COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE MOST OBVIOUS SIGN OF SUCCESS IN HOUSTON 
“To this day, I still remember looking out from my downtown office over a lush carpet of green trees and seeing ‘SUCCESS RICE’ emblazoned in bright red on white on the side of a large grain silo close to downtown –– maybe on Center street. It really was a neat, giant piece of history and an everyday reminder of time and place. As I moved jobs, I could always find one part of the floor downtown where I could peek out the window and see SUCCESS RICE. And daydream: ‘Hey, [I’m] successful!’ This . . . was in the innocent pre-Enron days. . . .” [jpsivco, commenting on Goodbye, Uncle Ben: East Side Silos Are Coming Down] Photo: Daniel Pagan
Sign up for the Newsletter
Houston Landmarks
The synopsis of the new opera based on the life of Anna Nicole Smith is under embargo until performances at the Royal Opera House begin on February 17th. But judging from the released video trailer (below), it’s likely the production will also feature the London stage debut of the former Gigi’s Cabaret on the 290 feeder road just across 34th St. from the Northbrook Shopping Center in Houston (or more probably its interior), where in 1991 the former Walmart and Red Lobster employee had the extremely good fortune of meeting the greatest sugar daddy of them all, billionaire J. Howard Marshall II. Both Smith and Gigi’s later underwent renovations and name changes: Smith from her original Vickie Lynn Hogan; Gigi’s more recently to Pleasures. But how realistic will the portrayals be? Will set designer Miriam Buether’s version get the Houston strip club’s stage and runway areas right?
Helicopter flyover alert: NBC’s new police action series, “Chase,” which debuts next week, is a show about the federal fugitive-apprehension team in Houston. The show’s lead character — a role notable for having been turned down by Maria Bello, Tea Leoni, and Christina Applegate — is U.S. Marshal Annie Frost (played by former All My Children star Kelli Giddish), who leads her law-enforcement team chasing criminals all over South Texas. So it was really important that the cast and crew find a way to get plenty of that Texas flavor on the show.
No-brainer, then: Under the guidance of executive producer Jerry Bruckheimer, the production team moved to uh, Dallas to film the pilot. And that’s where they’ll film later episodes too. Hey, it puts them right in the action to do all of those good 10-gallon-hat and runaway cattle scenes. Sure, but what are they gonna do when they’ve got a scene set in the Galleria, or Highland Village, or West Village Ave? What about then?
- Chase [NBC]
- Houston, we have a TV problem: New series set in Bayou City being filmed in Dallas [11 News]
Video: NBC
The Houston Business Journal‘s Jennifer Dawson is reporting that a hotel developer out of Fort Worth is purchasing the 22-story office building at 806 Main St. Downtown with plans to gut it, renovate it, and reopen it as a hotel. The building is approximately 100 years old, but its top 10 floors were added in the 1920s. The stone, terra cotta, and brick structure was dressed in a marble-and-glass slipcover about 60 years later. Directly across the street from the tower is the construction site of Hines’s MainPlace development.
The city has designated 806 Main as a landmark. It’s connected to the Downtown tunnel system, but has remained mostly empty in recent years. The last of 40 recent tenants is scheduled to move out this week. Building manager Betty Brown tells Dawson that only the Christian Science Reading Room and Domino’s Pizza on the ground floor will be left — their leases run out in 9 to 12 months.
With the exception of the Embassy Suites in downtown Fort Worth featured prominently on its website, Pearl Real Estate has built or redeveloped mostly suburban-style hotels. The 10-year-old company typically operates its own properties and serves as its own general contractor.
What kind of hotel is Pearl planning underneath this slipcover?
