Washington Ave

Historic Preservation
05/09/13 10:30am

Newly Historic Renovated Permitting Center To Hold Preservation Workshops on Renovating Historic Buildings

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Houston Landmarks, Institutional Buildings, Old Sixth Ward, Public Buildings, Washington Ave
4 Comments

All that hard work installing new wind turbines and solar panels and employee vegetable gardens at the Houston Permitting Center — or even the talk about building a hot dog stand inside — hasn’t seem to have affected its historic status, since the former Butler Brothers Building on Washington Ave in the Old Sixth Ward was given a protected landmark designation yesterday. And what does the newly historic and well-preserved Permitting Center plan to do with this street cred? Why, host historic preservation fairs, of course!

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Old Sixth Ward
05/01/13 2:45pm

Introducing the Washington Ave Parking District

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Parking, Streets, Washington Ave, Washington Corridor
11 Comments

Those light-blue dots? That’s where you’ll be able to pay to park now on Washington Ave. The city’s first Parking Benefit District (or PBD) went live as of this morning, with dozens of these pay-to-stay meters installed between Westcott and Houston that will charge you about a buck an hour between 7 a.m. and 2 a.m.

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Old Sixth Ward
04/29/13 11:00am

The Glow That’s Gone Missing from Washington Ave

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Renovations, Signage, Washington Ave
7 Comments

Hey! What happened to that neon sign at Huston’s Drugs? Artist Chris Bramel, who’s working to renovate the former pharmacy on Washington in the Old Sixth Ward into a space where he can live and work, explains: “The sign was claimed by the original owner and he’s going to hang it at his house or ranch.” To deal with the emptiness, Bramel is having a replacement sign built for him, he says, “and I will have that thing lighting up the street every night.”

Photos: Allyn West

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Evictions
03/07/13 3:00pm

Pearl Bar Locked Out on Washington Ave.

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Openings and Closings, Quicklink, Washington Ave
6 Comments

PEARL BAR LOCKED OUT ON WASHINGTON AVE. Landlord Eva Hughes has changed the locks on her building, reports Chris Gray, for Pearl Bar’s non-payment of rent: According to Hughes’s attorney, adds Gray, eviction “proceedings” are underway. This isn’t the first time the tenants at 4216 Washington Ave. have had a visit paid by such sober guests: “[I]n January agents from the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission and state comptroller’s office visited the bar and confiscated cash to count against a back-tax bill a comptroller’s spokesman estimated at more than $40,000.” [Hair Balls] Photo: Pearl Bar

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Comments
02/13/13 2:00pm

Comment of the Day: The Fate of the Neon Sign at Huston’s Drugs

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Quicklink, Renovations, Signage, Washington Ave
1 Comment

COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE FATE OF THE NEON SIGN AT HUSTON’S DRUGS “The Soda fountain stays. I want to fully restore it to working condition, along with reupholstering the stools, and getting the chrome redone to make it all shine again. The sign out front is a different story. I would very much like to keep the old ‘Huston’s Drugs’ sign but the original owners’ family still owns it and unfortunately might be keeping it.” [Chris, commenting on Artist Renovating, Moving Into Washington Ave.’s Old Huston’s Drugs]

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Fires
09/10/12 5:48pm

Breaking Through the Smoke at the Broken Spoke

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Restaurants, Washington Ave
8 Comments

According to several reports, the fire that appeared to be coming from the building that housed the recently shuttered Broken Spoke Cafe began this afternoon at the duplex next door, at 1807 Washington Ave. That structure has been completely destroyed; fire department officials report that the Broken Spoke, at 1809 Washington, has “sustained major damage.” A third house nearby got mighty warm. No injuries have been reported.

Photos: John Luu (fire), Matt Hackworth (smoke)

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Nightlife
02/06/12 9:27am

February Is Guadalajara Bakery Closing Month

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Openings and Closings, Restaurants, Washington Ave
14 Comments

You’ll have the remainder of this month to say goodbye to another piece of the old Washington Ave: The Guadalajara Bakery at 4003 Washington announces, through a sign posted in a front window, that it’ll be closing down on February 29th, after 45 years in business. The Houston Press‘s Katherine Shilcutt reports that new building owners have plans to turn the breakfast-taco spot on the corner of Leverkuhn into a bar, and gave the bakery 30 days to vacate; the Chavez family has no plans to reopen elsewhere.

Photo: Swamplot inbox

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Openings and Closings
10/07/11 11:17am

Washington Ave’s Growing Strip of Drive-Thrus

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Restaurants, Washington Ave, Washington Corridor
11 Comments

Guatemalan fast-food chain Pollo Campero‘s new-prototype restaurant (pictured above) will soon become the fourth standalone drive-thru in a row along a section of the south side of Washington Ave. Driving east from the corner of Durham, you’ll find the W Grill (at left, featuring 2 drive-thru windows), then a Jack in the Box on the corner of Shepherd. After El Rey Taqueria comes the future Pollo Campero site at 4701 Washington Ave., slated to be the company’s next-in-line location — a new one is about to open at 702 W. Bay Area Blvd. in Webster, and another is planned for Missouri City. Any room for this burgeoning Washington Ave drive-thru scene to grow? That small building wedged between the W Grill and the Jack-in-the-Box could start to look hungry.

Images: Pollo Campero and W Grill

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Comments
07/18/11 11:41pm

Comment of the Day: The Way Things Are Going

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Houston Heights, Quicklink, Washington Ave, Washington Corridor, West End
8 Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE WAY THINGS ARE GOING “So much hand-wringing over a store! Washington Avenue’s already peaking, and will be full of boarded up resturants and bars in a couple of years. The Heights will one day be covered in badly built townhomes, just like here in Rice Military. All that will remain is Wal-Mart. It’s just the way it is. Nobody or nothing can stop it.” [ricemilitaryboy, commenting on Washington Heights Walmart Companion Strip Stand-Ins: No-Names, Off-Brands, and Imports]

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Art
04/11/11 4:27pm

Tom Sawyer Comes to Washington Ave: How To Get Your New Office Painted for Free or Pizza

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Graffiti, Public Art, Renovations, Washington Ave, Washington Corridor
5 Comments

What’s it take to get a little paint or something thrown up onto a languishing and partially boarded-up Washington Ave building? If you’re landscape architecture firm Asakura Robinson and you’ve just moved in upstairs in front of the Drake in the building at the corner of Washington and Silver, you just put out a little invitation to Houston Street Art: Free . . . canvas! Bring on the street painters and poster kids! Nine of them showed up yesterday, including your pals weah, Article, Info, Wereone, Marbles, Sode, D-Falt, and COW. Swamplot photographer Candace Garcia caught up with the action as the paint and wheatpaste went down:

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Fraud
03/15/11 3:01pm

Washington Ave’s 360 Sports Lounge: The Oil-Trading Kickback Connection

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Nightlife, Real Estate Investing, Washington Ave
4 Comments

Last Friday, a former St. Anne’s Catholic School P.E. teacher named Jonathan Barnes pled guilty to 4 counts of federal charges in connection with a multimillion-dollar oil-trading kickback scheme. What does the Bellaire resident have to do with the 360 Sports Lounge on Washington Ave? The plea agreement he signed last week spells it out: His investment in the bar was a kickback itself, one of many gifts given to him by his 2 alleged co-conspirators, to thank him for overcharging his employer, Houston Refining (now a part of LyondellBasell) by as much as $82 million for shipping contracts he arranged with their companies.

Why might Barnes have figured that a new Washington Ave sports bar would be a good investment? Well, his stint at Enron in the early 1990s had given him a solid business background.

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Houston Heights
12/17/10 1:45pm

The Rush to White Oak: Is the Corkscrew Next?

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Nightlife, Openings and Closings, Washington Ave
12 Comments

“You wouldn’t believe the amount of hate mail that I have received since I closed it,” owner Andrew Adams says about the Corkscrew, the wine bar he and his brother Doyle opened way back in 2006 — the early days of the new Washington Ave — but shut down last year. But Adams has been paying attention. He tells the HBJ‘s Allison Wollam he’s planning to reopen the Corkscrew in the Heights in February, as well as a second location elsewhere, which he plans to call Little Corkscrew. Where in the Heights? Adams won’t say, “because he’s still negotiating leases,” but he says he’s “considering” a building on White Oak.

If the Corkscrew does make the move to White Oak, it’ll be joining several new restaurant neighbors: Christian’s Tailgate, Tacos A Go-Go, and D’Amico’s Italian Market Cafe.

The Adams brothers recently gave up on the Corkscrew’s successor, an organic-style cocktail bar they eventually called Sugarcane, after all of 5 months. They’ll be leasing out their space at 1919 Washington to club owners who plan to open a “trendy, upscale bar, complete with bottle service,” he tells Wollam:

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Construction Problems
11/05/10 1:19pm

The End of a Washington Monument

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Demolitions, Magnolia Grove, Townhomes, Washington Ave
6 Comments

Workers are dismantling the two half-built-and-holding townhomes at the corner of Jackson Hill and Washington Ave., says the reader who sends us these photos of the activity at the well-known and well-weathered properties. Demolition permits for 915 and 917 Jackson Hill showed up on Swamplot earlier this week. “No bulldozers or anything, looks like they’re disassembling them from the top down,” explains our tipster. Could this be the dawn of . . . a brand-new parking lot for Washington?

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Houston History
10/14/10 1:37pm

From Super Service to Service, and Other Big Changes Along Washington Ave

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Streetscapes, Washington Ave, Washington Corridor
5 Comments

The president of a local real estate organization is hoping Swamplot readers can help her put together a slide show illustrating changes that have taken place over the years to the Washington Ave streetscape. How many of you have access to really old photos of Washington Ave? Well, you probably don’t have to go back too far to find images of a street that looked rather different than it does today. Send your old images — and please include captions and credit info — to the Swamplot tipline, and we’ll forward them to CCIM Houston/Gulf Coast‘s Ann-Marie Daleo, for inclusion in that organizations’ Washington Corridor Overview and Networking Event on November 4th. Daleo promises she’ll post the presentation online after the event, for anyone to download. And if any good before-and-after views come out of it we’ll post them here as well.

Photos: Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston Public Library (top) and GHPA (bottom)

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