Neighborhood

02/01/19 5:00pm

Montgomery Home Listing Photo of the Day: Barflies

Montgomery

No Comments

5450 Honea Egypt Rd. [HAR]

77316, Homes for Sale, Montgomery

Demolitions

02/01/19 1:00pm

3000 Richmond Will Come Crumbling Down in April

Redevelopment, Upper Kirby

9 Comments

Tenants have been filing out of the 5-story office building shown above at the northeast corner of Richmond Ave and Eastside St. in anticipation of its planned collapse 2 months from now, according one employee who’s still inside but won’t be for long. Building management gave all occupants — includingÂ Imparali Tailor, luggage retailer Kipling, and dozens of other business and medical groups — notice last year that they’d need to hit the road.

Designed by Wilson, Morris, Crane & Anderson, the building is one of a dozen vertically-windowed mid- and lowrises that then-not-yet-famous Houston developer Gerald Hines built along Richmond in the early 1960s to accommodate businesses looking to spread out away from Downtown for the first time. (3100 Richmond, on the other side of ~~Weslayan~~ Eastside, was his work too, as well as 3101 Richmond, which sits catty-corner to the soon-to-be demolished building.) By the time the Richmond Ave corridor of similar-looking office structures was complete from Kirby to Weslayan, it had served as a sort of “MBA course,” write Houston architect Barry Moore and preservationist Anna Mod, “for Gerald Hines and arch-competitor Kenneth Schnitzer [of Century Development],” the 2 of whom soon graduated to designing taller and more notable Houston buildings inside and outside of Downtown.

The Richmond Corridor [OffCite]
The Business Strip [OffCite]

Photo: Capital Realty

Richmond Ave Adieu

77098, Demolitions, Redevelopment, Upper Kirby

Alvin

01/31/19 5:00pm

Alvin Home Listing Photo of the Day: Say, “Ah!”

2 Comments

1304 S. Johnson St. [HAR]

77511, Alvin, Homes for Sale

01/31/19 12:45pm

Renderings Show Midtown Sears Building Donning Upper Story Glass Cap, Welcoming In Both Tech Stars and Wannabees

Midtown, Proposed Developments, Renovations

17 Comments

The first illustrations of what Rice University wants to do with the Midtown Sears building it bought 2 years ago and has since stripped down emerged yesterday, casting a glance across Fannin St. to show what the northeast corner of the building — to be renamed The Ion — could look like once it’s been reworked into a nexus for tech entrepreneurs and students of various academic institutions who want to be like them. Among the Art-Deco-era bells and whistles shown intact are the sets of vertical mosaic tilework that flank the building’s corner entrance; they’ve got some new shine going on courtesy of light fixtures that appear to be installed directly above and below them. Up above the original late 1930s structure, the 4 architecture firms at work on the building (Gensler, James Carpenter Design Associates, James Corner Field Operations, and SHoP Architects) propose adding a 2-story glass-curtain-walled topping that’d help funnel sunlight into a whole bunch of empty space they’re calling a “central light well.” It would run vertically through the building’s interior, from the roof down to the lobby.

Work and meeting areas would go along the perimeter of the abyss:

Midtown Growth Spurt

77002, Midtown, Office Buildings, Proposed Developments, Renovations

01/30/19 4:45pm

Houston Home Listing Photo of the Day: Where the Wild Things Are

Sugar Land

2 Comments

15701 Oleta Ln. [HAR]

77498, Homes for Sale, Sugar-Land

01/30/19 11:00am

What the Timbergrove H-E-B Looks Like on Its First Day of Retirement

Openings and Closings, Retail, Timbergrove

2 Comments

And that’s a wrap over at the 18th St. H-E-B, closed since yesterday so as not to distract from the new, double-decker H-E-B that opened today at 2300 N. Shepherd Dr. between 23rd and 24th streets. The photos above show the old store’s front entrance stripped of all red, hyphenated signage, blockaded by shopping carts, plastered with closure notices, and — in case that wasn’t enough — fronted by stack of wooden pallets with a blaze yellow flyer addressing anyone who’d still hoped to get inside. A few weeks ago, workers inside stopped restocking the aisles, slapped a few discounts on what they had left, and watched as the store’s inventory dwindled up until it shut down.

By 5 p.m. yesterday, reports a Swamplot reader, the parking lot was mostly empty:

1511 W. 18th St.

77008, Openings and Closings, Retail, Supermarkets, Timbergrove

01/29/19 5:00pm

Sugar Land Home Listing Photo of the Day: The Pitch

Sugar Land

No Comments

68 Heathrow Ln. [HAR]

77479, Homes for Sale, Sugar-Land

01/29/19 11:00am

Hines Senior Living Signs Up for Former Momentum Audi Dealership on Richmond

Proposed Developments, Redevelopment, Upper Kirby

5 Comments

Note: A previous version of this story misstated the planned location of the new building as that currently occupied by Momentum Volkswagen. The building is planned across the street from Momentum Volkswagen, at the southeast corner of Richmond Ave and Revere St. formerly home to a different dealership, Momentum Audi.

Here are a few views of the new senior living apartment building that’s making an appearance in this week’s Houston city planning agenda, on the spot occupied by Momentum Audi at the southeast corner of Richmond Ave and Revere St. (That’s right across the street from the currently open Moment Volkswagen of Upper Kirby dealership at 2405 Richmond.) Architecture firm Munoz Albin’s design for the building appears to be a 7-story setup, with some new landscaping planted along the sidewalks that encircle the structure.

Here’s what the site looks like now:

77098, Proposed Developments, Upper Kirby

Upper Kirby Swap

Afton Oaks

01/28/19 5:00pm

Houston Home Listing Photo of the Day: The Long Way Home

5 Comments

810 Andrews St. [HAR]

77027, Afton Oaks, Homes for Sale

01/28/19 11:00am

What’s Next for the Empty LULAC Clubhouse Marooned on a Bagby St. Traffic Island?

Midtown

8 Comments

Last week, new chain link fencing cropped up around the former League of United Latin American Citizens Council 60 Clubhouse building at 3004 Bagby St., according to a Swamplot tipster, who sends these photos showing what the 2-story stucco structure looks like ringed by the new barriers. The building made news at the beginning of last year when the nonprofit working to preserve it received a $140,000 grant from American Express for planned restoration work, as well as a “National Treasure” designation from the D.C.-based National Trust for Historic Preservation. Since then, however, the fencing has been the only major sign of change at the triangular property, which housed LULAC’s de facto national headquarters for decades after the Latino civil rights group purchased and moved into it in 1955.

LULAC Clubhouse [National Trust for Historic Preservation]

Photos: Swamplot inbox

Midtown Mainstays

77006, Historic Preservation, Midtown

01/25/19 5:30pm

Houston Home Listing Photo of the Day: The Outdoor Shower

Houston Heights

1 Comment

2 W. 11th St. [HAR]

77005, Homes for Sale, Museum District

Demolitions

01/25/19 4:30pm

Obliteration of Corazon Clears the Way for 3 New Hyde Park Townhomes To Rise in Its Place

Hyde Park, Montrose

7 Comments

This pair of drive-by shots shows what remained on Tuesday of the Hyde Park building that until recently housed South and Central American craft store Corazon. After receiving a series of short-term lease extensions, the store’s owner Chris Murphy told Swamplot last October that he only had a month left in the space at 2318 Waugh Dr., which had housed the store since 1998 and served as a canvas for Houston’s fifth red dot on its Fairview-St. side. (It opened a year earlier on Montrose Blvd. a few blocks south of 59 in a spot within the former Gramercy Apartments that’s now occupied by the Museum Tower.)

Murphy began renting the blue and gray building that’s now collapsing for $650 a month over the discouragements of his friends, reported the Chronicle’s Ileana Najarro, who warned him of its location in “the middle of nowhere” and of the visibly lopsided posture it’d assumed over its 100-year lifespan. (Joke’s on them: the building, wrote Najarro, went on to survive 8 car crashes during the time Corazon was inside.) Harris County’s appraisal district dates its construction to around 1880. Since then, it’s done stints as a smithy, glass-blowing studio, antique store, general store, and furniture refinishing shop.

Once the dust has settled from the demolition, a set of 3 townhomes are set to rise in its place. Murphy plans to continue dealing products from South and Central American artists online.

Previously on Swamplot: Corazon Is Leaving the Corner of Waugh and Fairview for Real This Time; Corazon Will Hang Around Montrose for a Few Months More Before Its Building Gets Smashed Up;Â Corazon Now Being Removed from Its Big Red Dot Spot at Waugh and Fairview

Photos: Grey Stephens

Fairview Farewell

77006, Demolitions, Hyde Park, Montrose, Public Art, Redevelopment, Retail

01/25/19 10:30am

Here’s What the Southwest Portion of Hermann Park Could Look Like and Where You Can Go To Give Your Two Cents About It

Hermann Park, Landscape, Parks, Proposed Developments

10 Comments

Narrowing in on the corner of Fannin St. and Cambridge St.Â which will soon go by the nameÂ The Commons at Hermann Park, landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh and his associates have sketched out a few potentially transformative ideas for the area, such as the rocket-ship-shaped children’s play structure depicted at top with a mock jetway linking it to the hill on the right. And above, a handful of other new outdoor features that seem to be a hit with the faceless crowd of park-goers shown engaging with them in various forms of recreation.

To find out what real people think about the proposals, part of the 20-year Hermann Park master plan, the Hermann Park Conservancy is asking folks to weigh in on them during a public meeting to be held in theÂ Cherie Flores Garden Pavilion at McGovern Centennial Gardens off Hermann Dr. on Thursday, February 7 from 6 to 8 p.m.

Speaking of pavilions, there’s one included in Van Valkenburgh’s plan, too, as a complement to the existing one off Fannin St.

Fannin at Cambridge St.

77030, Hermann Park, Landscape, Parks, Proposed Developments

Briarmeadow

01/24/19 3:00pm

Openings and Closings, Renovations, Restaurants

6 Comments

A Swamplot reader who for the past few days has been monitoring changes at the intersection of Westheimer and Voss roads sends the photo at top showing a new Taco Cabana banner strung up on the roadside fast food pad that Pollo Tropical left in 2017. Although the new restaurant’s flavor profile won’t be much different from that of its predecessor, the look of the place appears to be changing quite a bit. So far, the white pergola fronted by Pollo Tropical’s signage on the east side of the structure has been removed and a fresh coat of gray paint has been applied to all sides of building, including the one home to that blue tagline and accompanying palm tree illustration shown opposite the sedan in the photo above.

Also gone: the 4 painted palm-tree window awnings along the south and east sides of the building, each of which fronted its very own live palm tree as shown in the photo. The trees themselves don’t appear to have been disturbed since Pollo Tropical left: