Attractions

03/01/11 4:51pm

Galvestonâ€™s Flagship Hotel Fades into the Sunset, Leaves a Few Big Chunks in theÂ Gulf

Demolitions, Galveston, New Construction, Redevelopment

20 Comments

Onlookers are reporting that large portions of Galveston’s Flagship Hotel are finding their way into the water below the 25th St. pier. The hotel’s owner, Landry’s Restaurants, is demolishing the building to make room for an amusement-park-style entertainment complex which you might reasonably assume won’t include any under-the pier attractions. The 225-room hotel closed permanently after Hurricane Ike.

Galveston real estate agent Billy Hill has posted an anonymous eyewitness account that a front-end loader operated by the Grant Mackay Demolition Co. pushed several portions of the building into the bay, including the section of framing that disappeared in the interval between these 2 photos:

77550, Attractions, Demolitions, Disaster Aftermath, Flagship Hotel, Galveston, Hurricane Ike, Landry's, New Construction, Redevelopment

02/22/11 1:25pm

Comment of the Day: What You Missed at the Great Forbidden Gardens One-Third-Scale Qin Dynasty Sell-Off

Buying and Selling, Comments, Katy, Museums, Openings and Closings, Quicklink

12 Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHAT YOU MISSED AT THE GREAT FORBIDDEN GARDENS ONE-THIRD-SCALE QIN DYNASTY SELL-OFF “I was there on Sunday, came home w/ 2 soldiers, 1 horse and 3 small figurines. The soldiers are FANTASTIC and I wish I had bought more, but for 100 ea it was a little steep to get a whole army of them. I have a bit of buyerâ€™s remorse about the horse, b/c its in pretty bad shape, and is not long for the world. But it was only 25$. There were many people there, but it was by no means crowded, took 45 minutes to get in the gates. The woman who rang me up, told me that a salvager was going to come by on Monday (yesterday) so I imagine the remaining men who were [intact] (there were still 100s left at noon on Sunday) will start turning up in thrift shops around. What else? I am glad I got to see the gardens one time before it was destroyed. It was a lovely ground and I wish I had known about it. (I sort of knew about it, but never went.) Apparently they were going to sell all the cherry trees as well, so they may still be on the market.” [anon, commenting on The 6,000 Garden Gnomes of Emperor Qin: Let the Great Houston Grave Ransacking Begin] Photo: Candace Garcia

77493, Attractions, Buying and Selling, Cemeteries, Comments, Katy, Museums, Openings and Closings, Retail

02/18/11 8:40pm

Comment of the Day: Lost Tomb of the Grand Parkway

Comments, Katy, Openings and Closings, Quicklink

4 Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: LOST TOMB OF THE GRAND PARKWAY “The bulldozed-over ones will make for some serious headscratching in the 23rd century when they are dug up and ‘discovered.’ Maybe the Asiatic Proconsul will use it as propaganda/proof [that] Global Manifest Destiny was already in the making in the early 21st century.” [SL, commenting on The 6,000 Garden Gnomes of Emperor Qin: Let the Great Houston Grave Ransacking Begin]

77493, Attractions, Cemeteries, Comments, Grand Parkway, Katy, Museums, Openings and Closings

02/18/11 1:52pm

The 6,000 Garden Gnomes of Emperor Qin: Let the Great Houston Grave Ransacking Begin

Freeways and Toll Roads, Katy, Openings and Closings, Proposed Developments, Retail

10 Comments

This weekend, while New York crowds flock to a recently opened exhibit of Forbidden City treasures belonging to China’s last emperor at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Houstonians will have a chance for a much more satisfying and interactive experience with the wonders of the ancients: Crowds here will be swarming to plunder a replica of the massive gravesite of China’s first emperor. It has come to this: Forbidden Gardens, the garden-free (and yes, until now open-to-the-public) little 60-acre museum and cultural center on the Katy prairie has found no buyer willing to purchase intact its collection of 6,000 one-third-scale terracotta soldiers from the 2,200-year-old Xi’an tomb of Emperor Qin Shi Huang Di, its one-twentieth scale model of Beijing’s Forbidden City, or its many other handcrafted and made-in-China models of historic Chinese treasures. So everything in the museum will be sold off piece by piece, in one giant 2-day artificial-grave-side blowout liquidation sale.

“CASH ONLY!! ALL SALES ARE FINAL!!” screams a notice posted to the ordinarily staid museum’s website:

77493, Attractions, Cemeteries, Grand Parkway, Katy, Museums, Openings and Closings, Retail

02/10/11 7:25pm

Report: Sundance Cinemas Replacing Angelika Film Center at Bayou Place; Bar Smorgasbord Moving in Upstairs

Downtown, Nightlife, Openings and Closings, Restaurants

18 Comments

The city of Houston and the Cordish Company are “deep into negotiations” with Sundance Cinemas to take over the former Angelika Theater spot at Bayou Place, Steven Thomson reports. Robert Redford’s Sundance Group has operated 2 Sundance Cinemas since 2007 — an 8-screen complex in San Francisco and a 6-screen multiplex in Madison, Wisconsin. If Sundance does end up taking over the vacant Angelika space at 510 Texas St. and maintains all existing screens, it would tie with the Sundance Kabuki Cinema near Pacific Heights as the largest complex in the small chain. The company appears to have scaled back the aggressive expansion plans it announced 4 years ago, which included new theaters in Chicago and Denver. The Angelika Film Center closed suddenly last summer.

77002, Angelika Film Center, Bars and Clubs, Bayou Place, Leasing, Movie-Theaters, Nightlife, Openings and Closings, Restaurants, Theming

02/03/11 11:12pm

Your First Official Look at Houston’s New Soccer Stadium

East Downtown, Proposed Developments, Stadiums

20 Comments

It’s not as if drawings showing the industrial look of the new Dynamo Stadium hadn’t been floating around for a little while, but today marks the day the folks at Populous, the building’s designers, officially “unveiled” the design for the East Downtown soccer venue. Hiding behind that veil, of course, is . . . a giant veil: a meshy, irregular metal skin wrapping the structure, lifted up at corner entrances to reveal a glowing orange polycarbonate surface behind. Kinda like the approach to that big reception desk at the new Downtown Y — just a whole lot more, y’know, grand.

When you’ve already designed Minute Maid Park, Reliant Stadium, and the Toyota Center, what’s left in Houston for these guys to do? Will they get to push the button for the Astrodome demo too?

77003, Attractions, Dynamo Stadium, East Downtown, Proposed Developments, Stadiums

02/03/11 2:34pm

Overwhelmed by Popular Demand, Forbidden Gardens Gives Up on Craigslist for Its Great Qin Dynasty Liquidation Sale

Katy, Museums, Openings and Closings, Retail

4 Comments

What’s it come to that a quirky little roadside attraction in Katy can’t quietly sell off its extensive collections of handcrafted-in-China replica Chinese figurines and miniatures online without getting overwhelmed? In advance of the curious shutdown of Forbidden Gardens, the institution’s stewards had decided to liquidate its entire collection of scale-model attractions, including the more than 6,000 terracotta warriors assembled for a broadly interpreted one-third-scale replica of the partially excavated tomb of China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang Di. And yes, the venue chosen for a good portion of the sales: Craigslist.

(Last month, the venue’s staff announced that Forbidden Gardens, located on Franz Rd. in Katy just off the stub-end of the long-planned Grand Parkway, would be shutting down — to make way for the expansion of the proposed ring road’s Segment E. But plans provided to Swamplot show that the proposed path for the Grand Parkway would only skirt the theme park property, and would perhaps even burnish its credentials as a roadside attraction.)

An ad on the online classifieds site taken out by Forbidden Gardens’ curators over the weekend offered a “variety of terracotta warriors for just $100 each.” Plus: “We are willing to make a deal if you buy in bulk.” Pieces from other exhibits were offered for sale, including 1/20th-scale buildings — and porcelain figurines, for as little as $1 each! Clearly, this was an “everything must go” sort of event: More pieces from Katy’s strange little “museum and cultural center” showed up in other Craigslist postings that featured vases, store furnishings, even those red benches arrayed around the grounds.

By late Wednesday afternoon however, the ads had been taken down. “At this time interest has been so great that it is overwhelming us,” reads a new note on a new Craigslist ad posted by a museum staff member. “There are only 5 of us and we are all part time.” All those goods are still available — it’s just that the staff couldn’t handle the online rush:

If you are interested in seeing the museum one last time we welcome you. If while there you see something that you are interested in and the staff is not overwhelmed, please feel free to make an offer. . . . If you are interested in purchasing an entire exhibit we greatly welcome you to call the main office. For those of you wishing to purchase individual objects we will be having a mass sell off after the museum closes Feb 13. Please check our website where we will post info on this as it becomes available.

Mass sell-off! In other words, the already strange spectacle of Forbidden Gardens has morphed in its final days into something curiouser still: A museum of replicas where visitors can bid on the exhibits and take them home with them.

77493, Attractions, Grand Parkway, Katy, Museums, Openings and Closings, Retail

01/24/11 6:17pm

Warwick Towers Survives Dinosaur Attack

Condos, Museums, New Construction

9 Comments

Note: Now there’s video! See below.

All is back to normal at the Warwick Towers condominiums across from Hermann Park after last Friday’s frightening flying dinosaur episode. For Houstonians more accustomed to tracking dinosaur migrations below the earth’s surface, the appearance of a full-scale ankylosaurus dating from the early 1960s hovering high in the sky above its recent home at the Museum of Natural Science must have been a harrowing sight:

77004, Attractions, Condos, Critters, Hermann Park, High-Rise-Condos, Museums, New Construction, Renovations

01/21/11 2:35pm

Behold the Orange Glow: The Dynamo Stadium Blob Is Ready To Go

East Downtown, Proposed Developments, Stadiums

18 Comments

The big East Downtown orangish blob that will be Dynamo Stadium takes on a more definite shape in these new drawings. That’s a giant steel mesh wrapping the 22,000-seat soccer and football venue. Inside: 34 luxury suites, 1,000 “club” seats, and a stadium club. Separate canopies connected to the exterior mesh hang over both sidelines and a stage on the south end. The Houston Business Journal‘s Allison Wollam reports that orange lights will shine on the stadium at night — but the tower lighting shown in earlier renderings is gone from the latest images. Maybe, as a Dynamo fan on HAIF suggests, the place is just gonna glow from within.

77003, Attractions, Dynamo Stadium, East Downtown, Proposed Developments, Stadiums

01/19/11 1:29pm

Out of the Way, Tiny Soldiers, Here Comes the Grand Parkway: Katy’s Forbidden Gardens Is Closing Down

Eminent Domain, Katy, Katy Prairie, Museums, Openings and Closings

21 Comments

Segment E of Houston’s new Grand Parkway — more commonly known as the new ring-road highway planned to cut through the Katy Prairie to link the Katy Mills Mall to the Houston Premium Outlets mall in Cypress (and to facilitate cultural exchange programs between those two institutions) — has its first casualty, and it’s not an Attwater prairie chicken. One of Katy’s quirkiest and most beloved attractions, Forbidden Gardens, has announced it will close. The Chinese history and cultural museum’s peculiar but convenient location on a former rice field along Franz Rd. just off the Grand Parkway’s stub end likely wasn’t “just off” enough. Forbidden Gardens’ last day open will be January 30; a note on its website says the closing will “make way for the Grand Parkway expansion.” Forbidden Gardens opened in 1996.

77493, Attractions, Eminent Domain, Grand Parkway, Katy, Museums, Openings and Closings

Art

01/17/11 12:02pm

Galveston’s Dead-Tree Sculptures: Now Entirely Fee Free!

Attractions, Disaster Aftermath, Galveston, Public Art, Streetscapes, Trees

6 Comments

Galveston Mayor Joe Jaworski now says he will waive the $10 annual permit fees the city had planned on charging 3 homeowners whose dead-tree sculptures stand in the public right-of-way. Homeowner Donna Leibbert started a small local-media firestorm late last week after she received a permit renewal form in the mail for the sculpture of a Geisha that artist Jim Phillips had carved out of an oak tree outside Leibbert’s home at 1717 Ball St. After the Hurricane Ike storm surge killed an estimated 30,000 trees on the island, artists turned almost 2 dozen of them into sculptures. But Leibbert’s Geisha is one of only 3 of the works that sits on city property.

City spokesperson Alice Cahill, who has helped to publicize the sculpture program as a tourist attraction, tells Amanda Casanova of the Galveston County Daily News that the license-to-use fee is normally required for any designed object that occupies a portion of the right-of-way. “A carved tree is treated the same as a cafe table.” Leibbert tells Casanova she was aware of the permit requirement at the time the Geisha was carved — getting approval for the sculpture required a formal application with the city’s planning commission. But she notes that the tree had stood in the same position for about 100 years, and for free.

Over the summer, Swamplot photographer Candace Garcia tracked down 22 of the tree sculptures, including Leibbert’s Geisha. Here’s her photo tour:

Art, Attractions, Disaster Aftermath, Galveston, Hurricane Ike, Public Art, Streetscapes, Taxes, Trees

12/02/10 5:00pm

Will They Ever Get to Play the Houston Flood?