COMMENT OF THE DAY RUNNER-UP: BAYPORT FOR TOURISTS “So no rent and docking fees? Which means the port will only be making money off of parking? Maybe something off of the cruise tickets? The Bayport cruise terminal is a nice feature, but the problem is that it’s located in the middle of nowhere. Most cruise ports are located where passengers can get off the cruise and be a tourist. Even though Galveston is the beginning and ending for many cruise passengers, it is also a destination for many also. New Orleans also feeds off this. The Bayport terminal is essentially dropping off passengers at a cargo terminal in the middle of a petro-chemical complex. FUN!” [kjb434, commenting on Port of Houston Paying $6.7 Million in Cruise Bait for Suddenly Popular Bayport Terminal]
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PORT OF HOUSTON PAYING $6.7 MILLION IN CRUISE BAIT FOR SUDDENLY POPULAR BAYPORT TERMINAL 
A minor detail missing from last week’s story explaining how the Bayport Cruise Terminal was finally able to lure a couple of cruise lines to its Galveston Bay-side shores, after long 4 years of loneliness and vacancy: the payola. Er, dowry. To entice Princess Cruises and the Norwegian Cruise Line to give up on the overstuffed Galveston Port and stop by for a little on-again, off-again fun with its otherwise antisocial upstream neighbor, the Port of Houston Authority has agreed to dole out a combined $6.685 million to its seafaring suitors. The bulk of cruising-around money will go to the tall Norwegians; Princess will take home $685,000. And both lines will be excused from rent and docking fees. [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Flickr user Silent Z
DEEP INSIDE MISSION CONTROL 
At last, that in-depth, exhaustive tour through the Johnson Space Center’s Building 30 that you’d been waiting for — coffee bars and tiny women’s rooms included: “The corridors look like they should exude the odor of decades of cigarette smoke,” space-travel fan Lee Hutchinson writes, “but the federal government’s ‘no smoking’ policy has been in place long enough that most smell faintly of stale coffee instead.” Bonus: Every console in Apollo-era Mission Control explained — or close enough. [Ars Technica] Photo: Steven Michael
HOTEL ROOM ART FAIR IMPRESARIO SELLS UNDERWEAR, LOSES SHIRT 
Wrapping up last weekend’s seat-of-the-pants Pan Art Fair, held in a third-floor hotel suite across the street from the massive Texas Contemporary Art Fair at the George R. Brown Convention Center, blogger and fair impresario Robert Boyd notes some successes. Among the sales: A piece from artist Jim Nolan’s drawers-in-a-drawer installation, the process of failure/it’s better to regret something you have done, also known as a pair of underwear displayed prominently in one of the bedside-table drawers. Also, Boyd sold out of the small run of T-shirts he had made to commemorate the event. And he’s glad a number of local artists helped push the exhibition space into some odd corners of the hotel room. But, he writes, “I lost money on this deal. Sales were meager. I had to take two vacation days from work to do it. So naturally, it is my intention to do it again next year — even bigger, if possible. See you then.” [The Great God Pan Is Dead; previously on Swamplot] Photos of Jim Nolan and artwork: Robert Boyd
SMALL COLD GALLERY SPACE GOING DOWNTOWN HOTEL SUITE MINI-BAR 
Having now sold out all remaining end-table and dresser drawer spaces in the hotel-room mini art fair he’s setting up in Room 307 of the Embassy Suites next to Discovery Green downtown, blogger Robert Boyd has found a tenant for one last untapped space in his Pan Art Fair, timed to coincide with this weekend’s Texas Contemporary Art Fair at the convention center down Dallas St. And that space would be: the hotel suite’s mini-bar. With only hours to go before tonight’s opening, Boyd has turned the space over to local experts with considerable experience running compact refrigerated galleries. Curators Emily Sloan and David McClain had been operating The Kenmore, a “cold self-run exhibition object” (which at approximately 3 ft. by 2 ft. by 2 ft. qualifies as one of Houston’s smallest art galleries) out of a few different local art spaces, including Skydive in Richwood Place. “I’m fairly certain I have no idea what [Sloan and McClain] will do,” Boyd is quoted as saying in a notice just added to the Pan Art Fair website, “but fuck-it, no one else wanted the fridge.” [Pan Art Fair; previously on Swamplot] Photo: The Kenmore
ART OF THE DOWNTOWN HOTEL SUITE FURNITURE 
Blogger Robert Boyd’s upstart Pan Art Fair — now touting itself as “Houston’s smallest art fair” — has been digging deep into the furniture of its Embassy Suites hotel room venue (Suite 307) to find space for more exhibitors. Added to the showing space for the fair, which runs at the same time as the much larger Texas Contemporary Art Fair across Discovery Green in the GRB beginning this Thursday: exhibits in the end-table and dresser drawers. Four of the six sliding spaces, dubbed “micro-booths,” have already been snatched up by artists and galleries, according to the fair’s website. Still available: the south end-table drawer, listed as the former location of “the installation Gideon Bible Piece.” [Pan Art Fair; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Embassy Suites
Here’s a video recreation of the 180-degree light-and-sound show from German building-projection artists URBANSCREEN, for Rice University’s centennial celebrations last week. If you weren’t there, you’ll want to watch this full-screen at the highest quality setting — with a screen much, much bigger than what you have. A Lovett Hall-only closeup version is here:
The regional tourism building planned for the northern of the 2 blocks between Minute Maid Park and the GRB will be called the Nau Center for Texas Cultural Heritage, Mayor Parker announced today. It’ll be named after beer distributor and $8-million-donor John Nau; fundraisers hope waving the rendering pictured above will help drum up an additional $32 million to get the thing built. ($15 million more is coming from Houston First, the “government corporation” that runs the city’s convention center, the Hilton Americas Hotel, and several city performance venues.)
The design leaves room for 2 houses dating from 1904 and 1905 and moved to the site last year, the only surviving structures from the neighborhood on nearby blocks named Quality Hill that by the 1930s had vanished — along with its storied reputation for integrity and elevation. The rendering also shows (at far right) the saved-from-scrap 1919 Southern Pacific 982 steam engine parked on the curb across from the East End Light Rail Line along Capitol St. Between the houses and the locomotive will sit the Nau Center’s signature dome entrance, held aloft, the rendering from Bailey Architects shows, by a ring of dainty columns resting at sidewalk level and a circular wall of glass.
A DOWNTOWN ART OVERNIGHT 
Blogger Robert Boyd is putting on his own art fair to coincide with next month’s Texas Contemporary Art Fair at the GRB. The Pan Art Fair will be housed in a (yet-to-be determined) room in the neighboring Embassy Suites Hotel, across from Discovery Green. Salon des Refusés or after-fair party pad? Maybe a little of both: Individual artists aren’t allowed to set up their own booths at major art fairs — Boyd’s hotel-suite extravaganza has already signed up 2 artists and 2 galleries. “I grew up going to comic book conventions, and art fairs are basically the same thing, except more expensive, more fashionable and less nerdy,” he writes. He’s hoping to drum up more competition: “Renting a suite at the Embassy Suites is not all that expensive. If four artists get together, they could rent a suite for the entire length of TCAF for about $250 apiece.” [The Great God Pan Is Dead] Photo of Embassy Suites, 1515 Dallas St.: Candace Garcia
Reader Jeromy Murphy sends a couple pics of a temporary ford of Buffalo Bayou seen last week near the site of the Police Officers Memorial off Memorial Dr. just west of Downtown. Planned nearby: a new permanent pedestrian bridge that will make the memorial accessible to soulmates hanging about in Glenwood Cemetery to the north. The bridge will also open the memorial to visits from bikers on the recently updated trail on the bayou’s north side.
This map shows the plan:
HOUSTON’S WAREHOUSED ROCKETSHIP 
Comparing it to displays of Saturn rockets in Florida and Alabama, space historian Dwayne Day finds Space Center Houston’s model of the Apollo program leftover parked in a Johnson Space Center shed structure and looking somewhat forlorn: “. . . the building containing the Saturn V is starting to deteriorate. Interior insulation is starting to crack and peel, showing considerable degradation from my last visit a year ago. This simply reinforces the impression that the Saturn V is being stored in a big garage. Houston has had the Saturn V for decades. It has housed it indoors for almost seven years, and yet the city has not improved the presentation or shown any indication that it intends to display the Saturn V with any of the affection and intelligence that the Kennedy and Huntsville communities have given to their Saturn Vs. If you look at what Houston has done it is hard not to wonder if they would have treated a shuttle orbiter with the same indifference.” [Space Review; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Dwayne Day
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE ASTRODOME HONEYPOT PLAN, CHEAPER THAN DEMOLITION “If someone just gave me $50 million, I’d structure a perpetuity yielding no less than a 1.2% return (which shouldn’t be at all difficult when 30-year T-bonds yield a 2.85% return) and maintain the Dome FOREVER. I say this because I recall a Chronicle article citing a cost of $600,000 per year to maintain it in mothballs. That’s just not very much money. Unless there’s a pressing need to spend $140 per square foot to reclaim the land (which would be idiotic given that Astroworld sold its land for $17 PSF and that the Reliant Arena is also on the chopping block and would yield more land), then the only thing that could possibly make sense is to do nothing. Simply wait. Then . . . the first private concern that can pony up the cash to do something appropriate with the venue that will generate hotel and/or sales tax revenue gets to capture the $600k per year for themselves. I suspect that it wouldn’t take particularly long. And then the taxpayers come out AHEAD as compared to demolishing it and the politicians get to take well-deserved credit.” [TheNiche]
NOTICING THE ASTRODOME-ARENA BAIT-AND-SWITCH 
A major focus of the report on the future of the Astrodome endorsed this week by the Harris County Sports and Convention Corp. was a proposal to spend an additional $385 million to replace the neighboring 1974-vintage Reliant Arena. (That’s almost $115 million more than the estimated $270.3 million the team of consultants estimated it would take to raise the floor of the Astrodome and turn it into a smaller “multi-purpose” facility.) And of course, county budget officials are quick to shoot down the resulting proposed $523 million tax-supported bond issue for a new county building, even if the name “Astrodome” is attached to it. But a comment from Ed Emmett quoted in today’s Chronicle makes it appear the county judge wants to call the bluff: “‘The way it was trotted out, we’re going to re-purpose the Dome and we’re going to replace the arena with a new building,’ Emmett said. ‘If we’re doing that, why don’t we use the Dome for the purposes the arena was being used for? Because that would obviously cost less.'” [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Wikimedia Commons [license]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE PROBLEM WITH ALL NON-OUTRAGEOUS ASTRODOME REDEVELOPMENT CONCEPTS “I’m not attached to the Dome and I don’t know that many people are. When I read this report, like other commentators, I’m thinking . . . thats a lot of money for ‘another venue.’ My impression is that some of the really cool ideas have been suppressed by the Rodeo, which disgusts me. I think a lot of money might be well spent if you are building a unique facility . . . something truly different that would make me load up my family and go there just for that experience. . . . but I don’t want to spend a lot of money just to build ‘another venue’ . . . who’s real purpose is to somehow ‘save the dome.'” [dara childs, commenting on New Life — or Death — for the Astrodome, Now at a Discount]
NEW LIFE — OR DEATH — FOR THE ASTRODOME, NOW AT A DISCOUNT 
Notable in the options presented in today’s report from the latest group of consultants to study the future of the Astrodome: lower prices. The cost estimate for demolishing the vacant sports stadium has been marked down to $68 million from the $128 million cited in a 2010 study (possibly in part because the new figure doesn’t include retiring the debt the county still owes on the building). And turning the Astrodome into a multipurpose sports and exhibition facility (the top recommendation from the consultants at Dallas’s Convention Sports and Leisure) is now predicted to cost just $270 million, down from the $324-to-$374-million range cited in the same 2-year-old report. But the consultants also suggested spending an additional $385 million to replace Reliant Arena; they’d also like to get a private developer to build a hotel on the grounds of Reliant Park. [Click2Houston; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Candace Garcia
