Cherry Demolition crews are attacking portions of the Memorial Club Apartments at 904 Westcott St. this morning. A tipster tells Swamplot the section of apartments on the east side of Westcott have been vacant for a few weeks, and that ovens, washers, dryers, and other appliances were hauled off last week.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: GOODBYE TO WOODCREST 
“. . . I contend that Rice Military has eaten up Woodcrest whatever the original boundaries were. I have lived about a mile from that Knox Street house for five years, riding my bike through there several times a week, and have never seen any evidence of the Woodcrest brand. (Though the pic of the sign in the TC Jester esplanade on the crickets-empty Woodcrest Neighborhood Association website looks vaguely familiar. It’s in black and white so no telling how old it is.) Rice Military, Crestwood/Glen Cove and Cottage Grove all have Wikipedia pages. Woodcrest does not. 999 out of 1000 Houstonians would not have a clue where Woodcrest was, but lots more know Rice Military. Its original identity has been erased in the last ten or 15 years and it’s now a Condo Canyon like Rice Military so let’s just let that boring Woodcrest name go, especially since there’s a Crestwood right down the street.” [John Nova Lomax, commenting on Hearsay Doubling Up Downtown; Touring the Inner Loop’s Second-Cheapest Rent House] Illustration: Lulu
Wide open spaces are inside as well as outside a 1994 contemporary home of steel and Galvalume siding on a heavily landscaped half-an-acre unrestricted lot tucked into the southern hinterlands of Rice Military. The green-screened property first appeared on the market back in January. Its price tag dropped by $100K last week — to $2.65 million.
Architect Meeks + Partners has posted a rendering of the steel-framed apartment complex Greystar is planning to replace the Memorial Club Apartments lining the southern boundary of the Washington on Westcott roundabout. Swamplot reported Greystar’s plans for the apartments last year — along with a tip that the planned redevelopment would include a new Trader Joe’s. The rendering shows no sign of a Trader Joe’s, but it does show the base of the apartment structure filled with retail spaces and outdoor dining areas facing the roundabout. The view appears to be taken southeast from the roundabout; the existing stone Rice Military placard is in the foreground.
“It looks like someone has bought the whole block between Feagan, Westcott, and Knox in Rice Military next to the Commonwealth Title office building,” a reader writes in accompaniment of a series of photos. “There are several old cottages with for sale signs showing the houses as ‘to be moved’ although they don’t look salvageable to me.” What, the reader wants to know, is going to happen here?
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHAT WENT WRONG IN RICE MILITARY AND THE WEST END “you get what you get. if the buyers of those units and the developers don’t have the initiative to deed restrict unit-divided rentals, it’s at their own fault. The city already dropped the ball by not having a minimum lot divisible in there originally. all of those 5000 sf cottages were not a realistic use of the land, but neither is 4 attached units on a common unregulated drive with gate, set to 20′ wide asphalt roads and no curbs/gutters. your comment that they will become slums is short-sided. i have a friend who lives in this type of housing in Boston, i assure you charlestown is both desirable and nice — his rent is $3.25 psf. forget that little white ghetto pocket you saw in ‘the town’ . . . this is the west end. always has been, always should be. shame on the city for not investing in infrastructure here, and shame on the buyer for not understanding the realities of paying $300,000 for attached unit housing with nobody taking ownership of a cooperative housing complex. really the developers leave that unchartered because the buyers are cheap, and they shy away from a house with an HOA. the assumption is the HOA has froth in it. so instead, they get a paved courtyard that runs into deferred maintenance issues and neighboring owners who say ‘piss off’ on everybody chipping in to fix it. if i owned one and was renting it to carpetbagging yankees, that would be my opinion and attitude.” [HTX REZ, commenting on Comment of the Day: What To Call the Greater West End]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHAT TO CALL THE GREATER WEST END “Forgive me if this has been discussed before, but am I the only one who thinks that the Wash Ave area needs one, unifying neighborhood name? I live in Magnolia Grove, but no one knows what that is, so I have to just say “Off Wash Ave†(though that implies that I moved there to be close to Wash Ave bars, which is NOT the case) or say that I’m in between Montrose and the Heights (which is a stretch). Rice Military stops at Durham/Shepherd so that isn’t accurate. The neighborhoods can continue to retain their individual neighborhood names, but the entire area [PDF] can have one unifying name so that folks know what you’re talking about (e.g., Montrose is the larger neighborhood that contains Hyde Park). I would think realtors and retailers would both jump at the chance to not have to describe the area by referring to street names. Part of the area is called the West End (I think the area between Shepherd, Wash Ave, Heights, and Katy Freeway), and I think that would be a cool name to describe the whole area (particularly given the fact that the area used to be the end of town). I’m sure there are other cool names too, but any name should not contain ‘Heights’ in the title, as the area is decidedly not the Heights and the feel/look is incredibly different. The area’s former name, ‘Smokeytown,’ should also be out for obvious reasons.” [Eric, commenting on New Shepherd Dr. Little Woodrow’s To Serve Pub Fare, Too]
NEW SHEPHERD DR. LITTLE WOODROW’S TO SERVE PUB FARE, TOO 
Beer after wine: Closed back in November, Block 7 at 720 South Shepherd Dr. is being replaced by Little Woodrow’s, reports Eater Houston’s Eric Sandler. Just south of the Washington Corridor in Rice Military Magnolia Grove and a block east from the about-to-open Katch 22 from Roger Clemens’s kid Kory, the new Shepherd spot, rep Nick Menage tells Sandler, will house no ordinary Woodrow’s: “In a twist, this location will have a full kitchen that will serve an updated mix of bar foods including burgers, nachos and pizzas from the old Block 7 oven. Menage assures fans of the bar’s popular steak nights that there are plans to maintain that tradition, too.” [Eater Houston; previously on Swamplot] Photo of Block 7: Panoramio user Wolfgang Houston
The son of Sugar Land Skeeters ace and former Astros hurler Roger Clemens is renovating a tapas bar into a house of “sports and spirits” that’ll be called Katch 22. That’s Katch with a K — for strikeout, if you’re scoring at home. Renovations are already underway at the former Convivio space here at 700 Durham in Rice Military. Kody Kory Clemens, reports Eater Houston’s Eric Sandler, will be Katch 22’s executive chef; he studied at Le Cordon Bleu and met co-proprietor Luke Mandola while working at Ragin’ Cajun. Sandler adds that though there will be 11 screens here showing ball games, the owners stress that Katch 22 is not a sports bar. Either way, it’s expected to open in May.
Photo: Allyn West
A tipster tells Swamplot that a parcel of the Memorial Club Apartments property at 904 Westcott  is “confirmed” as the future site of Houston’s fourth Trader Joe’s. Organized around the Rice Military roundabout near Memorial Park, the apartments are split down the middle by Westcott; the photo above shows a view from the roundabout looking east toward Washington.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: TOO DULL TO BE HAUNTED “As a former owner of a condo in Park Memorial (just a few feet south of the slab where the bones were found), I hate to break it to you hopeful readers, but there was not even remotely anything spooky or creepy that occurred on the grounds during the 5 years I lived there. There simply wasn’t anything going on . . . paranormal or otherwise. Sorry.” [Dave, commenting on Park Memorial Condos, New Apartments Built on Top of Old Rice Military Cemetery]
Spooked former residents looking for some sort of larger, more mystical explanation for the disastrous end of the Park Memorial Condos at 5292 Memorial Dr. now have confirmation of a first-class backstory to hang their storytelling hats on. A little late for Halloween, a medical examiner has determined that the human remains discovered this summer during the condos’ demolition — and the preparation of the site for its replacement, the Park Memorial Apartments — belong to bodies interred at a cemetery that once graced the site. That would be the Crooms Cemetery, Preservation Houston’s David Bush tells teevee reporter Deborah Wrigley. The African-American burial ground was named after Felix Crooms (who scored nearby Crooms St. as well), was in operation from approximately 1917 to 1937, and also served as the final resting place for members of St. Luke’s Missionary Baptist Church.
A reader wants to know what’s happening on the south side of Memorial Dr. between Birdsall and Knox St., just east of Westcott: “In mid-September a garden store opened in the warehouse-type building and then shut down just a few weeks later. Just last week a demolition crew tore down the warehouse [see photo above]. Also last week, there was a crew salvaging some building fixtures from the abandoned restaurant building next door (used to be La Mia). Will this building [on the left in the photo] go next? Any idea of what the site is being used for? There has been a lot of development in the area recently (Black Walnut Cafe) and more is on the way (a storage facility and older apartment complex on the north side of Memorial is about to be torn down for multi-family housing).”
Photo: Swamplot inbox
ABOUT THOSE “EARLY MORNING” CONCRETE POURS 
A neighbor of the Park Memorial construction site in Rice Military writes: “Just a question on Houston city ordinances. Are there any restrictions on construction in the middle of the night? I was awakened at 3 am this morning by a massive concrete pour. The site has been lit up with floodlights and there are multiple trucks with back up signals, machinery noise and yelling workers. I found some general noise ordinances but wondered if there are any other rules? This is as bad as any nightclub or worse.” [Swamplot inbox; previously on Swamplot]
If it’s, say, 1980, and you’re trying to get rid of a dead body, burying it at the foundation level of a brand-new condo complex going up over the reported site of an ancient cemetery might sound like a perfect after-offing disposal plan. But in Houston, you never know what’s going to get dug up next. HPD detective Carlos Cardenas tells Chronicle reporter Mike Glenn he doesn’t think the partial skeleton unearthed by construction workers yesterday on the site of the recently demolished Park Memorial Condominiums at 5292 Memorial Dr. (pictured above in a late stage of assisted decomposition) belongs to the native American graveyard reported to have existed there previously.
Forensic testing should give a clearer answer, but the circumstances of the body’s burial appear to tell a story on their own: The human remains were discovered along Chandler St. near Arnold, at the far northeastern corner of the complex, wedged between a retaining wall and a concrete slab that workers were taking out. The body was likely concealed there when the Park Memorial Condos were built, police detectives tell Glenn.
