- 1516 Campbell Rd. [HAR]
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Spring Branch
You might want to grab a spoon to dig into this 2001 neo-Victorian on a big corner lot in the Bellewood (spelled Bellwood in some places) neighborhood of Spring Branch. Its frothy paint pairings with chocolate- or vanilla-stained trim would be right at home in an ice cream shoppe. The pier-and-beam property last changed hands in June 2012, at $765K. Its listing last week has a $1.15 million asking price. There’s an open house scheduled for Sundae afternoon.
Lots of Lot
- 3123 Lazy Spring Dr. [HAR]
Note: The original version of this story misreported the home’s asking price. It is being offered at $749,900.
Blue. Red. Green. Orange. Were it not for the Dublinesque color rotation on the doors of a 4-pack of eco-friendly contemporary homes in Spring Branch’s Melody Oaks neighborhood, might owners accidentally enter the wrong one? Unit 1 — the bluesy one (top) that shores up one end of the lookalikes — is back on the market. Its listing by the owner-agent over the weekend has a $789,900 $749,900 price tag attached. That’s up, uh, somewhat from its purchase price in April 2013: $484,950.
The team at The ODD Group, (aka Open Design & Development, and including Royce/Eagleton Architects), is behind these “urban cottages” (above) proliferating in a newly minted “pocket community” tagged Janak Place. It’s located north of Westview Dr. between Wirt Rd. and Antoine Dr.
Urban Cottage Cluster
Here is a close-up view of an upcoming apartment complex that eastbound Hwy. 290 travelers might see to the west as they enjoy that new short-cut to I-10. Sueba Development’s Residences at North Post Oak is going up at 1300 N. Post Oak Rd. a little north of Awty International School and a smidge south of the Hempstead Hwy. and the creaky remnants of Northwest Mall. This project is almost catty-corner to another Sueba development — the North Post Oak Lofts, at 1255 N. Post Oak, tucked away behind Prince’s Diner.
A two-story office building and warehouse complex was demolished in 2012 to make way for the project.
Spring Branch East Redo
Here’s the early progress on Spring Branch’s Maravilla Court, a planned 28-home gated community going up in the 1700 block of Pine Chase Dr. on the site of a demolished 1970s-era apartment complex.
aesthetic oases
Here lie the remains of the New Flea Market, the most recent occupant of a strip mall site at 8315 Long Point Rd. that once was home to the  Spring Branch K-Mart. Workers are scraping an 8-acre parcel of the larger site at the corner of Hillendahl Blvd. to make way for the Village at Spring Branch, a 100-home David Weekley development offering three-story townhouses and garden and patio homes ringing a pool and cabana. Blue-light specials will be offered around $400k; premium buys will go on sale at $700k. Retail — and the tiny, historic Hillendahl Cemetery (captured below in an old photo) — will remain along the Long Point frontage.
What’s New Is Old
Houston’s (and America’s) first Walmart grocery store named and designed to cater to Latinos shut its doors at the end of last week. Supermercado de Walmart opened 5 years ago in Spring Branch in a converted 39,000-square-foot Neighborhood Market-style store at 7960 Long Point Rd., amid a fanfare of mariachi music and a smorgasbord of free food and drink samples. Those days are long gone: A reader sends in a pic (at right) of the far more offhand sign taped to the glass door.Â
Spring Branch Supermarket Shutdown
Developers have become very interested in Spring Branch, notes a Swamplot tipster. The latest evidence: the recent sale of the Blalock Woods Apartments (pictured above), just north of the Katy-Fwy.-side 99 Ranch Market at 1111 Blalock Rd. The new owner of the townhome-style complex is a group put together by investment and apartment-development firm Stanmore Partners. The property changed hands on October 1st; on the same date, residents of the Spring Branch apartment complex received a brief letter saying Greystar Management Services will be taking over management of all 316 units. The letter didn’t reveal the name of the property’s new owner, and didn’t say anything about shutting down the place, but a source tells Swamplot that no new leases are being written, and that a “departure deadline” of June 2015 is being planned.
New Homes or Apartments?
A mere half-dozen readers have written Swamplot to ask about this strange multi-story steel-framed structure that’s been going up next to the Lowe’s on I-10 between Blalock and Bunker Hill — or its twin on the site of the former Casa Elena restaurant across the freeway from The Woodlands at 26824 Interstate 45 North. And we’re guessing a few more of you are curious as well, but just haven’t had the time to send in your photos and speculation. Capitalizing on the freeway mystery, the company behind the structure has set up a website at GuessWhatThisIs.com. (With indoor-skydiving facilities in 9 other U.S. cities already, iFLY has been through the drill before.)
Indoor Skydiving
The interior of a decked out 1978 Spring Branch Estates home uses changing floor finishes to cue its ups and downs as the floor plan twists around a spiral staircase beneath a 20-ft. dome. The flow creates living spaces on several levels — and some rather unusual, futuristic features . . .
Taking Turns
- 1722 Springwood Dr. [HAR]
There are vintage, historical, and perhaps sentimental aspects of this place in Merlin Place, just north of Spring Valley: The listing notes the home was “modeled after” the owner’s previous property in Piney Point. And bits of old Houston, older Galveston, and really old New Orleans worked themselves into the 1995 custom home, which still has some unfinished rooms. Thursday’s listing of the Mansard-roofed property, located between Voss and Bingle roads and south of Westview Dr., has an $840,000 asking price.
Saving Graces
A HELIPORT LANDS IN SPRING BRANCH EAST 
A Swamplot reader is wondering what the story is behind a new helipad that’s landed on the almost-12-acre former industrial site at the northwest corner of the intersection of N. Post Oak Rd. and Westview Dr.: “About a month or more ago they cleared all the brush. A couple of weeks ago they took out the crappy wire fencing. Then they put up a nice tall wooden fence around about half the property. Last week, a helicopter showed up! Google Earth shows the nice new helicopter landing pad, along with a support building. The last thing I expected in Spring Branch was a heliport!” County property records show the lot at 1495 N. Post Oak Rd. was purchased in April of last year by an entity called NPO 1495 LP. A new driveway blocked by a keypad-operated gate now extends off of N. Post Oak and leads to the pad, in the northwest corner of the site, our copter-spotter continues, and adds: “It’s damned weird.” Photo: Swamplot inbox
