This relatively gritty Warehouse District warehouse appears to be the subject of some real estate speculation, reports Hair Balls’ Richard Connelly: A website for the Houston Studios building — home to a 10,000-sq.-ft. soundstage with a 30-ft. ceiling for video shoots, rehearsals, and other creative expressions — features renderings that show it as a cleaned-up commercial complex:
This corner at Mandell and West Main near Richmond and the Menil Collection has lost another tenant; Sophia bowed out of the freestanding brick building at the end of February. It was back in 2008 when Sophia’s predecessor Café Artiste kept this “closed today” sign posted in the window for an entire month, receiving your questions and comments without betraying a word; Sophia’s sand-bagged sign, spotted by a Swamplot reader at the end of last week, doesn’t appear to have inspired the same level of community feedback just yet.
Photos: Jack McBride (Sophia); Flickr user DrPantzo [license]
The all-day buffet line for Filipino dishes and Mongolian stir fry just west of the Med Center could be winding down. This standalone building at 2416 W. Holcombe, home to Gold Ribbon Bake Shop and Restaurant since the mid-nineties, has been listed for lease by Pipeline Realty. Located in the shadows of a recently completed storage facility, the property shares a back parking lot with an adjacent medical office. There are 48 parking spaces by day and another 40 after office hours. Interestingly, a sign on the door says the place is hiring, seeking new hires who speak English and Tagalog.
Photo: Pipeline Realty
The new owners of the Heights building at the corner of 19th St. and Ashland that for 61 years housed the Harold’s in the Heights men’s clothing store have wasted no time in advertising the modern structure for lease or “redevelopment.” The Chronicle‘s David Kaplan reports that a partnership led by local development firm Braun Enterprises bought the property from the family of Harold Wiesenthal last week; a flyer for the 13,600-sq.-ft. property, which comes with a parking lot in back, hawks restaurant or retail space in chunks as small as 1,750 sq. ft. The glass-front building includes a 3,000-sq.-ft. second-story office space. Harold’s closed its doors for good in August.
Photo: Braun Enterprises
Noting the new handcrafted plywood “for sale or lease” signs now hanging on White Oak in front of King Biscuit Patio Cafe, a few Swamplot readers have written in to tell us that it looks like the Woodland Heights restaurant’s promised comeback has been called off before it even started. Restaurant guide b4-u-eat announced last month that building owner Pat Quinn would be teaming up with former Fitzgerald’s owner Sara Fitzgerald to reopen the restaurant. One reader tells Swamplot that remodeling work came to a halt 2 weeks ago, and that Fitzgerald spent all of last Thursday moving out of the building. The signs — one of them advertising the availability of owner financing — were posted over the weekend.
Photos: Swamplot inbox
Bringing you the happening sounds of the vacant former Morse Wholesale Paper Co. on the east side — live, via YouTube!
Can’t get enough of this sort of thing? More Industrial:
