clearing the 28,709-sq.-ft. collection of lots — which have separate frontages on Missouri St., Grant St., and California St. — for its 24-townhome California Square project. A few properties from the gated complex of 2-bedroom townhomes have been listed on MLS — for just shy of $500K. Here’s the site plan:
California Square
