06/22/11 7:15pm

“I don’t know about the Whole Foods parking lot,” writes a Swamplot reader, “but it’s certainly getting real on D’Amico!” Here’s a photo sent in with that report, taken just past the American General Center garage north of the new store on D’Amico St., shortly after 4 pm. But there was plenty of neighborhood-street spillover earlier, too: “Around lunch time, if there was a curb there was a car . . . on both sides along D’Amico, bumper to bumper from the light to just under the garage.” How long will this sort of thing keep up? Our tipster imagines AIG American General will soon put out no-parking signs “along any parts of the street that is their property, such as along the entrance to a parking lot across from whole foods and by the garage. Other areas on the campus have no parking signs where people tend to stop. I know you can’t park within a certain distance to a stop sign, does the same apply to stop lights? If so, some people risked a ticket just to get some groceries! It would be cheaper to pay for parking in the AIG lot or the garage visitor parking.” And no rush, folks. Those free chicken breast coupons are good until next Tuesday.

Photo: Swamplot inbox

06/22/11 11:11am

I’ve been waiting here like 10 minutes, man! No, no no . . . this is my parking space man. Just like the video already? “Despite all that concrete, there is not a single space available as I look out the window,” reports a reader who’s been monitoring today’s grand opening of the new Whole Foods Market on West Dallas and Waugh from an office window high above — and has already started grumbling about the potential evening traffic: “The parking lot has been full all morning.” This photo was snapped around 10:15.

Photo: Swamplot inbox

06/21/11 5:47pm

Hanging out on the roof of Houston’s new Central Permitting and Green Resource Center at 1002 Washington Ave.: Solar panels, anchored by the first-ever commercial installation of Metalab Studio’s new PV-Pod. The local architecture firm developed the hollow high-density polyethylene pods with support from a UH Green Building Components grant. There’s one pod for each panel, and each is filled up with just enough water to resist required wind forces. This kind of assembly is much simpler to install than a typical photovoltaic-panel rack system with concrete ballast blocks, claims Metalab’s Andrew Vrana. It also allows for a more flexible layout. The new permit building opened for business yesterday.

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06/17/11 11:40pm

The Montrose Whole Foods media frenzy has begun! Did the company’s Walmart-alum store-development manager really tell the Chronicle‘s Nancy Sarnoff that Whole Foods decided not to build the store at Waugh and West Dallas on top of 2 levels of structured parking because “the amount of concrete required . . . would have created a ‘huge heat island’”? Meanwhile, bullet-pointed fact sheets announce the 45,000-sq.-ft. store’s smaller-scale innovations: Like LED lighting, 2 electric-vehicle chargers out front, a bike station with tools and an air pump, and much more parking lot than you’ll find in front of the Kirby store. Plus: fascinating facts, like the number of linear feet devoted to prepared items in the chef case (18), bulk foods (44), a beer cooler (32), and smoked seafood (8)! Take a look for yourself:

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06/16/11 2:41pm

Okay, okay! It ain’t exactly here, but y’all want to see this, so here ya go. North Montrose’s little bit in this game doesn’t open until . . . this weekend.

Video: Fog and Smog Films

06/15/11 12:29pm

Several readers have written in to report on the apparent demise of the Octane Coffee and Wine Lounge at the corner of 34th St. and North Shepherd. “As of Sunday,” says one correspondent, “the place was shut with a computer-generated ‘Sorry We’re Closed’ sign taped to the door, and a Pink’s employee next door said the owners had been carrying stuff out all day.” The morning and night spot opened almost exactly a year ago, one of the first tenants in the renovated but still-modern Garden Oaks strip center.

Photo: Candace Garcia

06/14/11 5:32pm

This photo, sent straight from the street by a Kirby-cruising reader, shows the brief sign-free interregnum between the rule of Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams and its replacement, Internum, at 3303 Kirby. There’s been no change of ownership at the home furnishings store, and Internum will continue to sell MG+BW lines — at least for a little while. But luxury-goods company European Designs, operator of MG+BW stores in Houston, Miami, and Mexico City, is renaming and revamping its locations, adding in additional furniture brands like Poltrona Frau, Kenzo Maison, Baxter, Cappelini, and Flexform. European Designs also operates the Roche-Bobois stores in Houston and several other U.S. and Mexican cities.

Photo: Swamplot inbox

06/14/11 3:34pm

Storied Heights hangout 11th Street Cafe, at the corner of 11th St. and Studewood, is now closed, a tipster reports. It’s scheduled to reopen Saturday with a new menu and a slightly different name: Ruggles’ 11th Street Cafe. The Heights location will be the third in Bruce Molzan’s growing Ruggles Green empire — the counter-service restaurant’s second location opened in CityCentre last year.

Photo: Candace Garcia

06/09/11 12:10pm

Your latest retail edition:

  • Closing and Expanding: New Orleans import Kaboom Books has shut down its Studewood location in the Heights strip center next to Antidote Coffee. Open now: more space for books and readers in the 3116 Houston Ave. storefront at the end of Bayland in Woodland Heights. The expanded store incorporates the north end of the streetfront building, and includes a back yard and reading area.
  • Moving: The storefront division of PH Design Shop, from its Shepherd Dr. hangout next to Sugarbaby’s Cupcake Boutique, to a larger 1,440-sq.-ft. space at 2414 Rice Blvd. in the head-in-parking paradise of Rice Village, later this month. The new store will allow the addition of gifts and tabletop items to the store’s mix of custom mix of funky paper goods and custom design services.

One more:

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06/08/11 11:36am

Noting the new handcrafted plywood “for sale or lease” signs now hanging on White Oak in front of King Biscuit Patio Cafe, a few Swamplot readers have written in to tell us that it looks like the Woodland Heights restaurant’s promised comeback has been called off before it even started. Restaurant guide b4-u-eat announced last month that building owner Pat Quinn would be teaming up with former Fitzgerald’s owner Sara Fitzgerald to reopen the restaurant. One reader tells Swamplot that remodeling work came to a halt 2 weeks ago, and that Fitzgerald spent all of last Thursday moving out of the building. The signs — one of them advertising the availability of owner financing — were posted over the weekend.

Photos: Swamplot inbox

06/03/11 4:48pm

Epicurean Express, that long-awaited little bodega-style grocery store in East Downtown, opened quietly early this week in this strip shopping center at 2018 Rusk St., at the corner of St. Emanuel — about 10 months after its originally scheduled opening date. Swamplot photographer Candace Garcia reports a bit more work will be needed inside before the 3,500-sq.-ft. store just down the street from Warehouse Live — which includes a small area for cafe seating inside — is fully stocked. You’ll want to wait a few more weeks before sandwiches are ready at the deli, too.

Photos: Candace Garcia

05/24/11 2:51pm

The endcap restaurant space on the River Oaks Village strip center just west of Kirby that’s currently home to Tony Mandola’s but before that was Fins and before that Rickshaw and Bambu — but that’s still probably familiar to more people as that “No Parking Here for Chuy’s” place — will have a new name over the door soon. Ouisie’s Table owner Elouise Adams Jones plans to open a yet-to-be-named “new American-style bistro” at 2810 Westheimer in September. Tony Mandola’s will escape to its new Waugh Dr. building as soon as it’s ready this summer, after spending only a few months in what the restaurant officially calls its “miracle location.” (Tony Mandola’s Gulf Coast Kitchen closed its longtime location in the River Oaks Shopping Center at the end of its lease in January. A high-foreheaded Brasserie 19 is open in that space now.)

Photo: LoopNet

05/19/11 12:35pm

Opening date for the brightly colored new 40,450-sq.-ft. Whole Foods Market on West Dallas and Waugh: June 22, the company reports. What about farther afield? A Whole Foods spokesperson says the company has no current plans for a store in Katy, but Nancy Sarnoff reports sources have told her the grocery retailer “is in negotiations to put a 30,000 square-foot store at the corner of Grand Parkway and Fry Road.”

Photo: Candace Garcia

05/18/11 12:51pm

There’ll be a West-U-ish Molina’s Cantina location for the first time in 3 years — once the Tex-Mex chain opens up its new digs in one of the spaces left after the twin Terlingua Texas Border Cafe flameouts in March. Molina’s will go into Terlingua’s Braes Heights Shopping Center space on Bellaire near Stella Link. The last West U Molina’s, on Buffalo Speedway, closed down 3 years ago to make way for H-E-B’s Buffalo Market.

In other on-the-ashes-of-failed-restaurants news, the former Sabetta Cafe space at 2411 South Shepherd near Fairview is now the home of recently opened performance-art venue Greatfull Taco.

Photo of future Molina’s Cantina location, 3801 Bellaire Blvd.: West University Examiner

05/12/11 11:01pm

ELEMENTARY SCHOOL DEMOLISHINGS AND CLOSINGS HISD plans to begin demolishing the old Bastian Elementary School on Calhoun Rd. just south of the South Loop within the next few weeks, in an effort to make the 6-acre property more appealing to possible buyers. The South Park campus has been vacant since 2007, when a new Bastian Elementary was built a mile south on Bellfort. At one point, Lynn Walsh reports, “the property was listed for sale for $825,000, according to an online multiple listings service search, or slightly more than a third of the county’s appraised value for it.” Meanwhile, the HISD board voted this evening to close Grimes, Rhoads, McDade, and Stevenson elementary schools. Some students from Stevenson Elementary will begin classes next year at Love Elementary in the Heights, which had previously been threatened with closure. [Texas Watchdog] Photo of Bastian Elementary: Dikombi Gite