A reader writes in to share the exciting news that one of those Northgate Custom Homes townhouses on Heights Blvd. that’s snuggled up next to the train tracks and just behind the recycling center on Center St. is now listed as “option pending” on MLS. Readers chose the complex as the city’s Best Vacancy in the Swamplot Awards for Houston Real Estate just a few months ago. Is someone buying right next to the tracks?
Well, not exactly. 114 Heights Blvd. Unit B, priced at $309,000, is the one that’s now listed as option pending. It’s shielded from those noisy trains by the full 20-or-so-ft. width of the adjacent townhome, Unit A. And here’s the featured view from one of its balconies:
“The Sons of Hermann site would not have to be dry. There used to be a liquor store at the Boulevard and the bayou - Kims #1. Tapping in to all the people who now live within drunks-puking-in-your-driveway distance of Washington makes that site a good choice. Enter from Yale or Heights. Then maybe those condos that are 6 feet from the RR [tracks] would finally sell.” [finness, commenting on H-E-B Plans To Build a Montrose Grocery Store at Wilshire Village]
“. . . My reason for staying away from those townhomes…Any one of those townhomes could be easily tweaked in the future to be 2 apartments. Pair that with the common driveways and you could easily have alot of people sharing a pretty small area.” [justguessin, commenting on Comment of the Day: Here Come the Almeda Promoters]
“Eventually people will get sick of having no place to park and the hot spot will move on. Prediction is for Brixx to go out of business within six months, Eight will turn into a restaurant within a year and Taps will probably stay as it is. Not sure about Roosevelt - could become a restaurant as it does have a parking lot of its own.” [MC, commenting on What It’s Like to Live on Center St.]
From the Houston Press’s magnum opus on the Washington Avenue scene: “Drunk people walk through the yard, pee on the house, sit on the porch swing and bark at the dogs. They scream and yell and fight until all hours every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night, and now during the day on Sunday. The music from District can be clearly heard from the driveway. ‘Right now you could go sit in my bedroom and feel how the house just thuds. The windows rattle,’ [longtime Center St. resident and property owner Helen] Espinoza said. There are constant accidents at the nearby intersection. With police focused on Washington, late-night drag racers take to Center Street. Espinoza says she has a hard time getting cops to come at all. [Neighbor Marie] Martinez, meanwhile, spends much of her time fighting new liquor licenses in court. She can’t hold them off forever, though, and while she’s fighting one bar, others pop up. Five liquor licenses are pending in the area right now. As more nightspots open, more people flood into the neighborhood to park. They block driveways or sometimes just use them, tear up the grass and get stuck in the drainage ditches. Marlene Gafrick, the director of city planning, says her department began working on the parking problems in March and has tried to bring each of the 35 to 40 bars and restaurants up to code. She too must hustle to keep pace with the development. Soon after one bar finally agreed to rent a nearby lot, for instance, the lot went under construction. . . . After a long fight, Espinoza finally won ‘No Parking’ signs on her side of the street. The factory across the way put up its own, with chicken wire, along its long and tall chain-link fence. People just cut them down.” [Houston Press]
Food and travel writer Salma Abdelnour, who grew up here, takes New York Times travel section readers on a tour of 5 Houston restaurants carved out of former something-or-others: the car dealership that became Reef, the ice house that became Beaver’s, the burlap factory that became Textile, the appliance warehouse that became Block 7 Wine Company. Somehow the spaghetti-western-themed strip center that ultimately became Stella Sola gets mixed up in this crowd (Abdelnour calls the building a “town house”). She adds: “In the film ‘Urban Cowboy,’ based in Houston and nearby Pasadena, the mother of the John Travolta character told him, ‘You just can’t get good vegetables in Houston.’ You certainly can now.” [New York Times] Photo of Stella Sola: 2Scale Architects
The Wall Street Journal’s Katy McLaughlin picks on a few loud restaurants:
Many of the most cutting-edge, design conscious restaurants are introducing a new level of noise to today’s already voluble restaurant scene. The new noisemakers: Restaurants housed in cavernous spaces with wood floors, linen-free tables, high ceilings and lots of windows—all of which cause sound to ricochet around what are essentially hard-surfaced echo chambers.
Upscale restaurants have done away with carpeting, heavy curtains, tablecloths, and plush banquettes gradually over the decade, and then at a faster pace during the recession, saying such touches telegraph a fine-dining message out of sync with today’s cost-conscious, informal diner. Those features, though, were also sound absorbing. . . .
Restaurateurs often say the only complaints they get about noise are from older clientele. As people age—and particularly when they are 65 or older—they often lose acuity in hearing high-frequency sounds, making it harder to understand speech, says Mark Ross, a professor emeritus of audiology at the University of Connecticut.
The Corkscrew wine bar at 1919 Washington Ave. will be closing for good on February 9th. Appearing in its place by March will be a new “organic bar” from the same owners. Bee Love will serve infused cocktails and other drinks with fresh, local, organic ingredients and no syrups or mixes, reports the HBJ’s Allison Wollam. And the bar will grow its own limes, oranges, and lemons.
[Corkscrew co-owner] Andrew Adams, who also owns The Washington Avenue Drinkery at 4115 Washington Ave., says it may take a little longer to get a drink at Bee Love than at other rowdy bars along the Washington Avenue corridor because the drinks will be made for “experiencing,” not just drinking.
Adams also says that by the end of March he plans to open a new over-30 nightclub right next door to Bee Love. It’ll be called Trixie’s and feature eighties music.
So much new stuff going on it’s impossible to keep track of it all!
Opening Soon? A new “Houston Ave. Bar” at the site of the former Farmers Coffee Shop on the corner of Houston Ave. and White Oak. Here’s the evidence: A permit for a “2 story addition” to the property was approved by the city last month. The corner is already a popular gathering place for floodwaters — several commenters on HAIF have posted photos of the intersection after Hurricane Ike (see above) and Tropical Storm Allison.
Moved: The Central City Co-op Wednesday market, from that Ecclesia space next to the Taft St. Coffee House to new digs at the Grace Lutheran Church at 2515 Waugh, just north of Missouri St. Sunday markets are still at Discovery Green. Next up for the co-op crew: Selling enough veggies to pay off those loans used for the church buildout.
Opening Softly, Later This Month: A place called Canopy, from the folks who brought you that place called Shade. Claire Smith and Russell Murrell’s new restaurant will go in the spot where Tony Ruppe’s was, in the double-decked strip center at 3939 Montrose, reports Cleverley Stone. Three meals a day, 7 days a week, plus 3 seating areas:
a bright and refreshing dining room, festive bar and side street patio. We will eventually offer curbside “to go” service.
Opening Early Next Month: The brand-new Dessert Shoppe, in the strip center portion of 19th Streete in the Heights. Fred Eats Houston writes that sisters Sara and RaeMarie Villar will be serving up “whole cakes and pies to individual desserts, along with assorted breakfast pastries, cookies, quiches, cupcakes, and some breads.”
Reopened, for the First Time Since Ike: The Shriner’s Hospital for Children in Galveston. The combined boards of the International Shriners and Shriners Hospitals for Children had originally decided to close the hospital for good, after 30 inches of water wandered through the building’s first floor during the Hurricane. Shriners voting at this summer’s convention in San Antonio reversed that decision. The new hospital will have a smaller staff and budget. The Chronicle’s Todd Ackerman reports that the hospital should already be open for reconstructive surgery cases; burn victims will have to wait until December for treatment.
“If ‘Nudist sundeck + 1 hired model –> 100% occupancy’ was the case, then the Core (on Washington Ave) and Bel Air (on Allen Parkway) and many others in the similiar ’scene’ and price range would be at 100% occupancy too. But they are not. BTW, the Bel Air pool is really really nice!” [irfan, commenting on Taking More Than Half Off at Those Apartments with the French Quarter Look]
“Good riddance! This landmark has for too long stood in the way of shiny-shirt progress. Think of how many bars with names like ‘Elite,’ ‘Wealth,’ or ‘Entitled’ you could fit on that property! For my money, I might just have to call [it] the Bourgeoises, in honor of the now defunct Proletariat. And by ‘in honor of’ I mean ‘urinating upon the memory of.’” [Nord, commenting on GM Wants To Take Away Knapp]
On the list of dealerships General Motors intends to shut down: Knapp Chevrolet, at 815 Houston Ave. just south of Washington. Back in May, GM notified the longtime Downtown dealership of its intent to terminate its franchise agreement as of Halloween 2010.
Since then, the dealership’s owners have been trying to get the decision reversed: President Robert G. Knapp presented his case to a congressional subcommittee in July, after several appeals to the company were rejected. Knapp claims his dealership has been profitable, and that closing the dealership would significantly hobble GM’s local market share. Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee has gotten involved, introducing a bill in Congress that would make it easier for dealerships to appeal franchise terminations in court. Knapp is also collecting a list of supporters through an online petition to GM. More than 6,200 supporters have added their names to the list so far.
One of those supporters: The Greater Houston Preservation Alliance, fans of Knapp’s moderne corner building, completed in 1941, 2 years after the dealership was first established.
A reader notes that a few of those new Villas at the Heights townhouses from Northgate Custom Homes, built “right on the railroad tracks on Heights Blvd, backing up to the recycling center” are now sporting new — and much lower — asking prices:
The most extreme price reduction on one went from $365k to $299k. There are now 5 units for sale with prices ranging from $289k to $309k. They are getting there, only another $40k to go before someone might actually look at them!
Front-row train-side Unit M — featured in Dave McC’s famous video below — seems to have taken a break from MLS, but it’s still listed on the Northgate website for just $299,900!
This doesn’t sound so much like a deli now, does it? How long ’til they start calling this part of Shepherd The Gastrow?
A little birdie points Swamplot to more info about plans for the former Cue & Cushion pool hall, hiding on the uh . . . secret Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau website:
510 Shepherd, designed by award-winning hospitality designer Joel Mozersky, will be a unique neighborhood restaurant concept reminiscent of a traditional London gastro pub, yet modernized in design and updated to take into account American tastes.
Swamplot covers real estate, home design and renovation, architecture, and the landscape of Houston, Texas. Swamplot did not flood during Allison — or Ike! Honest! Read more
Food and travel writer Salma Abdelnour, who grew up here, takes New York Times travel section readers on a tour of 5 Houston restaurants carved out of former something-or-others: the car dealership that became Reef, the ice house that became 
Comment of the Day: Imagining the H-E-B Heights Revitalization Plan
“The Sons of Hermann site would not have to be dry. There used to be a liquor store at the Boulevard and the bayou - Kims #1. Tapping in to all the people who now live within drunks-puking-in-your-driveway distance of Washington makes that site a good choice. Enter from Yale or Heights. Then maybe those condos that are 6 feet from the RR [tracks] would finally sell.” [finness, commenting on H-E-B Plans To Build a Montrose Grocery Store at Wilshire Village]