- 3929 Marlowe St. [HAR]
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West University
Rather than choose between more yard and more house, a 1991 custom home in West University appears to have simply put everything but the front lawn under roof, including a free-range atrium vignette in the living room (top) and a garden patio (above middle). The home was relisted by the same agent last Friday and has an asking price of $1.249 million. The previous listing, at the end of February, lasted a month and was aiming for $1.399 million.
The Grated Indoors
- 2917 Lafayette St. [HAR]
. . . Well, at least as long as Brays Bayou is able to handle whatever rains come. Late last month, an excavator (pictured above) yanked out the last piece of a 3-year-old 6-ft.-by-6-ft. concrete panel used as a “restrictor” and meant to make sure rainwater that fell in West U stayed in West U for a good long time. The restrictor (shown in place blocking the right side of the drainage channel pictured at left) had been put in place by the Harris County Flood Control District after West U, working with the city of Southside Place and Metro, completed $8 million worth of drainage improvements in 2010 on the colorfully named Poor Farm Ditch, which drains along the east side of Edloe St. through much of West University and further south to Brays Bayou. Those improvements had been meant to solve West U’s frequent flooding problems. But without some place for the water to go, that solution for West U might have caused flooding elsewhere downstream. So the district placed the restrictor on Poor Farm Ditch on the south side of the Edloe St. bridge across Holcombe St. — until the city could somehow come up with 13.5 acre-ft. of flood detention to hold the runoff.
With flood improvements completed but the restrictor still causing water to back up on Poor Farm Ditch, West U flooded again in January 2012 after a hard rain.
The Rich Floodwaters of Poor Farm Ditch
- 3833 Oberlin St. [HAR]
Note: Story updated below.
Yes, we have another Inner Loop recycling center closing to mark for the new year. Swamplot reader Jon Morris caught these shots of the final evening of bottle-clinking at the West University RecyclExpress at 5004 Dincans St., behind Goode Company Seafood, last night. You’ve got only a few minutes left to get rid of those New Year’s shindig empties — the center closes forever at noon today. “Scene was calm but with steady traffic when I was there,” reports Morris. “All the bins were overflowing though.”
Inner Loop Recycling Apocalypse ’14
DON’T WORRY, YOUR LISTING IS STILL SAFE 
Police arrested 4 individuals on the scene early this morning after a break-in at the Houston Association of Realtors “SuperCenter” at 3693 Southwest Fwy., west of Edloe. The suspects were not believed to have made off with anything, but are being investigated for possible involvement in another organizational crime: The Girl Scouts of San Jacinto Council Building across 59 and Buffalo Speedway at 3110 Southwest Fwy. was also broken into overnight. [KHOU] Photo: Andrew Horansky
A city permit was approved last week to convert a portion of the building that once housed the A&M Pet Clinic at 5010 Dincans St. into a wine bar. The 2-story building is across the street from the new apartment block Hanover is completing between Bissonnet and North Blvd. just west of Kirby Dr. The Swamplot reader who visited the closing-after-New-Year’s West U recycling center just to the north of the property finds the posted TABC notice, which identifies the applicant as Catering Plus. Ray Memari, co-owner of the Antica Osteria Italian Restaurant on Bissonnet just west of Greenbriar, purchased the building last year.
Bottle District?
The uncommon 62 (and a half!)-ft. width of this West University lot near the city’s park on Sunset Blvd. gives a 1992 contemporary home by the late Preston Bolton room to change up the typical front, flow, and footprint found in the plethora of Georgians built around that time in the neighborhood. Bolton’s custom design for the current owner stacks living space back from the street, on a 20-ft.-setback block, and features a well-established lattice espalier as well as distinct geometric gates and grill work a spider would be happy to call its handiwork, despite slightly shaggy landscaping creeping onto the front walkway:
In the earlier waves of West U’s great residential reboot, before the 21st Century stucco surge, ruddy brick finished out a fair amount of the city’s new housing. The townhomes of Rutgers Place, for example, worked bricks, bricks, and more bricks into the development’s exteriors, fencing, and patios. An oft-updated corner unit in that street-straddling enclave, which dates from 1981, popped up on the market last week. Asking price: $484,500 — plus a $120 monthly maintenance fee.
- 4151 Bissonnet St. [HAR]
That steel frame on Centenary St. that roused some West U residents to name-calling and concern-raising 2 years ago now has a steel house built around it — and a single father and his two sons inside. Still, says architect Cameron Armstrong, the build wasn’t as smooth as it might have been: “[C]ertain neighbors were actually quite hostile — they heckled the subcontractors (and not always from across the street!), and made numerous frivolous complaints to the police about things like (non-existent) parking violations by workers. . . . They thought they were living on a street with a predictable visual future, which turned out not to be the case.” Adds Armstrong: “[I]t’s hard to identify substantive objections. . . . The good news is that most of the neighbors are just fine with how the design turned out.”
Going out, coming in: It looks like the work to update this former Rice Epicurean Market at 2617 W. Holcombe into The Fresh Market is well underway. Set back in that shopping center on the southwest corner of W. Holcombe and Kirby Dr. in West University, this will be one of the 4 Rice Epicurean spots that the North Carolina chain said it would be freshening up this year; the others are on Weslayan, Tanglewood, and Memorial.
- The Fresh Market Leases Four Houston Metropolitan Area Grocery Store Locations [The Fresh Market]
- Previously on Swamplot: Rice Epicurean Giving Up the Groceries, Leasing 4 Locations to Fresh Market
Photo: Allyn West
The only difference between this 1981 West University property’s new listing and a previous one in mid-March appears to be the $110,000 escalation in price since its sale in mid-April, for $525,000. The current photos are a bit grainy and bleak, but they document how the unoccupied interior and lot-filling pool and deck have been faring as prices rise:
- 3111 Bissonnet St. [HAR]
