Openings and Closings

Katy
05/21/10 9:38am

Where Local Fruits and Vegetables Will Be Hanging Out in Katy

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Openings and Closings, Retail
5 Comments

“We had gone to many places calling themselves farmers markets but their produce was coming in from California and Florida,” Susan Becker tells the Chronicle‘s Samira Rizvi. The 3,800-sq.-ft. Katy Fresh Produce Market she and her husband opened this week at 5026 East Third St. in Katy calls itself a farmers market; it’ll be open every day except Tuesday and “at least half” of the produce will be from local farmers, reports abc13’s Kevin Quinn, who spots bell peppers from Alvin, green beans from Cat Spring, and peaches from Fairfield (the city, not the subdivision).

Photo: Katy Fresh Produce Market

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Houston Heights
05/14/10 1:19pm

The Great Houston Heights Fast Food Slowdown

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Openings and Closings, Restaurants, Woodland Heights
7 Comments

“I have to say, I have always had luck with Asian food in some sort of repurposed fast food building,” declares The Heights Life blogger Viula. Surely everyone hopes her good fortune continues: A Heights Asian Cafe (or, as the banner puts it, Height Asian Cafe) will soon lay claim to the booty that is the vacant Long John Silvers building on Yale at 22nd St.

Likewise, Jenni’s Noodle House expects to open its 3rd location in the former Mrs. Baird’s Bread outlet at 602 E. 20th (at the corner of Oxford St.) in less than 8 weeks.

Ah, but there’s more than Asian food moving in. Viula has the rundown:

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Leasing
05/13/10 9:09am

Up Next on the Westheimer Retail Turntable: School for DJs

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Openings and Closings, Retail, Westheimer Curve
7 Comments

Another year has passed, which means it’s time for yet another business to move into the little house across the street from Hugo’s Restaurant, at the northeast corner of Westheimer and Mandell, where the Westheimer Curve finally figures out how to go straight. So what comes after Juliet and Romeo, Remix, and the Pleasure Chateau? Thanks to an inquisitive Swamplot reader with a camera, we know that the next tenants at 1550 Westheimer will be a Mixxwell Audio Lab. According to a construction worker our reader spoke to, it’s a DJ school.

Sadly, it appears the Pleasure Chateau’s lovely chandeliers have been removed:

I asked if I could look inside, the contractor explained that he didn’t have any access inside, but that the instructors would be there sometime this week. I did get a chance to look through the window and I must say it looks completely redesigned . . .

Photo: Swamplot inbox

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Openings and Closings
05/11/10 12:15pm

Better Return Those Videos Now, Before the Late Fees Extend to Infinity

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Quicklink, Retail
3 Comments

BETTER RETURN THOSE VIDEOS NOW, BEFORE THE LATE FEES EXTEND TO INFINITY Just in case the closing sales at the Southbelt, Webster, and Katy locations didn’t give you enough of a hint, the company that owns Hollywood Video announced yesterday it will be shutting down all 2,415 of its stores nationwide for good, including its remaining 7 6 5 Houston-area locations. [Reuters; previously on Swamplot]

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Buying and Selling
05/07/10 11:23am

Rescued from the Bistro Vino Redevelopment Flop: Ocean’s Ceviche

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First Montrose Commons, Homebuilders, Leasing, Montrose, Openings and Closings, Restaurants
15 Comments

Remember the swingin’ days of a couple of years ago, when InnerLoopCondos bought Bistro Vino and got ready to tear down the 24-year-old Montrose restaurant at the corner of West Alabama and Roseland? And then the company put out that goofy little internet survey asking us to vote on which type of condo-building cliche you’d like to see shoved onto the site? If you’re one of the lucky participants who somehow managed to write in “Give it up,” congratulations! Your choice has been selected!

Mexico City natives Jorge and Isaac Alvarez have since secured a lease-purchase of the former restaurant property from its would-be redevelopers. Jorge Alvarez, a custom-home developer himself, had a crew from his Alvgar Construction company renovate the 1930’s Tudor-style home and patio.

The brothers’ “modern Mexican” restaurant, Ocean’s Ceviche, isn’t expected to open officially until May 21st, but intrepid Swamplot photographer Candace Garcia brings you this little preview of the spiffed-up grounds:

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Garden Oaks
05/05/10 2:10pm

Shock of the Redo: The Garden Oaks Strip Center Miracle on 34th St.

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Openings and Closings, Renovations, Retail, Strip Centers
27 Comments

Swamplot advertiser Robert Searcy typically knows his way around southeast Houston, but finds himself a bit disoriented on a recent venture north to Garden Oaks. An encounter with the former strip-center home of Binswanger Glass at North Shepherd and 34th St. has him stumped:

Someone renovated it and anyone who takes a center like this and DOESN’T slather it in stucco with the obligatory strip of crown molding on the top, well, in my book they deserve kudos just for that. They seemed to have brought it back to its original design. There is one tenant in there now and a sign on the corner slot saying an application to sell liquor has been filed. It says it is for some kind of a coffee shop named Octane, (but apparently one that sells booze too). At any rate, a sensitive renovation and then a tenant mix that isn’t a combo of a check cashing place, a nail salon & a subway sandwich shop? I don’t know how to act.

Oh, but part of it’s already gone to the dogs:

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Discovery Green
05/05/10 12:11pm

Swamplot Award Winners Converge as Phoenicia Moves in Next to Discovery Green

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Downtown, Openings and Closings, Retail
30 Comments

The owners of the international foods emporium voted best grocery store in the city by Swamplot readers last year have announced they’ll be opening a second location Downtown, across the street from Discovery Green — whose opening day was voted the Best Moment in Houston Real Estate in the Swamplot Awards the previous year. What Swamplot Award-winner mashup will they think of next?

The new 28,000-sq.-ft Phoenicia Specialty Foods — smaller than the 55,000-sq.-ft. store on Westheimer near Kirkwood — is expected to open at the end of this year across McKinney St. from the Downtown park, in the ground floor of the One Park Place apartment tower. But park visitors will likely have to walk around the building to get their freekeh on: The store’s entrance will face Austin St.

We know what you’re wondering — will the pita be floating down from the ceiling on a conveyor belt Downtown too?

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Bellaire
05/04/10 8:14am

Timbergrove Swing: Plenty of Pots, Pans, Parking Where SSQQ Is Headed

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Houston Heights, Openings and Closings, Renovations, Retail, Shady Acres, Shopping Centers, Timbergrove Manor
6 Comments



Come June, promise the owners of SSQQ, the popular social dance studio will reopen just to the west of Restaurant Depot, in the former Kmart beached on the asphalt shores at 20th St. and T.C. Jester near Timbergrove.

Last weekend, SSQQ shut down the Bellaire strip-center site it had occupied for 30 years. Why’d it up and leave? Doctors’ orders, reports the Bellaire Examiner‘s Steve Mark: First Street Hospital, which owns the center on Bissonnet just outside the Loop, is planning an expansion that would slice the center in half, knocking out SSQQ, Sweetwater Pool & Patio, and a Radio Shack. (Not all is lost, though: Charlie’s Hamburgers and that nail salon in the center at 4803 Bissonnet will get to stay.)

Besides easy access to restaurant supplies, what’s in store for students taking a swing at new Bachata and Whip moves at SSQQ’s new location?

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Leasing
05/03/10 10:45am

Look Out Bello: What Could Possibly Take the Place of La Strada?

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Lower Westheimer, Openings and Closings, Restaurants
7 Comments

The new wrapper on what used to be a For Lease sign in front of the former La Strada restaurant building at the corner of Westheimer and Taft mentions lunch and dinner, but not brunch. The name of the new tenant: Caffe Bello.

Photo: Swamplot inbox

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Home Decor
04/20/10 12:17pm

The Fabulous Flea on the Market

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Homes for Sale, Houston Architects, Interiors, Openings and Closings, Retail, Upper Kirby
14 Comments

Today, tomorrow, and Thursday are the final days for The Fabulous Flea: After this sale, shop owner Mary Daly and her husband hope to sell the little Bammel Lane antique store — along with their cozy 4,018-sq.-ft. house next door. The compound, designed by Kurt Aichler, also includes a pool, an open-air poolhouse, and a small collection of courtyards on a 15,000-sq.-ft. lot.

The whole 4-6 bedroom, 3-1/2-bath package is priced at $1,995,000. But you might be able to find a few pieces of furniture for a little less than that at the shop’s final sale this week:

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Montrose
04/13/10 12:28pm

Sabetta Café Makes Sure To Feed the Blogs First

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Openings and Closings, Restaurants, Retail, Vermont Commons
16 Comments

How cute! Just a few days after a restaurant publicist emails news about the new Sabetta Café & Wine Bar set to open in the former location of Café Zol at 2411 South Shepherd just south of Fairview, a Swamplot “reader” sends in a photo (which just happens to be named in the same very specific style as the ones sent by the publicist) of the new sign out front and asks us if we know anything about it.

Only what you tell us! Let’s see: that it’ll be the new digs of former Simposio’s executive chef Riccardo Palazzo-Giorgio and his wife, Donna; that they’ll be serving “classic, signature dishes from the twenty-two different culinary regions of Italy,” and that you expect it to open in May.

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Commercial Real Estate
04/05/10 11:17am

H-E-B Announces That the Buffalo Grille Is Moving — Somewhere

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Leasing, Openings and Closings, Parking, Restaurants, Retail, Shopping Centers, Strip Centers, West University
21 Comments

A spokesperson for Buffalo Grille parking-lot tenant H-E-B confirms that the popular West U brunch-and-lunch spot will be moving from its current location on Bissonnet at Buffalo Speedway after its lease expires next year, “to a new location yet to be determined.” But one possible new location for the Buffalo Grille — a portion of the former JMH Market on Rice Blvd. — was just snapped up by the owners of Thompson + Hansen Nursery and Tiny Boxwood’s. The Buffalo Grille’s John McAleer tells the West University Examiner

“Right now…pickings are very slim. Any vacant space in the West U area, or the closest you can get to it, we’re looking at it. We have a year left, and we’re looking at that perfect location to find.”

How awkward: McAleer’s parents, Mac and Betty McAleer, “are part of the management team that owns the land on which the Buffalo Grille and H-E-B are situated,” the Examiner‘s Charlotte Aguilar and Steve Mark explain. And Molina’s Restaurant — displaced from the shopping center a few years ago when H-E-B redeveloped it — is still looking for its own replacement West U location.

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Condos
04/05/10 8:37am

Is 2520 Robinhood at Kirby Ready for Another Neighborhood Bar?

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Neighborhood Disputes, Nightlife, Openings and Closings, Proposed Developments, Rice Village
10 Comments

Remember that fun feud between a few residents of the 2520 Robinhood at Kirby condominiums and the tiny bar directly to its west? Well, now it looks like there’s a brand new bar getting ready to open directly to the tower’s east!

When last we left the 16-story Rice Village condo tower, residents had been placed under a court order prohibiting them from “running or pouring water or any other liquid” and “throwing any object whatsoever” onto Hans’ Bier Haus — after the bar’s owners complained to district court judge Patricia Hancock about an ongoing liquid and projectile campaign mounted against their partly open-air establishment by its eastern neighbors. (For good measure, the judge similarly prohibited the proprietors of the courtyard bar from trespassing on or “interfering with [residents’] peaceable use and enjoyment” of the condo building next door.)

But just as the legal and dousing action on the tower’s west side appears to have subsided comes the prospect for more neighborly interaction on the tower’s east: From Swamplot’s tip line we find these photos of another small building directly adjacent to the tower. What’s that new sign posted on the front window?

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Bellaire
04/02/10 12:17pm

Dunkin’ Donuts Coming Back to Bellaire

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Franchises and Chain Stores, Openings and Closings, Renovations, Restaurants
9 Comments

The owner of the Dunkin’ Donuts in Pasadena and on FM 1960 near I-45 is renovating the Bellaire location that a previous owner shut down last October, writes Steve Mark:

“I heard they were closing that store and I called the corporate office right away,” [Harshad] Patel told The Examiner. “We don’t have that many Dunkin’ Donuts close to the city, so I asked if I could re-open that one. . . .”

Patel expects the first donuts will be ready later this month — after the gutted building at 5406 Bellaire Blvd. between Bissonnet and Chimney Rock gets outfitted with a new roof, AC system, and kitchen equipment.

Photo: Bellaire Examiner

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Adaptive Reuse
04/02/10 11:36am

The Sign of BRC Rises on Shepherd

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Brunner, Openings and Closings, Restaurants
14 Comments

“Robots need not apply” reads the recent ad for staff positions at the new BRC Gastropub at the corner of North Shepherd and Blossom. Hey, didn’t that building use to be a funeral monument and gravestone sales center? Reader photos show it ready to come to life — almost directly across the street from that former pool hall refashioned into Branch Water Tavern.

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