The new Menil Drawing Institute building, being designed by LA architects Johnston Marklee (winners of last year’s competition), will sit on land currently occupied by the Menil’s Richmont Square apartment building. The arts institution doesn’t have plans to tear down the entire apartment complex, however: Drawings submitted to the planning commission as part of a variance application show only the northernmost bank — at the back of the site — wiped clean.
The Houston and Southeast Texas chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association will be moving its headquarters from Holcombe Blvd. to Southeast Houston. Gensler redrew the former Plus4 Credit Union on the Loop feeder near Long and Griggs to do away with the 6-teller drive-thru and include instead a garden, cafe, office space, and entrance pavilion on the 2.2-acre property. The 2-story, 16,078-sq.-ft. bank building dates to 1979. Construction is scheduled to begin this Wednesday.
Here’s what’s going up on the west side of the Rice University campus. Construction began back in December on the 3-story, 53,000-sq.-ft. Anderson Clark building, just off University Blvd. and behind the football stadium, that will serve as the much-larger home for the Susanne M. Glasscock School of Continuing Studies; plans describe 2 dozen new classrooms, conference space, an auditorium, and a terrace for events.
Check out some purty renderings of the finished building after the jump:
A new residence hall for men rehabbing from drug and alcohol addiction looks to be shaping up in Midtown. Designed by Roesler Architects, the 4-story, 26,000-sq.-ft. building will hold 64 efficiency units meant to house 2 men at a time; each unit, according Roesler, will have a microwave, refrigerator, built-in desk, and a coffee bar. There will also be what Roesler describes as a “Linear Courtyard” — a fenced-in landscaping feature, presumably — that will be accessible from the dayroom on the first floor. The new building is located at the corner of Alabama and San Jacinto, east of the Men’s Center headquarters across Main St. from the construction of Broadstone 3800, the 5-story apartment complex facing the light rail line on Main.
Correction: An earlier version of this story reported that the city would relocate its traffic operations to this building; that assertion is in error. The new Patterson St. building is replacing an older structure, and it will serve in addition to the primary traffic operation offices in the Public Works Building Downtown. The story has been corrected. Swamplot regrets the error.
Going up: This building at 2001 Patterson St. On the north side of I-10, the 40,000-sq.-ft. building designed by Kirksey will house the city’s traffic operations offices, warehouses, and sign- and signal-making shops. A smaller pavement-marking shop will be built here too. Fittingly, the buildings will stare across the freeway at David Adickes’s recently installed spelled-out declaration of Houston love.
All that hard work installing new wind turbines and solar panels and employee vegetable gardens at the Houston Permitting Center — or even the talk about building a hot dog stand inside — hasn’t seem to have affected its historic status, since the former Butler Brothers Building on Washington Ave in the Old Sixth Ward was given a protected landmark designation yesterday. And what does the newly historic and well-preserved Permitting Center plan to do with this street cred? Why, host historic preservation fairs, of course!
Does the green fence mean go? It looks like demolition is just a shot away for this westernmost building of the former Shell Technology Center. Lovett Homes has said it plans to build 39 3-story homes —Â scaling back after some Southside Place residents raised concerns at public hearings its original plan for 45 3.5-story ones —Â on the 3.2 acres here at the corner of Braes and Bellaire Blvd.
In the middle of last summer, Interfaith Ministries closed on almost 76,000 sq. ft. of Midtown property spanning 2 catty-corner blocks just north of HCC, including the PrimeWay Federal Credit Union building shown here at 3303 Main St.; the organization says it’s closing in on the $12.5 million needed to fund the renovation of the 39,000-sq.-ft. bank into its headquarters and the construction of a new 14,000-sq.-ft. Meals on Wheels distribution center at Elgin and Fannin.
Kirksey submitted the rendering above in a 4-firm competition to design a general office with some temporary housing for the Saudi Consulate, now occupying a suite in the 22-story Westheimer highrise shown here, which dates to 1982 and sits across the street from an IHOP. But Kirksey lost that competition — to Studio RED.
The redo of this Chenevert St. warehouse is complete, Mayor Parker announced yesterday, and the Houston Center for Sobriety is ready to give drunk people a place to dry out. Next to the Eastex Fwy., the 84-bed center at 150 N. Chenevert will operate out of a 19,000-sq.-ft. building behind the Star of Hope homeless shelter, across from Irma’s Mexican restaurant on Ruiz and just a few blocks north of Minute Maid Park.
Thieves made off with copper wiring from UH’s University Center late Saturday night, a UH public safety department bulletin reports: A contractor noticed early Sunday morning that the wiring had gone missing; a reader tells Swamplot that this knocked out the building’s power and is delaying renovations. The Barnes & Noble and Cougar Byte stores inside the UC have been scrambling to set up temporary locations elsewhere on campus.
Seen any images floating around of the new building Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts is planning for the northwest corner of the Bissonnet and South Main, next to the Cullen Sculpture Garden? Well then, this watercolor-and-charcoal “concept sketch” for the building by architect Steven Holl from a year and a month ago may interest you. It’s going up for auction tomorrow — as part of a fundraiser for the nonprofit Architecture for Humanity. Holl was selected from a group of 3 finalists this past February, beating out LA design firm Morphosis and Oslo’s Snøhetta for the MFAH commission of a new structure to house 20th- and 21st-century art.
The regional tourism building planned for the northern of the 2 blocks between Minute Maid Park and the GRB will be called the Nau Center for Texas Cultural Heritage, Mayor Parker announced today. It’ll be named after beer distributor and $8-million-donor John Nau; fundraisers hope waving the rendering pictured above will help drum up an additional $32 million to get the thing built. ($15 million more is coming from Houston First, the “government corporation” that runs the city’s convention center, the Hilton Americas Hotel, and several city performance venues.)
The design leaves room for 2 houses dating from 1904 and 1905 and moved to the site last year, the only surviving structures from the neighborhood on nearby blocks named Quality Hill that by the 1930s had vanished — along with its storied reputation for integrity and elevation. The rendering also shows (at far right) the saved-from-scrap 1919 Southern Pacific 982 steam engine parked on the curb across from the East End Light Rail Line along Capitol St. Between the houses and the locomotive will sit the Nau Center’s signature dome entrance, held aloft, the rendering from Bailey Architects shows, by a ring of dainty columns resting at sidewalk level and a circular wall of glass.
GRANTS TO SPARK MIDTOWN ARTS CENTER FUNDRAISING 
The consortium of independent arts organizations planning a theater and gallery complex at the corner of Main and Holman just got a step closer to the $25 million it needs to build the project. Two weeks ago, the group received a $750K grant from the Fondren Foundation. Last week it got word of an even bigger haul: a $6 million grant from the Houston Endowment. In August, the group — which includes DiverseWorks, Fotofest, and Main St. Theater — changed its name from the Independent Arts Collaborative to “The MATCH,” short for the Midtown Arts and Theatre Center Houston. The 59,000-sq.-ft. complex at 3400 Main St. is being designed by a match-up of San Antonio’s Lake Flato Architects and Houston’s Studio Red. [Previously on Swamplot] Rendering: The MATCH
Construction of the complex’s overall expansion isn’t quite finished yet, but a new section of the resale shop at the Memorial Assistance Ministries in Spring Branch will open officially for the first time this weekend anyway. And oh, by the way, says the group’s marketing manager, in advance of that the shop at 1625 Blalock Rd. north of Long Point is actually open already. The new section adds 4,000 sq. ft. of retail space to showcase more of the used clothing and household stuff people keep donating. Another 4,200 sq. ft. was also added to the warehouse area to sort through it all. New totals: 14,000 sq. ft. for the store, plus 8,400 sq. ft. in the warehouse. The program’s executive director says the store typically generates enough income to fund MAM adult education programs and other assistance for more than 800 families.
The new store space, designed by Kirksey, is at the northern end of the complex’s original building (in the front at right in this new photo):
