- 3215 Virginia St. [HAR]
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Neighborhood
Here’s the raw scene captured around lunch time today, when a small pack of excavators was sighted rooting through the debris at the base of the former Corporate Plaza I midrise. The increasingly see-through office building was fully de-striped some time between yesterday (second photo) and noon today (top); below is a quick video of the excavator crew gently yanking down a piece of what appears to be the 4th-story floor:Â
Break Another Little Piece
The blue all over the Mecom Fountain on Monday signaled the start of the now-fully-funded work to undo the damage to the 1960s monument caused by the quickly-backtracked application of limestone panels to its exterior earlier this spring. Also on the docket, as the panel damage gets fully repaired: another restoration, this one using architect Eugene Werlin’s original plans (which the fundraising group Friends of the Fountain says it found in a Houston parks department office).
The group says workers are using historically appropriate materials, including Cocoon brand liquid polymer coating (to be layered over the blue primer on the exterior) and Moon Dust plaster (to line the insides of the basins). Here’s a look at parts of the 1964 architectural drawings, which call for Cocoon in the notes:
Drained on Main
The semi-shrouded Houston Heights Beverage Coalition released a statement today filling in some details on the group’s plan to legalize take-home beer and wine sales in the Heights’ dry zone. The initiative was floated quietly on Cinco de Mayo by way of 109-word newspaper legal notice; the group’s longer press release clarifies that it will try to collect around 1,500 signatures in 60 days to call a special election for residents of the no-longer-a-city of Houston Heights. That election wouldn’t change the zone’s ban on liquor sales (or the need for a private-club-workaround for folks intent on selling it anyway), but would allow grocery stores to get in on the alcoholic action.
Coalition chair Steve Reilley tells the Houston Press‘s Phaedra Cook that H-E-B supports the measure — adding that the chain is probably going to move into the area if the change passes. Reilley also says that other grocery chains are involved with the coalition, but doesn’t tell Cook which ones.
Taking Names
A reader sends fresh snaps from north of Buffalo Bayou in Fifth Ward, where Urban Living’s long-time cornerside “coming soon” sign at the intersection of Clinton and Jensen has been joined by a more specific banner advertising the planned Eado Edge subdivision. A 2014 replatting created 80 new lots out of the former Standco Industries warehouse complex at 2701 Clinton Dr., which Colliers sold following the oil equipment company’s bankruptcy proceedings a few years prior. The not-yet-townhomes sit across Clinton from the former KBR site bought by Cathexis back in 2012; the currently empty land is also just west of InTown Homes’s Regent Park subdivision.
EaDo Creeping North
A northern ambassador to the Houston restaurant scene appears to be moving into the Uptown spot recently vacated by southwest-centric Canyon Cafe. The logo for Canadian fusion chain Moxie’s Grill & Bar now shows up on Weingarten’s leasing flier for The Centre at Post Oak, across Westheimer Rd. from the Galleria. Tom Gaglardi, the current owner of both the Moxie’s chain and the NHL’s Dallas Stars, told the Dallas Business Journal early last year that he was planning to push Moxie’s into the US market by way of several major Texas cities.
Uptown Moxie
MFT Interests appears interested in tenants for its Heights Central Station project, slated for the site of the increasingly well-loved former post office on 11th St. between Yale St. and Heights Blvd.  The development’s leasing website now includes the first rendering of what those mixed-use lowrises might look like (see above), as well as a site plan.
Although the logo for the center implies a possible train station theme to go along with the name,  the site plan shows that most of the property will be devoted to automobile parking — an 86-car street-facing parking lot separates the storefronts from 11th and Yale streets, though the Heights Blvd. side of the eastern building is much closer to the street:
Heights Central Station
- 27 Hildene Way [HAR]
Hitting the market late last week in the neighborhoods of Meyerland and of $425,000: a groovy 1970s home a few doors down Lymbar Dr. from soon-to-be-renamed Johnston Middle School, northeast of the intersection of Willowbend Blvd. with Chimney Rock Dr. The living room of the 2,362-sq.-ft. house features a round concrete fireplace amid wood paneling and sealed brick floors; a shower-side planter setup makes appearances in the master suite’s bathroom.
Here’s the cantilevered porch and striped front door a the top of the home’s circular driveway:
Meyerland Mod
Above is a rendered view of the Skyline on 24th townhomes at 815 and 819 W. 24th St., a couple of which burned down on Friday evening after a nearby dumpster fire reportedly spread. The Skyline site backs up directly to part of the Shady Acres location of C&D Scrap Metal Recyclers, which last month announced plans to close its Heights branch on May 12th; C&D owner and $2-bill enthusiast Dennis Laviage pointed out to KPRC that the fire was hot enough to melt the steel frames of the townhomes, and that the incident could have been way worse if some of the diesel stored on the C&D property had gotten involved in the action.
Builder La Casa International‘s in-progress pre-fire plans for the 2 lots included 8 units; a rendering of the complex’s driveway viewed from W. 24th shows stone pavers partitioned off by strips of fake grass:
Smoke over the Skyline
Some construction photos released yesterday by the prepping-to-open business at 3015 Bagby St. seem to provide a definitive answer to that lingering 2013 question of whether the century-old structure at the corner with Rosalie St. would be patched up for a new gig as a Midtown bar called The Sterling House, or just torn down to make room for it. The building (which belonged to members of Ross Sterling‘s family but not to the former governor himself) wasn’t totally demolished, though it did get gutted and largely rebuilt. The space then got shopped around last year by landlord Amir Ansari, who offered the spot with TABC licenses and other permits already in place.Â
A Sterling House Facebook page got a coming-soon photo update over the weekend, showing a few post-redo photos of the inside and outside of the structure:
Polishing Up on Bagby
For sale along Buffalo Bayou, just above the junction with still-biohazardous Spring Branch: the Frame-Harper house, designed in the late 1950s by Harwood Taylor. The 3-time houstonMOD Mod of the Month was unwhitewashed by Stern & Bucek in 2007 to the tune of various accolades, but after an initial 2008 listing (at a smidge under $3 million) the home was pulled off and pushed back on the market 2 more times before a late 2011 sale for $1.78 million. The house came back onto the market in August of last year for $3.45 million, holding out until a November withdrawal; the current listing asks for $2.85 million instead.
Above is the family room, with original walnut paneling, and some of the coffered ceilings un-de-coffered by the 2007 redo. Here’s how the rest of the un-remodel is standing the test of time:
Still Bayou Cool
WAXING POETIC OVER THE DEMOLITION OF AN ALLEN CENTER SKYBRIDGE 
“The age of confinement is over,” pens Realty News Report editor Ralph Bivins this week in his first foray into real estate poetry. Bivins was moved to verse by the details released last week on the upcoming redo of the 3 Allen Center towers at Smith and Dallas streets — more specifically, by the fact that Brookfield’s plans for the site includes the removal of one of the skybridges between One and Two Allen Center, as well as the earthen berm beneath it. The demo will turn the long-sequestered landscaped green space between the buildings into a street-accessible events lawn. The rest of the poem, entitled A quick verse by R. Bivins for Kenneth Schnitzer, Texas Eastern and the prior generation of downtown development, can be read here. [Realty News Report; previously on Swamplot] Rendering of planned Allen Center redo: Studio AMD
This week’s video release from hometown country singer Robert Ellis takes viewers on a forlorn wandering tour of Houston’s downtown and surrounding thoroughfares, sans all of those pesky people and cars. Iconic cameos include the AIA’s future headquarters on the corner of Franklin and Commerce streets, the WALD warehouse sign at Live Oak and Rusk streets, and Bad News Bar on Main St.; the video also includes a hike down a dead-empty I-45 and associated entrance ramps, several frantic light-rail stops, and a dramatic reunion on the pedestrian bridge over Memorial Dr. at Sabine St.Â
- Robert Ellis shares video for touching new single “How I Love You†[Consequence of Sound]
Video: Robert Ellis
Musical Background
The previously white house at the northwest corner of Westheimer Rd. and Stanford St. now has an edgy new look, along with some some city permits issued to an entity called Beijing Assassin Tattoos in April. The permits mention a tattoo parlor and retail setup in the building, which was bought in 2014 by a legal entity of the Katz family (of never-closes deli fame 2 doors down to the west of Vinoteca Poscol).
A previous set of permits was issued to Beijing Assassin back in early 2015, after which the space opened for a few months as Gods and Monsters e-cigarette supply store. Then a coat of whitewash blotted out the building’s pretty-new-at-the-time murals, shown in part below:
Filling In On Lower Westheimer
