COMMENT OF THE DAY: EXXONMOBIL TAKES THE FOREST “[It’s] awesome, but I thought the era of building suburban office campuses was close to gone. Not anymore, I guess. Just goes to show that there is still plenty a land for Houston to sprawl, and this illustrates no signs of slowing down. God that third outerbelt is just going to catalyze more of this crap (albeit ExxonMobil’s campus is pretty crap). I mean, if ExxonMobil really wanted to, they could’ve revitalized an entire swath of area in one of many industrial parts of Houston. No, but instead of utilizing an area that could be purposeful, they chose to destroy the environment. Yeah, Houston’s forests in the north are what keeps the area looking bad, but just a few more decades of this, and there will be nothing left to conceal this disgusting sprawl.” [Carlos, commenting on Welcome to the Land of ExxonMobil: A Tour of the Company’s New North Houston Campus]
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Landscape
That floating central portion of the new gateway “Energy Center” planned for the entrance to ExxonMobil’s just-acknowledged new office campus in Spring only looks like it’s touching down after an outer-space tour of possible new energy sources. Or is the structure’s “Look, Ma, no feet” stance meant to communicate the company’s attitude toward whatever stuff might be lurking on the ground — or below it? The welcome center, which will include a reception area, training and conference facilities, and a formal restaurant, “has been designed to represent the ExxonMobil brand for the long term,” an internal company memo declares. Well, hello up there!
The campus was planned and designed by New Haven architects Pickard Chilton, with local firms PDR and the Houston office of Gensler. Hargreaves Associates created the landscape plan. More images of buildings now under construction by Gilbane and Harvey on the company’s 385-acre campus near the intersection of I-45, the Hardy Toll Rd., and the likely path of the future Grand Parkway loop road:
Ever wonder what’s behind all the political endorsements made by so many vacant lots in Houston? Why is it that the weedy site shown above at the corner of Heights Blvd. and Center St., near the future West End Walmart, for example, appears to be supporting Jenifer Rene Pool in her bid for an at-large city council seat? Among the empty lots of Washington Ave, there seems to be a lot of support for another candidate for the same position, Eric Dick. What’s up with that? Political consultant Greg Wythe, who’s long studied the demographics and political opinions of Harris County’s human population, has begun a new website devoted to exploring the campaign preferences of Houston’s vacant properties — as expressed by the various signs and banners they’re regularly festooned with.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: BAYOU OVERLOOK “Everyone I know thinks I’m crazy, but I canoed Buffalo Bayou from Highway 6 to downtown a few years ago, and it was surprisingly clean and natural. The best part was the stretch through Eleanor Tinsley Park, at the end of the trip, where the downtown skyline suddenly pops into view. In April of this year, a friend and I took a ride on the little-known public pontoon boat ride offered occasionally on Buffalo Bayou near the Sabine Street Bridge. It was a really, really neat experience, and there were only 4 people including us that were there for the ride. The city is so different from the water. They even show you the ruins of a family tomb that was used as a foundation a bridge that still exists, and there is a point where a heavy stream of clean water pours into the bayou from an uncapped artesian well under a street a few blocks away. The weather was perfect that day, and I was shocked at seeing only a few dozen people utilizing the landscaped trails and green spaces along the bayou. I’m sure on the same day, Memorial Park and Hermann Park were packed – why not this place? I wish the Bayou had a more prevalent place in Houston’s image and culture.” [Superdave, commenting on Banks Report: Tex Hex Graduates from Buffalo Bayou Movie Scene, Gets Ready for Official White Oak Bayou Premiere]
Here’s a showboat custom-made for Houston’s bayous: an aluminum pontoon deck outfitted for exploring inland waterways . . . and screening videos along the way. Assembled by a design-build sculpture collaborative called Simparch, the Tex Hex has its official maiden voyage scheduled for May 21, the night before Houston’s Art Car Parade. The boat will dock in front of the concrete steps where White Oak Bayou spills into Buffalo Bayou, behind the loft building at 1011 Wood St., for a program of films about — what else? Car culture. They’ll be projected onto the Tex Hex’s onboard rear-projection screen. Downtown skyscrapers are expected to hang out in the background, just for effect.
GULF FREEWAY OUTLET MALL SITE: UP FOR GRABS? 
A possible complication in those plans to put a new 95-store outlet mall between the Big League Dreams sports complex and the Bay Colony shopping center west of the Gulf Freeway in League City: The Galveston County Daily News‘s Laura Elder reports that the 35 acres of land Tanger Factory Outlet Centers was hoping to purchase out of bankruptcy for $8.7 million will be going up for auction instead in just 10 days. A bankruptcy court ordered the sale last week. Tanger announced the project in January, just days after the Simon Property Group announced its plans to build another outlet center, the 100-store Galveston Premium Outlets, just 4 miles to the south, in Texas City. [Laura Elder’s Buzz Blog; previously on Swamplot] Rendering: Tanger Outlets
Inspired by Canadian photographer Dominic Boudreault’s recent viral timelapse video of nighttime views taken in Montreal, Quebec City, Toronto, New York, and Chicago (above), Swamplot reader Rob Kimberly writes in with a question: What Houston highrises have observation decks that are still open to the public. And: If there are buildings where they used to be open, why did they close?
Video: Dominic Boudreaux
Three trees have been delivered and installed at the site of the still-under-construction Asia Society Texas Center on Southmore and Caroline in the Museum District, announces the reader who sent Swamplot this photo of the trucked-in foliage from last week (above) — as well as a view from over the weekend of greenery as it now appears in front (below). “The inside of the building has been lit at night lately and it is quite stunning,” reports our correspondent. The building — only the second U.S. design by Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi, which follows his 2004 expansion of New York’s MOMA — isn’t scheduled to open until March of next year.
While thousands of ExxonMobil employees wait patiently to hear confirmation from the oil giant’s tight-lipped management about their rumored “possible” consolidation in a brand-new enormous office campus just south of The Woodlands, aerial photos that show work proceeding on the site have shown up in an update to Google Maps. The photo update appears to be relatively recent; it shows a level of clear-cutting similar to what was evident in the images leaked to Swamplot last month, which dated from March 12:
COVERING HOUSTON’S INSIDE STORIES Stick ’Em Up! filmmaker Alex Luster tells the Houston Press’s John Nova Lomax a few of the things he learned from mentor and former KTRK reporter Carlos Aguilar in the mid-1990s, when they both worked at Spanish-language news station Noticiero 48: “‘He said, “Most of your news stories are gonna be in the Inner Loop.” I asked why and he told me it was easier for a TV station to get [those stories], and also the ones in Southwest Houston. Most of the stations didn’t want to waste the gas or time to cover things outside the loop,’ Luster remembers. ‘And he taught me how not to get lost without reading a map or pulling over to get your bearings — to just head for the buildings. He said to learn downtown and then everything else I could figure out from there. That’s another reason I’ve come to love the Inner Loop — the buildings signified home and safety.'” [Houston Press; previously on Swamplot]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: EXXONMOBIL OFFICE PARK CONSTRUCTION REPORT “On [my way] in to work this morning, driving south on 45 and going over the Rayford/Sawdust bridge, I could clearly see a crane poking out above the trees in the Exxon campus area.” [Jessie M, commenting on Aerial Views of ExxonMobil’s New Sprawling, Top Secret Houston Headquarters]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: SAVE THE GRASSLANDS “One of these days I’m going to start a movement to return Houston to the prairie that it was before World War II. I’ll organize a massive protest every time a new tree is planted, in an effort to restore Houston to the pristine flatland of pastures it originally was, before the invasions of those alien oak, pine and palm trees. (Never mind the tallows….)” [J.V., commenting on Clearing Out the Feagan Oaks from Magnolia Grove]
What’s been going on deep in this pine forest north of Houston, behind the fencing and security guards, where all those trucks have been driving in and out for months? A whole lot of logging at least, it looks like. While ExxonMobil continues to tell its employees that no decisions have yet been made about whether to consolidate approximately 17,000 of them from Houston and Virginia into a new 3 million sq. ft. office campus just south of The Woodlands, contractors working for the company have been stripping what looks like thousands of trees from its 359-acre property and preparing the site for construction of as many as 2 dozen office buildings, 4 enormous parking garages, and several other structures. These aerial photos of the site sent to Swamplot are dated March 12th.
- 2314 Waugh Dr. [HAR]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: VIEWING THE PARK MEMORIAL CONDO POOL PARTY FROM THE AIR “On Google Earth’s time slider tool, the pool turns from a light aqua blue to a dark green pea soup between Jan. 2008 and Sept. 2008.” [Superdave, commenting on The Park Memorial Condo Wildlife Refuge]