Neighborhood

Featured Posts
04/06/17 1:30pm

Vietnamese Replacing Italian by the Discarded Starbucks Shell on Richmond Ave.

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Galleria, Renovations, Restaurants, Retail, Richmond Strip
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Roostar Vietnamese Grill, 5551 Richmond Ave., Westheimer Gardens, Houston, 77056

Former Napoli at 5551 Richmond Ave., Westheimer Gardens, Houston, 77056Roostar Vietnamese Grill is just about done moving into the southern slot of the perpendicular 2-man segment of the Richmond Ave. strip center east of Chimney Rock Rd., a reader notes. The Vietnamese kinda-fusion restaurant’s first location opened in Spring Branch a few years ago as Vietnam Poblano, swapping to the new name and stylized but literal melded bird-star logo not long after. Ronnie Nguyen and Linda Nguyen, the 2-link chain’s forgers, had hoped the new location (in the space formerly occupied by Napoli) would be up and running in time for all that Super Bowl hubbub; looks like the new plan is for an April opening.

Next door to the nearly-hatched restaurant is the former Starbucks spot, which had shut down by the time that shiny new freestanding one opened up on the corner across the street last year:

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Coffee Out, Roostar In
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Art
04/06/17 11:30am

Double Decker Heights Strip Center Planned In Place of Shipping Container Art Gallery, Nonagenarian Bungalows

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Houston Heights, Proposed Developments, Restaurants, Retail
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Retail Center planned for 628 E. 11th St., Houston Heights, Houston, 77008

628 E. 11th St., Houston Heights, Houston, 77008

628 E. 11th St., Houston Heights, Houston, 77008Retail plans along the stretch of E. 11th St. west of Beverly St. look to be moving in a more concrete direction once again — SRS has started advertising available square footage in a double-decker strip center planned on the eastern half of the block. The design for the site has been totally overhauled since the original ads for a Park Place on 11th development (the weathered signage for which is still hanging around on the property, and has been for the better part of a decade.)

The potential footprint of the retail space spreads all the way from Beverly St. to just east of metals brightener Bright Metals of the Heights.  A leasing siteplan shows the center insulated from the 11th St. traffic by a breathable dual layer of parking spaces — and even a triple layer on the Beverly St. side:

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2X 11th
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Featured Posts
04/05/17 11:15am

Tremont Tower’s Dome Spotted Naked on Westheimer Again

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WAMM
12 Comments

Tremont Tower Condos, 3311 Yupon St., WAMM, Houston, 77006

Tremont Tower Condos, 3311 Yupon St., WAMM, Houston, 77006The round bit of the Tremont Tower condo complex behind Doc’s was photographed entirely uncovered last week, nearly a year after the last confirmed sighting of the bare turret (and at least 2 years after the obscuring tarp was first installed). The reader who captured the shot (who adds that he “thought they only removed it to signify the election of a new pope”) didn’t catch the denuders in the act, however. The Montrose sighting comes just a day or so after those tornado-warning-laced storms blew through; perhaps incidentally, the tarp’s previous disappearance was also heralded by windy weather.

Photos: Swamplot inbox (top), Hey Hey Houston (second)

Baring All in Montrose
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Featured Posts
04/04/17 5:00pm

Pollock, Insect Ceilings in a Freewayside Woodside Mod, Yours for $565K

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Homes for Sale, Woodside
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3611 Woodvalley Dr., Woodside, Houston, 77025

3611 Woodvalley Dr., Woodside, Houston, 77025

Just how many textures are tucked between the low walls of the facade at 3611 Woodvalley Dr. and the rather taller 610 Loop noise barricade that the property backs up against? The 2,704-sq.-ft. home has been outfitted with a considerable variety and range of visual stimuli in its 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, as well as its open kitchen and living areas — from the mod and minimalist to the more avant garde (that’s the master suite pictured above, as viewed from the open-plan walk-in closet). You can even draw your very own patterns on one of the 1959 home’s more recent chalkboard surfaces:

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For Sale at Loop’s Edge
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Downtown
04/04/17 2:30pm

No More Lunchtime Ragin’ at the Downtown Ragin’ Cajun Location

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Openings and Closings, Restaurants
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Ragin' Cajun tunnel location beneath 930 Main St., Downtown, Houston, 77002

Ragin' Cajun tunnel location beneath 930 Main St., Downtown, Houston, 77002Ragin’ Cajun, likely Downtown’s most subterranean crawfish vendor, is packing up and crawling out of the tunnels beneath the McKinney Place Garage at 930 Main St., a reader notes this week. (That’ll leave its French-Quarter-evocative retail space open for more underground restaurant turnover; the garage most recently saw the swapout of a Prince’s Hamburgers branch for Time for Thai, amid other nearby culinary tunnel shuffles). The shop’s other locations are still open, per signage left behind at the scene.

Photos: Dave

Crawfish Digout
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Featured Posts
04/04/17 12:30pm

Somebody Finally Has a Plan for That 50-Bedroom House in Manvel

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Manvel, Temporary Housing
7 Comments

2354 County Rd. 59 , Manvel, TX 77578

Did everyone get their bets in on what the next use for that half-constructed cult-ready megamansion off County Rd. 59 was gonna be? Well, you’ve had plenty of years, and now time’s up: A group is currently working with the city of Manvel to turn the 30-to-70-bedroom space into a veterans housing facility, with plans to house veterans’ families as well (and to offer services like PTSD treatment, readjustment counseling, art classes, and rides to VA appointments). The place is going by the name The Bailey House, after actor and PTSD-afflicted veteran Jimmy Stewart’s character in It’s a Wonderful  Life. A meeting with the organization is in the works for Saturday morning, if you want more info (or want to help the place get set up and running, financially or otherwise).

Veteran Christa Mode, who’s spearheading the project, told the Chronicle’s Dana Guthrie this week that there won’t be a completion date floated until funding is taken care of. The building has also been roughed up by vandals since it last showed its face on HAR:

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Vetting Plans Near Pearland
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Featured Posts
04/04/17 10:00am

Down House Joins Bernadine’s and Hunky Dory in the Treadsack Chapter 11 Club

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Houston Heights, Restaurants
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Down House, 1801 Yale St., Houston Heights, Houston, 77008

Down House Ventures, the legal entity behind Treadsack’s oldest Heights-area technically-a-private-club, has filed for bankruptcy this morning, lagging just a few days behind last week’s Bernadine’s and Hunky Dory filings. The company preemptively included Down House in a Facebooked list of Treadsack restaurants that would stay open for now despite the legal and financial question marks now hanging over the company, given the sudden mid-winter departures of side-by-side restaurant and bar duo Foreign Correspondents and Canard and the details of payroll and tax issues subsequently dredged up; D&T Drive Inn and Johnny’s Gold Brick were placed on the still-truckin’ roster as well. This morning’s filings also look to have included a motion asking for funds to pay current Down House employees, as Craig Malisow reports was granted in the case of last week’s Chapter 11 initiates.

Photo: Down House

Going Down in the Heights
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Featured Posts
04/03/17 4:30pm

The Galleria’s Preeminent 24-Hr Sex Shop Looks To Be Up For Grabs

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Galleria, Retail
22 Comments

Zone D'Erotica, 2626 West Loop South, Galleria Area, Houston, 77027

The always-open pink-and-purple site of adult accessories shop Zone d’Erotica, which has long served as a retina-searing guidepost to westward-bound Galleria traffic, is currently listed as for lease on the website of retail real estate brokerage The Retail Connection, a keen-eyed reader noted this morning. The trapezoid-heavy building is tucked on a trapezoidal plot of land between the yellow-bedecked corner Shell station and the austere gray facade of Dillard’s, and served as a Luke’s Hamburgers in a past life before making the Zone transition well over a decade ago (presumably with the aid of Houston’s lack of zoning laws). Just down the road along the Galleria’s Westheimer Rd. edge, a younger, prettier pad site (built recently as part of the Galleria’s ongoing makeover and reconstruction) has now been filled in with the likes of Michelin-starred dim sum joint Yauatcha, which opened last week.

Photo: The Retail Connection

Westheimer Zone-ing
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CityCentre
04/03/17 1:00pm

How To Topple That Last Bit of Seventies Mod Office Building Without Letting It Topple You

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Demolitions
2 Comments

Friday’s knockout of the last walls standing of the Town & Country III office building by CityCentre can now be added to Swamplot’s small but smashing video collection of doomed structures taking a light swing at their demo crew on the way down. To be fair, the semi-controlled collapse of the midrise’s final walls looks to have been much less of a surprise than last fall’s award-winning Corporate Plaza parking garage acceleration incident: while footage of the Town & Country toppling does show the cloud of dust stirred up by the pullover, it captures no contemporaneous cloud of suspense regarding the fate of the operator and nearby construction workers. (The video above also captures commentary from some onlookers in CityCentre Five, who’ll likely have a similarly clear view of the next few teardowns on the docket.)

Video: Swamplot inbox

CityCentre Grab and Smash
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Featured Posts
04/03/17 11:30am

Where Big Brother, Trump, and Tin Foil Hats Gathered in the Museum District This Weekend

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Museum District
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Bus Shelter April Fool's Day, Bissonnet St. east of Montrose Blvd., Museum District, Houston, 77005

Bus Shelter April Fool's Day, Bissonnet St. east of Montrose Blvd., Museum District, Houston, 77005 Shots of Orwellian wall ornamentation and conspiracy theorist headgear were turned up by a reader’s surveillance of the Bissonnet St. bus shelter east of Montrose Blvd. by the Museum of Fine Arts early Saturday morning. The setup looks like one of the series of bus shelter makeovers purportedly planned around town by a vigilante redecorator — though perhaps because of heightened citywide gag tolerance spurred by April Fool’s Day, this round seems to have significantly outlasted the pre-dawn tiki hutch installed in front of the Public Storage on W. Gray back in February.

Eyes on the scene sent a few further monitoring reports on the decorations throughout the day, including notes of edits to the display from various passer-bys:

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Museum District Surveillance
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Bankruptcies
03/31/17 11:45am

Hunky Dory and Bernadine’s Are Not Dead Yet

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Bars and Clubs, Houston Heights, Quicklink, Restaurants
11 Comments

HUNKY DORY AND BERNADINE’S ARE NOT DEAD YET Patio, Hunky Dory Tavern, 1801 N. Shepherd Dr., Houston HeightsIn a statement posted simultaneously yesterday to the Bernadine’s and Hunky Dory Tavern Facebook pages, Treadsack’s management team says the twin restaurants at 1801 N. Shepherd (along with the company’s remaining establishments: Down House, D&T Tavern, and Johnny’s Gold Brick) remain open — and that it’s hoping customers will support the decision by continuing to eat there: “We’ve filed Chapter 11 Bankruptcy for Hunky Dory and Bernadine’s so we can restructure our debt and continue to operate. This was a very difficult decision, and not one we came to lightly, but the chance to save the businesses that all of our employees have worked so hard to build and so many of you, our guests, have supported, made it a risk worth taking. We love these restaurants and will continue to fight for them.” [Eater Houston; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Hunky Dory

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Demolitions
03/30/17 9:45am

The Houston Chronicle Downtown Has Only One Story Left

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Downtown
6 Comments

Demolition of Houston Chronicle Building 801 Texas Ave., Downtown Houston

With this latest photo dispatch from the southeast corner of Milam and Prairie, Swamplot reader Brie Kelman adds the latest chapter to her ongoing chronicle of the disappearance of the former Houston Chronicle headquarters complex from Downtown. In the month since her last report, 4 or more stories have been taken down from the structure facing Prairie St.; there’s now just a single story left. Not even a complete story, even. Just a few scenes:

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Time for the Kicker
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