Second Ward

Featured Posts
01/18/19 11:30am

A Look Around the Miabella Apartment Building That Could Be Plopped in the Middle of a N. Nagle St. Neighborhood

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Second Ward
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This 4-story glass and stucco box dubbed Miabella got pulled from the agenda before Houston’s city planning commission could take a look at it yesterday, but renderings of it are still floating around the interwebs. It’s planned to go up on 3 currently vacant home lots at the corner of Fox St. and N. Nagle St., putting it 3 blocks north of Navigation Blvd. in the Second Ward. The straight-shot rending above shows where its grade-level garage will let out onto N. Nagle.

Its Fox-St.-side will also provide access to parking:

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Second Ward
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Quicklink
01/08/19 2:15pm

Other Local Recipients of the UAE’s Harvey Foreign Aid Check: Library, Homeless Shelter, Kids Health Squad

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Second Ward
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OTHER LOCAL RECIPIENTS OF THE UAE’S HARVEY FOREIGN AID CHECK: LIBRARY, HOMELESS SHELTER, KIDS HEALTH SQUAD Also receiving a chunk of that $6.5 million check that the United Arab Emerites announced its cutting Houston: the city’s Flores Neighborhood Library branch at 110 N. Milby St. It’s been closed since Harvey, but the books and equipment inside the building at Milby and Canal are mostly in decent shape, a spokesperson for Councilwoman Karla Cisneros told the Chronicle‘s Alyson Ward last summer. (The floor and drywall, she says, are another story.) $800,000 will go toward repairs as well as “upgrades to the library’s programming and computer lab and the purchase of new furniture,” according to the city’s press release. Beyond the library, a new homeless shelter to be built in an unspecified location will also get in on the UAE aid money: $2 million of it. Dubbed The Navigation Center, it’ll provide temporary housing for folks waiting on somewhere else more permanent and will also function as a disaster recovery shelter during storms. And last but not least, Houston’s health department is getting $1.1 million, which it’ll use to fight environmentally-induced illnesses in children. How so? By bringing its asthma education program into 3 more ISD schools, testing kdis for blood lead poisoning, and creating a new illness screening team its calling the Children’s Environmental Health Mobile Unit. [City of Houston] Photo: Houston Public Library

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Buying and Selling
11/30/18 2:15pm

Kaldis Buys Coffee-Adjacent Cameron Iron Works Plant

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Redevelopment, Second Ward
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An entity connected to Kaldis Development is the proud new owner of the Cameron Iron Works complex across the railroad tracks from the shuttered coffee plant on Milby St. And already, the developer — which has a thing for refilling old Houston buildings — is marketing its purchase for lease as The Cameron and promising to renovate it into something that restaurant, bar, and event venue tenants can get in on.

The 1.43-acre property at 711 Milby St. is home to 2 buildings: the 3-story brick one shown above with Cameron’s name set in stone above the main entrance, and a less eye-catching warehouse next-door to it, shown below from the corner of Rusk St.

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Forging a New Path
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Bars and Clubs
10/01/18 12:30pm

Moon Tower Inn’s Old Patio Is Now Completely Plowed Following the 3-Day Farewell Bender It Hosted Last Week

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Renovations, Second Ward
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Drink specials set the stage not only for what Moon Tower Inn billed as a “gluttonous celebration” of its 8-year anniversary 2 weeks ago, they also helped management get rid of all its inventory so that the venue could close down while workers install a new patio in place of its old one. Following 3 days of clearance festivities, the bar ran dry in the afternoon last Sunday — although some “cheap ass” food remained in stock until Friday, August 25, when it finally shut its doors. Now, a Swamplot reader sends the photo at top showing what used to be the Moon Tower’s covered patio transformed into an earthen field. From it, the new heated and cooled outdoor seating area will materialize with help from the equipment pictured above.

It’ll span the yard between the corner of Canal and North Ennis streets and the shipping container that architecture firm Kinetic Design Lab repurposed for the bar’s reopening in 2012:

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3004 Canal St.
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Bars and Clubs
09/24/18 2:15pm

Who’s Drinking in D&W Lounge at 7 AM?

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Quicklink, Second Ward
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WHO’S DRINKING IN D&W LOUNGE AT 7 AM? Until recently, a lot of “third shift workers on their way home” from the Maxwell House coffee plant 3 blocks up Milby St., reports John Nova Lomax in his recent Vice ode to the bar. (There’s no getting away with it under current regs, but — he adds — D&W used to be a 24-7 establishment.) “It was also a hit with weary cops and assistant district attorneys,” says Lomax. The coffee plant closed down over the summer, but the bar’s hours remain the same. [Vice; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Nathan F.

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Featured Posts
09/20/18 4:00pm

What Rex Supply’s Harrisburg Complex Would Look Like with Restaurants, Throngs of Pedestrians Taking Over Its Thru-Street

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Second Ward
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The rendering at top from Texas real estate firm Hunington shows off what Rex Supply’s double-block complex along the Green Line would look like redone with a shop-lined pedestrian zone dubbed Rex Alley at its heart, where Everton St. is now. The full setting is called Milby Junction and would be carved from the array of industrial buildings that sit on either side of the north-south road between Harrisburg Blvd. and Preston St. right now. The 2 biggest are shown preserved in the map above, along with a house to the northwest that appears to play no part in Hunington’s plans.

An L-shaped building adjacent to the house is the one goner. It’s visible just north of the structure labeled REX SUPPLY in the view below from the corner of Harrisburg and Milby:

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Milby Junction
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East End
08/24/18 4:30pm

Where Lovett Plans To Stick 120 More Townhomes in Place of 3 Houses, 3 Warehouses, and Some Second Ward Dirt

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Proposed Developments, Second Ward
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A Swamplot reader notes that 7 variances signs recently cropped up all at once on 5 adjacent blocks in the Second Ward. Each one indicates a request for the same thing: to chop up the properties into lots less than 3,500-sq.-ft. each so that new townhomes can rise on them. (Some include more specific requests too, like shuffling around parking and scooting certain homes closer to the roads.) Taken together, 127 new homes would be spread across just under 4 acres in the area, bounded Sampson and Milby streets to the east and west — and Garrow and Commerce to the north and south.

Some houses would fill in the gaps between warehouse buildings and cottages, while others would take their spots:

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Single-Family Swapout
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Apartments
08/22/18 3:00pm

What the New Commerce St. Old Folks Apartments Will Look Like to the Middle Schoolers Across the Street from Them

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Proposed Developments, Second Ward
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Plans for the 3-story Campanile on Commerce apartments slated for the corner of Commerce and Delano streets are still winding their way through the city’s approval process, but a new strip of imagery shows what they’d look like viewed from the magnet school across the street from them. The idea is to put 220 120 units on the vacant 3-acre field extending directly north and east of the Baylor College of Medicine Biotech Academy at Rusk (which recently dropped its pre-K through 5th grade programs to go middle-school-only). A corner porte-cochere depicted above on the right would front Commerce adjacent to the complex’s entrance driveway.

Parking hooks around the back of the apartments, buffering them from the block-long warehouse building directly to their north:

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Campanile on Commerce
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Featured Posts
08/21/18 2:15pm

31 Townhome Sites Are Gaining Ground in the Second Ward Before Anything Gets Built on Them

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New Construction, Second Ward, Townhomes
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Mounds of soil are now piled up behind La Familia Meat Market, where InTown Homes is in the early stages of construction on its latest townhome cluster, Williams on Commerce. A commercial fill and grade permit issued for the site back in mid-April gave the developer permission to jack up 31 of the lots it plans to build on using the dirt pictured above. Now that much of it’s been dumped in place, a few PVC pipes are starting to sprout from it.

Other infrastructure waits patiently on the sidelines:

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Featured Posts
07/26/18 10:15am

Houston Maritime Museum Sets Sail for Canal St.

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Museums, Openings and Closings, Second Ward
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Museum movers are now lugging cargo out of 2204 Dorrington St. as part of the Houston Maritime Museum‘s move to the Second Ward, where it’ll remain landlocked. Two years ago, the museum announced plans to build a new $50 million facility designed by architects at Gensler next to the dock for the Sam Houston boat that conducts tours of the ship channel. But nothing’s opened up yet along that section of waterfront, south of Clinton Dr. and east of Wayside Dr. in Denver Harbor.

In leaving behind its current converted house southwest of the Med Center for new 3-story office-building environs on the corner of Canal and Navigation, the museum will take on a more businesslike appearance than it’s sported so far.

It’ll also get used to sharing its space; existing tenants in the new building include The Polnick Law Firm and Andes Cafe, pictured below from the west:

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Anchors Up
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Featured Posts
07/10/18 3:30pm

Vacant Second Ward Lot Now Embarks on Second Life as El Segundo Swim Club

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Openings and Closings, Second Ward
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Surf’s up at El Segundo Swim Club, the Second Ward swimming pool bar that’s now soaking up the sun on the formerly vacant lot at 5180 Avenue L, north of Navigation Blvd. The watering hole has been inviting swimmers in to take a dip over the past few days through a series of ticketed preview events that are planned to continue through this weekend.

Shade comes courtesy of the bright orange umbrellas now surrounding the pool deck — in place of the folded-up, gray ones shown above during the site’s transition phase back in February. A few modified shipping containers give visitors room to get out of the sun, too — except for the one on the left in the photo at top; it houses the bar.

The 15,000-sq.-ft. lot didn’t have much flora before the redo, but that’s changed thanks to these transplants:

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Wet Bar
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Featured Posts
06/11/18 12:15pm

Sign of Southside Flying Pizza Now Topping the Vacant Corner of the Shops on Navigation

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Openings and Closings, Restaurants, Second Ward
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Spotted from Canal St. just east of Navigation: signage for Southside Flying Pizza’s fifth location and first in Houston. The Austin restaurant chain is making its way into the southeast corner spot of the right-angled Shops on Navigation strip center that Ancorian Hunington Properties built over the last 2 years. It’s mapped out in the image above from Ancorian, the developer behind another property just east of the corner strip. Aside from Southside’s next-door neighbor 9Round kickboxing gym, other existing cohabitants include Maldives Nail & Spa, Bottles Wine & Spirits, EaDo Dental, Go Cleaners, Cajun Town, and the largest of the bunch — a corner Frost Bank branch:

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Second Ward
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Featured Posts
04/24/18 2:15pm

Two Second Ward Rowhouse Transplants Now Ready for Their Latest Change-Up

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Homes for Sale, Second Ward
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After hauling all 6 of their endangered Victorian cottages 8 blocks and arranging them neatly off Sampson St. 4 years ago, Michael Skelly and Anne Whitlock are now ready to part with the 2 pictured at top. $700,000 is the asking price for both structures — which occupy a single 5,000-sq.-ft. lot at 3408 Garrow St. They’ve been on the market for a week.

Since relocating them, Skelly and Whitlock have also redone the interiors of the 2 cottages:

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Firehouse Backyard
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Bars and Clubs
02/12/18 4:30pm

New Swimming Pool Bar Next to Navigation Cement Plant Now Holding Water, Waiting on Liquor

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New Construction, Second Ward
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Coming soon to the long-vacant lot next to the Cemex cement plant on Navigation east of Lockwood: El Segundo Swim Club, a swimming pool bar shown still under construction but already watered in the photos above. Work on the 1,350-sq.-ft. pool and its surroundings began last July, 2 months after an entity connected to developer Matthew Healey bought the property on the corner of Avenue L and N. Edgewood St. The photos above look over the barbed wire up on the corner of Avenue L to show the 15,000-sq.-ft. yard planted with umbrellas, chairs, a hammock, and a converted shipping container.

A view from N. Edgewood St. shows the freight container fronting the pool:

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Adult Swim
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