08/10/11 5:26pm

Who said looking for a match online is easy? This remade 4,818-sq.-ft. home on a half-acre lot near Hilshire Village was on the market almost continuously from fall 2006 to fall 2008 . . . then again in the spring of 2010, and this year from April to the end of June. But you’ve gotta have hope: It’s back on the market again as of last week. How about: 61-year-old Bellewood belle has heart of gold, kitchen counter of granite, master bedroom floor of berber. Grew up in staid suburban Spring Branch Ranch; still inscrutable at first glance, very different on the inside. Dedicated to imagining romantic self, internal growth. Stuck on cul-de-sac, but willing to break down walls to get what I need. Given to recurring fantasies involving candles and wrought-iron balconies; ready to go for baroque if the right offer comes along.

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06/25/10 7:07pm

Got a question about something going on in your neighborhood you’d like Swamplot to answer? Sorry, we can’t help you. But if you ask real nice and include a photo or 2 with your request, maybe the Swamplot Street Sleuths can! Who are they? Other readers, just like you, ready to demonstrate their mad skillz in hunting down stuff like this:

Not sure the “answers” readers provided for this week’s Street Sleuths feature were satisfying enough to merit a summary post, but it’s nice at least to have another excuse to run Jason Tinder’s dramatic photo showing the end of the Komart Marketplace. Here’s what we, uh, “learned”:

  • Spring Branch: So yes, Tinder now does have some “clues” that might help him figure out what’s going on with the Gessner Place Shopping Center on the west side of Gessner just north of I-10, and the remains of Komart. The property is owned by MetroNational, but any redevelopment schemes the company is hatching from its Death Star overlook remain a mystery. Harmonica adds another tidbit to the Memorial City Mall area rumor mill:

    I also understand that they own the center on the other side of Kingsride from the professional building on the South side of 10 and have not been renewing leases.

    In this photo, the Death Star surveys its vanquished foe:

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06/22/10 12:48pm

Got an answer to any of these reader questions? Or just want to be a sleuth for Swamplot? Here’s your chance! Add your report in a comment, or send a note to our tipline.

  • Midtown: A couple of readers are curious about this new sign, which went up at the end of last week at the long-languishing lot south of West Alabama between Travis and Main, across the street from Julia’s Bistro and the Breakfast Klub. There were plans to build a hospital in this location a few years ago. In the last year it’s become an inexpensive parking lot, notes roving Swamplot photographer Candace Garcia, who’s curious how whatever’s being envisioned for the property might “tie in with the rail, the church (SMBC), and the Men’s Center nearby.”
  • Spring Branch: Reader Jason Tinder snaps the dramatic photo below, showing the final moments of vanquished Korean grocery store Komart, and notes the entire Gessner Place Shopping Center, on the west side of Gessner just north of I-10, is being demolished. It looks to him like something else is going in there . . . can anybody give him some clues?

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11/11/09 6:50pm

So much new stuff going on it’s impossible to keep track of it all!

  • Opening Soon? A new “Houston Ave. Bar” at the site of the former Farmers Coffee Shop on the corner of Houston Ave. and White Oak. Here’s the evidence: A permit for a “2 story addition” to the property was approved by the city last month. The corner is already a popular gathering place for floodwaters — several commenters on HAIF have posted photos of the intersection after Hurricane Ike (see above) and Tropical Storm Allison.
  • Moved: The Central City Co-op Wednesday market, from that Ecclesia space next to the Taft St. Coffee House to new digs at the Grace Lutheran Church at 2515 Waugh, just north of Missouri St. Sunday markets are still at Discovery Green. Next up for the co-op crew: Selling enough veggies to pay off those loans used for the church buildout.
  • Opening Softly, Later This Month: A place called Canopy, from the folks who brought you that place called Shade. Claire Smith and Russell Murrell’s new restaurant will go in the spot where Tony Ruppe’s was, in the double-decked strip center at 3939 Montrose, reports Cleverley Stone. Three meals a day, 7 days a week, plus 3 seating areas:

    a bright and refreshing dining room, festive bar and side street patio. We will eventually offer curbside “to go” service.

  • Opening Early Next Month: The brand-new Dessert Shoppe, in the strip center portion of 19th Streete in the Heights. Fred Eats Houston writes that sisters Sara and RaeMarie Villar will be serving up “whole cakes and pies to individual desserts, along with assorted breakfast pastries, cookies, quiches, cupcakes, and some breads.”
  • Reopened, for the First Time Since Ike: The Shriner’s Hospital for Children in Galveston. The combined boards of the International Shriners and Shriners Hospitals for Children had originally decided to close the hospital for good, after 30 inches of water wandered through the building’s first floor during the Hurricane. Shriners voting at this summer’s convention in San Antonio reversed that decision. The new hospital will have a smaller staff and budget. The Chronicle‘s Todd Ackerman reports that the hospital should already be open for reconstructive surgery cases; burn victims will have to wait until December for treatment.

And yet even more new stuff:

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10/26/09 11:23am

The Swamplot Price Adjuster needs your nominations! Found a property you think is poorly priced? Send an email to Swamplot, and be sure to include a link to the listing or photos. Tell us about the property, and explain why you think it deserves a price adjustment. Then tell us what you think a better price would be. Unless requested otherwise, all submissions to the Swamplot Price Adjuster will be kept anonymous.

Location: 3122 Mona Lee Ln., Binglewood
Details: 4 bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths; 3,894 sq. ft. on a 10,018-sq.-ft. lot
Price: $234,500
History: On the market since mid-September

This person who’s nominating this home writes:

Binglewood? Binglewhere? Wherever it is, this is a great neighborhood to walk in. As my spouse and I have strolled past this house over the years, we’ve called it The White Elephant. It’s a charming elephant from the front, but it’s been way over-improved for the neighborhood. Before the large addition, it was a 3 bedroom, 2 bath and was probably around 1700 square feet. Now it’s a 4 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath, and almost 3900 square feet. Almost no one else in the neighborhood has added on. The addition at the back is quite graceless, the pool won’t add any value, and the entire rest of the back yard is concrete.

There is no cache to living in this neighborhood. When we moved in, more than one person said to us: “Oh, Spring Branch. That area used to be nice.” We love it here, but are under no illusion that other people will. The school district is great, but the neighborhood is zoned to Edgewood, Northbrook and Northbrook – not the best in the district. (Snark aside, our kids loved Edgewood Elementary, but didn’t want to go to Northbrook Middle and High. It was their choice to go elsewhere.)

So what about a better price for this home?

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09/08/09 8:01am

Hidden among the pix of this new Spring Branch listing: more evidence of Houston’s snoozy real-estate market. Details:

Drastic reduction by $105k! Bargain hunter where r u? . . . can easily convert to commercial use for clinic,office,corner store,washertia. High traffic area . . .

We’re hoping that’s a plain ol’ residential use pictured in the bedroom here.

And who’s sleeping in that other bed?

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08/12/09 3:12pm

It’s a Wednesday, about 3 o’clock, which means it’s time for Houston’s newest — and probably smallest — “farmer’s” market, in a corner of the parking lot at the School of the Woods Montessori school, 1321 Wirt Rd. at Westview, in Hilshire Village. It’ll last until 6. Yelper Aeryk P. says the market started out pretty small a few weeks ago. He found:

Village Botanica’s produce and meat, Quick-n-ezee’s Indian food, Shirley Ann’s pies and [quiche], Barky Dogz natural dog treats, Katz’s Coffee, Trentino’s Gelato and CareKindly’s environmentally friendly cleaning products.

Photo: School of the Woods

04/08/09 11:19am

Following up on a comment made on this site recently by another reader — noting Houston’s recent but storied “tradition of adopting styles that clearly evolved in climates very different from ours” — Swamplot resident Robert W. Boyd sends in photos of a notable exception: the Bermuda Woods Apartments in Spring Branch, near Long Point and Gessner.

Boyd reports after his visit:

The townhomes are superficially like Bermuda–the pastel colors, the long vertical window shades.

Isn’t that the idea?

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04/02/09 5:08pm

We have a winner . . . and a new member of the Rice Design Alliance!

Here were your guesses for this week’s Neighborhood Guessing Game: “Spring Branch south of Long Point, around Antoine, Wirt and Pech,” Spring Branch, Oak Forest (2 guesses), Mangum Manor, Timbergrove Manor, Lazybrook, Garden Oaks, Afton Oaks, “Braeburn/Meyerlandish,” Meyerland, Meyer Park, “Westbury, around Chimney Rock/Willowbend/West Bellfort,” Willowbend (2), Glenbrook Valley, Braeburn Valley West, Westwood, Tanglewilde, Westbury (2), Maplewood, “Spring Valley or above – near Hollister,” Pasadena, “between Willowbend and Bellfort, east of Post Oak, within a half-mile of Willow Park in Willow Meadows,” Tanglewood, Braes Heights, Braes Oaks, “somewhere south of Bellaire Blvd., near Stella Link/Buffalo Speedway,” Braes Terrace, Channelview, Jacinto City, Montgomery near Little York, and “the Woodlake/Briar Meadow area off Richmond inside the Beltway.”

Right off the bat, Brad and CK win a couple of honorable mentions for mentioning Spring Branch. This week’s winner didn’t name that neighborhood explicitly, but came closer to the actual location and gave a better explanation:

I think Brad sorta nailed it but I’m going to move a little to the west & say Spring Valley or above – near Hollister. A cul-de-sac lot – that big bathroom window is looking out on their own garage, so no need for, um, cover. Maybe if you buy the house they’ll throw the RV in as well. Possibly a ravine lot – that’s why the new bathroom, because of flooding in the 90’s?

Congratulations, flake: You just won a one-year membership in the RDA!

A third honorable mention goes to biggerintexas, for this entertaining and entirely plausible (if geographically challenged) commentary:

My favorite part is how the dining room floor magically grew onto the kitchen walls. The bathroom was a project done very recently (hence no window coverings) to help sell this house…if only you could see the before photos of the bathroom when it had gold, textured wallpaper and a red carpet to go with the pistachio colored porcelain. In their defense – the visible “neighbor” is actually the detached garage so unless they have squatters living in their garage they don’t have worry about peeping toms from that particular directions. The house is owned by a couple that is reaching retirement age and they plan to sell their house and dump their furniture so they can take their RV (you can see it from the kitchen window) on a tour of America’s finest petting zoos. Once the furniture gets cleared out this house isn’t so bad but the new owner will have lots of fun removing wallpaper and paneling. Oh, and the house was built around 1960-ish in the Oak Forest neighborhood.

And the actual coordinates?

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10/10/08 4:39pm

Former Fiesta Mart at I-10 and Blalock, HoustonFiesta Mart closed its I-10 and Blalock location when the Katy Freeway was expanded because too much of its parking got eaten up by the wider freeway. So how is the new 99 Ranch Market going into that space going to deal with the parking problem?

Suzanne Anderson, a regional leasing director with Weingarten, says the parking lot will be restriped to maximize the number of available parking spaces.

“We’re going to have to re-lay out the parking,” she says. “It’s still going to be under what the typical grocery store might have.”

99 Ranch Market is owned by Tawa Supermarket and is the largest Asian American supermarket chain, with 25 stores in California. The 84,000-sq.-ft. store opening on Blalock next summer will be the company’s first store in Texas.

Photo of former Fiesta Mart at 1005 Blalock: Weingarten Realty

01/31/08 5:38pm

Hillendahl Cemetery, Long Point, Spring Branch, Houston

There’s just too much to take in from the latest rambling, illustrated walking tour by David Beebe and John Nova Lomax, narrated in harmony from their two separate corners of the Texan blogosphere. The pair’s latest venture — appropriately enough — runs along Long Point, through the heart of Spring Branch:

. . . primarily Long Point is a binary street combining Mexico and Korea. In contrast to the multi-ethnic riot that is Bissonnet, or the Pan-Asian explosion that is Bellaire, Long Point is binary. Some businesses fuse into MexiKorea. The Koryo Bakery, right next door to the only Korean bookstore in Houston, touts its pan dulce y pastels, for example, and it seems that many of the Korean-owned businesses aim at Spanish-speakers more than Anglos. (Someone should open a restaurant out here called Jose Cho’s TaKorea.)

The camera-and-tequila-toting duo guide us through a shady thrift-store nirvana they declare to be drab but safe, pointing out salient features along the way: cans of silkworm pupae in a former Kroger turned Korean supermarket, and the historic Hillendahl Cemetery (pictured above) carved out of one corner of a Bridgestone tire barn parking lot.

After the jump, more Spring Branch walking-tour highlights!

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12/11/07 1:22pm

Villas of Antoine Ad

Houston is such an international city! If you’ve been here a while, you’ve probably already found Tuscany in Houston and Hong Kong in Houston, and perhaps also Charlottesville, New Delhi, Versailles, New York, Mexico City, Cairo, Dubai, Atlanta, and maybe even some Lubbock in Houston as well.

Well, here’s a new one: Now you can discover Barcelona in Houston too. And it’s in Spring Branch!

Fortunately, for those of you tired at the thought of all that around-the-world-in-eighty-themed-apartments travel, this little bit of the Spanish Mediterranean comes in the familiar form of a Houston townhome six-pack: two rows of bright yellow tightly fit stucco-coated boxes facing a bare concrete driveway.

So really, it shouldn’t seem so foreign after all.

After the jump, more pics!

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