05/12/16 10:15am

Giant Mushroom Forest, 1236 Studewood St., Houston Heights, Houston, 77008

Fungal sculptor Bill Davenport sends this photo of the Giant Mushroom Forest on Studewood south of W. Melwood St., showing the central toadstool freshly decapitated. His explanation for the un-making of his own work: the middle sculpture, originally designed for only a year-long Austin stint back at the turn of the decade, was crumbling and unstable, and had to be demolished last Sunday. “I’m sad to say the other two are not far behind,” he adds.

Davenport is now crowdsourcing funds to put toward restoring the trio and getting them in shape for a longer-term gig. The 3 giant mushrooms (not to be confused with the 3 giant mushrooms that sprung up down the road by Inversion Coffee House a few years ago) currently reside in front of Urban Harvest’s Tiny Mushrooms community garden.

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Shrooms and Stones in the Heights
05/11/16 5:15pm



Glen Park resident and
periodic White Oak Music Hall critic Beth Lousteau sends along this Tuesday retelling of a Mother’s Day encounter with a work crew apparently having a go at some vegetation along Little White Oak Bayou near 210 Glen Park St. The property, including the warehouse across an unpaved road, was bought last spring by White Oak W2 Investments, an entity controlled by the White Oak Music Hall developers. Lousteau says that workers on the site told her they’d been tasked with clearing a nicer view to the water, but that the boundary between the purchased property and the county-owned floodway land wasn’t marked.

Here’s a brief glimpse of the scene reportedly taken that Sunday, when Lousteau encountered the work crew mid-whir:

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Glen Park
05/11/16 3:30pm

TABC regional headquarters in Heights Medical Tower, 427 West 20th Street, Suite 600 Houston Heights, Houston, 77008

A group called the Houston Heights Beverage Coalition PAC is hoping to bring about a vote on allowing beer and wine sales in the technically dry section of the Houston Heights. The group published a notice on May 5th announcing an application to the city to start collecting the petition signatures required to get the measure on a local option ballot.

Here’s the text of the required public notice:

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Watering Down the Dry Laws
05/11/16 11:00am

The Cistern, Buffalo Bayou Park near Sabine St. at Memorial Dr., Houston, 77007

Friday’s tours of the 1920s underground water reservoir buried along Buffalo Bayou are already booked up, but the space will be open to the public Thursdays through Sundays from here on out. A 30-minute tour of the Cistern is $2 (except on Thursdays, when access is free), but reservations are required either way.

Can’t wait for the next open timeslots to scope out the space? Artist Donald Lipski’s Down Periscope is already up and running on the lawn above the reservoir, allowing digital spelunkers access to a light, a camera, and a microphone permanently installed in the space below. Off-site viewers can also queue up on the contraption’s website to take remote control of the installation for 5-minute intervals and swivel around in the underground chamber at will:

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What’s Down Below
05/10/16 1:00pm

3501 W. Alabama, Greenway,

The walls came down last week at the southwest corner of Edloe and W. Alabama streets, in the wake of a demo permit issued the week before. A few readers had eyes and lenses on the spot, which is currently listed for lease on LoopNet as 3000 Alabama Ct. but goes by 3501 W. Alabama in other county records. The walled complex (shown mid-teardown at the start of last week) was sold to St. Luke’s in 2009 by Metsun Senior Living, though it’s rumored to have been a former residence of deceased Greenway Plaza mastermind Kenneth Schnitzer.

St. Luke’s, whose main land holding sits catty-corner to the Alabama Ct. property, also owns the office park across Edloe, visible to the east of the freshly-emptied lot in this shot below from later last week:

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Alabama Ct.
05/09/16 4:30pm

Daiso at 2540 Old Denton Rd., Carrollton, TX 75006

Japanese dollar and 100-yen store Daiso has signed a lease for a 10,998-sq.-ft. spot at 501 S. Mason Rd. in the Mason Park shopping center, east of Mason Creek and the Barker reservoir. NewQuest Properties says the retailer was drawn to the location on S. Mason south of I-10 because of its proximity to Asian grocery chain 99 Ranch Market, which is currently getting the former Kroger spot in the center ready for a summertime opening.

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Coming to Katy
05/09/16 12:30pm

RAVEN TOWER’S TOWER TEMPORARILY CLOSED, BUT THE SHOWS WILL GO ON Raven Tower Bar, 301 North St., Northside, Houston, 77009The blue bar-on-a-stick at the northwest corner of the White Oak Music Hall complex temporarily shut down last week so W2 Development Partners can add more railings and make the space more physically accessible. The elevated 1970s former bachelor pad reopened as a bar and rooftop patio in January, 3 months before the first show on the semi-temporary main stage next door; a set of concrete stairs wrap around the elevator shaft leading up to the main space.  The non-tower sections of the Raven Tower venue, including the downstairs bar and the outdoor patio and performance space, are scheduled to stay open and host concerts as planned. Across the parking lot, White Oak Music Hall has another lawn concert scheduled for tomorrow night. [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo of Raven Tower: Swamplot inbox

05/06/16 3:30pm

Spring Branch tributary after Laverne St. Fire

The ditches ran red in the Spring Branch area yesterday as the billowing 4-alarm fire near Laverne St. at Spring Branch Dr. triggered evacuations and shelter-in-place orders across the surrounding areas. The blaze reportedly started in a home-slash-auto-shop on Laverne and spread next door to the A-1 Custom Packaging warehouse (which transfers large quantities of various industrial liquids into smaller bottles for distribution). Some of those stored chemicals (including the bright red petroleum additive visible in the shot above) made their way into drainage ditches and culverts flowing into Spring Branch itself.

The red additive is non-water-soluble and has been getting pushed around by contract clean-up crews downstream to stop the spread. But contractors cannot, the city says, catch the pesticide that also made its way into the same drainage channels, as it dissolves in water. It’s still unclear how much of the 500 gallons or so thought to have been stored at the site made it all the way into Spring Branch (which flows into Buffalo Bayou south of I-10), but some water quality test results are due back later today.

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River Running Red
05/06/16 12:30pm

allen-center-remodel-2

One Allen Center, 1200 Smith St., Downtown, Houston, 77002Brookfield released a few renderings this morning of the plans to make over One, Two, and Three Allen Centers at the corner of Smith and Dallas streets downtown. The rendering above depicts the new plan for the greenspace between One and Two: to subtract 1 of the 2 second-story skybridges currently running parallel to Smith and add an events venue. The redo plans also include a major street-level change for One Allen Center, depicted above with a 2-story glass lobby running around corner in place of the current largely-bricked-over podium facade.

That tiny neon sign on the left edge of the turn-of-the-decade photo above once marked the location of Don Patron; the quarter-centenarian Tex-Mex lunch spot started to close in February and finished the job in March. The remodel plans swap it out for a higher-end restaurant, which will get some patio space along Smith St:

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1, 2, 3 Remodel
05/06/16 10:30am

Future site of Gipsy Girls, 726 W. 19th St., Houston Heights, Houston, 77008

Signs of the impending turnover at 726 W 19th St. west of N. Shepherd Dr.: a banner bearing the curly pink logo of Gipsy Girls teen-and-tween gift shop. The spot formerly hosted Pink Studio cosmetics, which has headed north to a space in the Northwest Gessner Center along the 290 feeder; following the departure of a business geared toward holding on to the things of youth, the W. 19th St. space is being remodeled to host children’s karaoke and birthday celebrations.  

The children’s party venue will move in between Mark’s Hair Studio and adult party venue Painting with a Twist, down the row from Insomnia Video Game Culture and Vinyl Toys, TxDryClean, and Replay Games. Across the street is the mid-Phase-2 Re:Vive development; here’s the rising frame of the apparent Benjamin Moore paint store, which should help strengthen the center’s nascent dessert-and-real-estate theme:

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Pink in, Pink Out