A reader who spotted a group of “official looking folks with hard hats and fluorescent vests” looking at the grounds of the Park Memorial Condominiums at 5292 Memorial Dr. last week (and sent in photos of the group congregating at the Detering St. entrance to prove it) wants to know if the visit means something is about to happen to the abandoned property. Swamplot’s most recent first-person report on the complex came from a runner who passed through with a group in March, to admire the mosquito-infested pool and “creepy” surroundings. Condo owners have been stuck in limbo for the last 3 years, since city officials ordered the property vacated. Attempts to sell the property to a third party for redevelopment have failed so far because condo owners have been unable to agree on terms.
- Park Memorial Condominiums coverage [Swamplot]
Photo: Swamplot inbox
New owners of a 50,000-sq.-ft. site at the southwest corner of Richmond and Mandell in Montrose, which includes Lucky Burger, The Harp Irish Pub, Maria Selma’s Mexican Restaurant, and Orange Bar: a partnership controlled by Braun Enterprises — the same group that bought the former 
A year after Downtown’s Houston Club Building fell into foreclosure, the U.S. division of Swedish construction firm Skanksa has at last bought the 63-year-old building at 811 Rusk. But the new owner isn’t saying yet whether it plans to tear down the 18-story property. 
Two former Hewlett-Packard office buildings from the original Compaq World Headquarters campus at the corner of Hwy. 249 and Louetta will be demolished in a “controlled demolition” on September 18th. The 2 buildings, a 1,200-car parking garage, and a central chiller plant were purchased for $12.6 million by the Lone Star College System last year, as an extension to the 8 buildings the former North Harris Montgomery Community College System bought a year earlier to create its new University Park campus. But it’s clear the college was mostly interested in the parking spaces that came with the latest purchase. 
The Westbury Christian School is buying the Westland Family YMCA at 10402 Fondren, south of South Braeswood, with plans to turn the building, its pool, and large playing field into a remote athletic campus. The 31-year-old Y is a little more than a mile west of the K-12 school’s main campus at 10402 Hillcroft. The property wasn’t up for sale, but “declining membership and increasing operating costs” convinced the organization to shut the facility. 
Walmart’s ridiculously humungous Cedar Crossing distribution center near Baytown now belongs to . . . Walmart. 
