The flags have been lowered in front of the former N. Shepherd home of Fiesta Mart, now several days along on its journey toward pre-redevelopment flatness. A reader sends more photos of the action from yesterday afternoon, showing the demolition team munching its way east through the building:
Chronicle reporter Gabrielle Banks snaps a fresh photo of the Spirit of the Confederacy, the well-labeled century-old statue standing around by the lake on the west side of Sam Houston Park (near the split of Allen Pkwy. into Lamar and Walker streets downtown).  The statue’s placement was funded in 1908 by Houston’s still-active Robert E. Lee chapter of the national United Daughters of the Confederacy and is inscribed to “all heroes of the South who fought for the principles of states rights.” Despite the statue’s unambiguous Confederate sympathies and nearness to City Hall, the bronze statue has largely flown beneath the radar of the past year’s scrutiny of Houston school and street names.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: A FINAL DESPERATE CRY FOR DEMOLITION PARITY IN THE HEIGHTS 
“The smashing has begun! Heavy machinery is on site, and the bricks are crumbling down. Where are the Friends of Heights Fiesta? Aren’t these bricks special enough to be saved???” [North Heights, commenting on Former Fiesta Site Preps for Teardown as Heights Dry Zone Petitioners Circle] Photo of demolition at 2300 N. Shepherd: Steven Byrne
Another effect of the Memorial Day weekend and early June floods: the EPA says it has had to pause some of its latest study efforts near the 1960s industrial waste pits in the San Jacinto river (shown at the top looking a bit more submerged than usual on May 31, facing north from the I-10 bridge). New rounds of sample-taking were triggered by the discovery in December that the Superfund site’s armored cap (which is made of special tarp material held down by a layer of rocks) had a 25-ft.-long hole where the rocks were missing. The EPA also notes that the damage was found within an area of the cap where no tarp was actually initially placed, in light of concerns that the rocks would slide off of it.Â
Hobbyist demolition spotter Steven Byrne sends portraits of the end of the former Fiesta Mart at the corner of N. Shepherd and W. 23rd St. Byrne snapped these shots of the teardown action yesterday afternoon (right after the structure’s demo permit was issued), though there’s plenty more building left to rip apart today. The excavators at the site appear to belong to Cherry Demolition, which recently wrapped up the sometimes-slow sometimes-unsettlingly-fast takedown of the Corporate Plaza complex at Kirby Dr. and 59.
The Fiesta opened in the space in the mid-1970s and shut down in March. Here’s a few more closeups of the scene for further grocery-minded contemplation:
Remember that home that was being built in Rivercrest for twice-former Rocket Mike James when he got traded away (the second time) back in 2008? The one that looked uncannily like the Royal Oaks home of Juwon Howard, for whom the Timberwolves swapped James back down to Houston? The pricetag on the 11,384-sq.-ft. home, with full-size regulation basketball court included, is set at $6 million as of the property’s late-May reemergence onto the market. The house was listed at just under $7.5 million back in September 2014 (after reportedly being shopped around for $8 million previously) and was pulled in December of last year following a half-million drop.Â
The new listing mentions hydrotherapy immersion tanks, a putting green, and the pool below:
The west wall has been breached at 3615 Montrose Blvd., where Riverway had previously planned to break ground on a Philip Johnson/Alan Ritchie Glass House-themed condo midrise this spring. The 130-ft. sign (per a city inspector’s disapproving measurement) advertising the most recent condominium project planned for the corner at Marshall St. has been blacked out for about a month, according to a reader surveying the empty corner lot from above.
The comparatively tiny sales center sign is missing altogether; the same round of March inspection ticketing asked for it to be removed from the property. Also gone: HAR’s sales listings for the building’s individual units, which the site indicates were also removed around the end of April and the beginning of May.
The management at 717 Louisiana St. has sent out word to tenants that the tunnel segment beneath the vacated downtown Houston Chronicle building is now open again, even though the newspaper’s former headquarters at 801 Texas Ave. are still standing on top of it. Documents filed with the Harris County district clerk’s office show that Hines agreed to hold off on the demo for a while, after Linbeck’s Theater Square group filed a lawsuit to stop them.
The walls and roof of the former Walgreen’s at 3900 Westheimer Rd. are now being teased apart into the tangle above, following the issuance last week of a demolition permit for the 1975 structure. River Oaks Baptist School bought the property in April of last year, around the time Walgreen’s jumped eastward across the intersection of Westheimer and Weslayan/Willowick to inhabit the former Fresh Market space (where it now operates next to what turned out to be a Texas Emergency Care Center neighboring the River Oaks branch of Mattress Firm).
Here’s another angle on the teardown, with the 1963 Willowick Condominiums tower peeking over the scene in the background:
Following a few months of permit angst and the placement of a red pig in the parking lot, the N. Shepherd location of Dallas-import pizza join Cane Rosso says it will open this evening at 5pm. Cane Rosso’s other planned Houston spot is still getting worked over on Yoakum St. at Richmond Ave.
Just beating it to the punch this afternoon is the even-longer-delayed 4th location of  Niko Niko’s Greek & American Bakery & Cafe, opening at 3pm in the former Chili’s building across the parking lot from Houston Community College’s Spring Branch campus:
The glowing parrot and red neon lettering previously decorating the front of the former Fiesta Mart at 2300 N. Shepherd Dr. have been traded out for a construction fence and a few streamers of festive caution tape. A pre-demo permit to disconnect the 1965 building’s plumbing was issued near the end of May, and a reader snapped the top photo of the site during a break in Friday’s rain.
A very quick summary of a long, long peek over the construction fence at Kirby Dr. and Colquitt St. shows the progress to date on the mixed-use Kirby Collection development. Developer Thor Equities has been working over the former site of the Kirby funeral bars since last fall, and has reached the top level of the complex’s parking garage. Thor plans to have the main skeleton of the office tower done by November and to put the last structural bits of the ellipse-footed residential tower in place by early 2017.
Video: Thor Equities
Some things have changed in the last few months at the corner of Brazos and McIlhenny streets in Midtown, where scandal-embroiled nightclub Gaslamp appears to have shut down to make way for a newly-opened bar called 360. The Gaslamp sign is gone, and the building’s new Facebook page also lists it as located at Google-baggage-free 500 McIlhenny instead of 2400 Brazos (though the number 2400 was still in place over the door as of last week).
The former second-floor club-within-a-club Elysium space upstairs appears to have been redecorated as well, and to have picked up the name The Hamptons. Other things remain the same, however — for example, the photo posted last week of 360’s rooftop patio (above) is remarkably similar to a view from the rooftop previously posted to Gaslamp’s webpage (below):
