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 photo of the strip center just west of the Lower Westheimer restaurant row shows the recently closed Tejas Custom Boots and Hollywood Food & Cigars. A Swamplot reader says that a sign posted in the window here at Helen and 208 Westheimer says that the alligator- and ostrich-unfriendly bootmakers will be moving the stretching and stitching operations farther west to the 400 block of Westheimer. As of Friday morning, calls to Tejas Custom Boots for comment about the relocation and reopening haven’t been returned. City records show that the 4,100-sq.-ft. 1960 building and 11,322-sq.-ft. property are owned by a single family.
Photo: Swamplot inbox
A reader sends this photo of what went down today at 6000 Richmond and Fountain View: The Magnolia Bar & Grill, cleared for demo last month, has been reduced to rubble and that sideways sign. And what’s in store for this Briargrove corner southwest of the Galleria? Kenneth Lewis, a rep from the partnership that owns the property, says you’ll soon see a McDonald’s.
Photo: Pat McCarley
The only thing that’s really changed about 3400 Montrose, a tipster tells Swamplot, is the name of its owner: Global Paragon, which bought the former podium for Scott Gertner’s Skybar in 2011, went “belly up” this past November, the tipster says, and the vacant 10-story building’s now owned and managed by a 40-person LLC that’s looking for a buyer or a joint venture.
And that’s where these interior photos, from a short-on-info listing posted recently on Cushman & Wakefield’s website, come in:
Spring’s a time of renewal: And the Yoakum St. apartments — and palm trees, too — pictured here came down this winter so something very like this office building could begin going up. Campanile South, it’s called, is being described by developers Hansen Partners as a 6-story, 82,000-sq.-ft. “boutique” space with retail and restaurants facing Richmond Ave. Setting up on a lot between Yoakum and Graustark, Campanile South will be be the 7th member of the Campanile family that’s clustered around St. Thomas University the University of St. Thomas and Montrose Blvd.; it’s expected to be ready for tenants in 2014.
And something like this 3-story, 2-building office complex should start going up this spring in Spring, reports the Houston Business Journal’s Shaina Zucker. Planned to sit on 7 and a half acres at 460 Wildwood Forest Dr., the 127,794-sq.-ft. Wildwood Corporate Center will be across the street from apartments and about 3 miles north of the ExxonMobil campus being built among comparatively tame woods where 385 acres have been clear-cut around the intersection of I-45, the Hardy Toll Rd., and the likely path of the Grand Pkwy.
Rendering: Houston Business Journal
WEINGARTEN RESPONDS: HEY, IT’S NOT US, IT’S MARFRELESS 
The make-out den behind the blue door says it’s closing because of the “rising cost of doing business” in the River Oaks Shopping Center, but landlords Weingarten Realty don’t see it that way — or at least that’s what an email sent yesterday to the Houston Chronicle’s Nancy Sarnoff says: “It was Marfreless’ decision to cease their operations at River Oaks Shopping Center. Weingarten Realty has made several attempts to contact the tenant to continue discussions but we have not been able to get a response. We remain open to discussing a lease extension and agreement.” [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Flickr user jmcgeough
Hines has confirmed that it will be putting up something new — maybe this glow stick of an office building, maybe not — at 609 Main, just north of the former MainPlace, now BG Group Pipe Wrench. Pickard Chilton, says Hines, will design a 41-story, 815,000-sq.-ft. office tower just as soon as an anchor tenant is signed. This view of the rendering released this week seems to look south toward the Hines-owned downtown block bound by Main, Texas, Fannin, and Capitol. Now, half that block is an $8 a day parking lot. If you look closely at the rendering, you’ll see an Apple logo just to the left of that entrance teepee. Whether that will actually be a new Apple store is not confirmed — and anyway, before anything new can come in, Hines will have to tear down what’s already there: The unoccupied Texas Tower, the former Sterling Building, at 608 Fannin:
HOUSTON PAVILIONS TO BE RENAMED, REBRANDED 
Clearly, former NBA star Earvin Johnson knows the value of renaming — and Houston Pavilions, which Magic and other investors bought back in August, will be given a new moniker of its own, reports the Houston Business Journal’s Shaina Zucker: Today, @HouPavilions tweeted an invitation to a party on April 4 at San Jacinto between Dallas and Polk during which the mall-ish complex will reveal its new name and new brand strategy. “[R]etailers and restaurants,” the invitation says, “will have booths featuring complimentary tastings and interactive activities including Wii Bowling, a basketball hoop-off for the chance to win a signed Houston Rockets basketball and more.” [Houston Business Journal; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Flickr user cjt3
A result of the news yesterday that H-E-B will be moving from its Fountain View and Westheimer store to a new one on San Felipe in 2014 is the impending demolition of Tanglewood Court apartments, which stand on the 18-acre property bound by Fountain View, San Felipe, and Inwood. (The photo shows the apartments from the corner of Fountain View and Inwood.) Lynn Davis of Fidelis, which purchased the site in September 2011, tells Swamplot that notice has been given to residents that they’ll need to move by the end of March or early April. Buses from neighboring complexes, says Davis, have been shuttling them around to help them find a new place to live.
And once they’re gone, what, besides the H-E-B, will go in their place?
OFFICE MONOPOLY 
Note: Story has been updated.
Houston Business Journal reports that Office Max and Office Depot are combining into one global office force to be reckoned with. The $1.17-billion, all-stock deal between the two big-box paper pushers is expected to create a single company — with less overhead and less overlap, too, you’d think — that’s worth $18 billion. Also, the Houston Chronicle‘s Nancy Sarnoff reports that developer Ed Wulfe says that “9 or 10 of the 40 Office Depots and 19 Office Maxes in greater Houston are close enough to each other that one will have to close.” One of those, pictured here, is located in the strip center at Richmond and Kirby. [Houston Business Journal; Prime Property] Photo: Panoramio user Wolfgang Houston
THE LUXURY POST OAK IMMIGRANT EXPERIENCE NEXT TO MCDONALD’S 
Randall Davis has completed the purchase of (most of) the 1405 Post Oak property where that long-standing McDonald’s was getting in the way of his Astoria development (the rendering of which is shown here), reports the Houston Chronicle‘s Nancy Sarnoff: The McDonald’s that appeared in last Monday’s Daily Demolition Report is expected to be replaced with a smaller one near the edge of the 30,466-sq.-ft. 1.23-acre property, making room for the 70 28-story luxury tower — with 3-bedroom units going for $1.3 million — that’s being marketed as a path of upward mobility: “Davis has been luring investors through the federal government’s EB-5 visa program where wealthy would-be immigrants can put $500,000 or $1 million into a job-creating commercial enterprise and become lawful permanent residents of the United States.” [Houston Chronicle ($); previously on Swamplot] Rendering: Randall Davis Company
Not quite 3 years after reopening as what owner Rodney Finger claimed to be the biggest furniture store in Texas, the 600,000-sq.-ft. I-45 Finger Furniture flagship — and the 16.5 acres near UH that it sits on — has come up for sale. Until the Finger family bought the property in the early ’60s, it was home to a minor-league baseball stadium for the Houston Buffs, a farm team for the Cardinals up in St. Louis. That history was given some floor space among the couches and mattresses indoors in the Houston Sports Museum — with a replica home plate in the showroom tile to approximate the original. And the asking price? $11 million.
Meet Lasso, your mascot for the new Grand Texas Theme Park! The armed-and-friendly blond stud has been revealed as the long face of the Texas-themed theme park’s second-go-around in Texas. Back in July 2009, developer Monty Galland announced that he had a spot in Tomball for the park’s first phase to open by April 2010. Well, that was then. Now, Galland’s back — with Lasso in tow — and presenting a revised proposal to Montgomery Country leaders, reports the Tomball Potpourri: The developer’s eyeing property near New Caney, where Grand Texas might better hitch its wagon to dinosaur-friendly EarthQuest.
Ah, Friday: Why not take a stroll down Binz St. in the Museum District and have a look at what’s going on? Let’s head east from here: the corner of La Branch and Binz, near the Children’s Museum.
Our guide, Swamplot reader David Hollas, provides the photos and the observations:
