Ready to see some fun pix from around town? Here’s the guardhouse for the loading dock at the Igloo plant in Katy, as captured a while back by blogger Donna B.
A few more:
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Parking
He may have officially retired last summer, but the former CEO of Houston’s HCC Insurance Holdings doesn’t seem to have slowed down! A settlement with the SEC, which accused Stephen L. Way of backdating stock options on at least 38 occasions, means the former executive is barred from serving as an officer or director of any public reporting company for five years. But Way has apparently found a way to keep himself busy, making improvements around his Bayou Woods home.
There’s just one problem with the lovely boxwood-hedged and pine-shaded parking lot pictured above, along with a concrete driveway and speed bumps Way also had built down the street:
Been worried that those neighbors of yours have been ruining the delicate balance of petroleum-based fertilizers in their grass with slow oil leaks?
Help is on the way! City Council has passed an amendment to Houston’s parking ordinance that will allow neighborhoods to apply individually for local 20-year bans on front-yard parking.
Signatures of 60 percent of a neighborhood’s residents are required to enact a ban, and restrictions can be appealed. But Intermodality blogger Christof Spieler, who’s been following lawn-parking-ban efforts for some time, notes neighborhoods that don’t have fussy deed restrictions already in place might want to think twice before signing up:
This new version also allows for the use of permeable paving. But it does not address the other problem: ultimately, this is an incentive to pave more. If your neighborhood opts in, you won’t be able to park on your front lawn. But, unless there’s a specific deed restriction in place against it, you’ll be able to pave your front lawn and the park there.
- City Council cracks down on cars in yards [Houston Chronicle]
- The lawn wait is over [Intermodality]
Photo: Flickr user herbinhouston
Feeding the meter won’t help you avoid a parking ticket Downtown anymore, thanks to a change in Houston parking regulations that passed City Council yesterday:
Drivers who stay beyond the posted limit will get a ticket, even if they have paid for additional time or have bought the all-day “Downtown Hopper” pass. The stricter ordinance also includes a provision making it clear that no one else can feed the meter for you.
How they gonna catch you? By tracking your license plate. The fine for overstaying coin-bought welcomes? $25.
The new rules are set to go into effect after a 1-month “grace period.”
- Time’s up for ‘feeding meters’ in downtown [Houston Chronicle]
Photo: Flickr user wandayuen2001
Here’s something we can all feel tingly and nostalgic about: Developer Bobby Orr’s Heights-ish fantasy — of brand-new old-timey storefronts facing long streetside parking lots off Yale St. and Heights Blvd. just south of I-10 — is dead. The Chronicle‘s Nancy Sarnoff drops news of the demise of the Heights Village dream as an aside to her update on the stalled-out High Street development.
The entire 4.9-acre property, across Heights Blvd. from the ArtCar Museum, is back on the market, at $75 a square foot.
Sadly, Cushman & Wakefield’s listing for the property doesn’t include any misty watercolors to memorialize what might have been. But Swamplot remembers! Here’s a brief trip down invented-memory lane . . . in 3 quick images:
A Heights-area reader alarmed by the “Notice of Public Hearing” sign that appeared in front of the 100-plus-year-old converted home at the northeast northwest corner of Heights Blvd. and 11th St. has done some sleuthing and sends Swamplot a report:
No, the 1903 Victorian at 1101 Heights Blvd. won’t be torn down . . . the owner has received approval from the historic commission to move the building one lot to the north. And then to jack it up a few more feet, so cars can be parked underneath. Why hadn’t the Victorians thought of that?
Why the need for parking? To accommodate the brand-new strip center the developer wants to slide in between the new location for the home and the corner, facing 11th St. On the corner itself: Parking.
One observer who’s seen the plans says the house will end up “awfully close” to the back of the strip center. The developer apparently has promised to “restore” the home, though it may be leased out as office space. The project is scheduled to go before the planning commission a week from this Thursday: November 20th.
More photos from the scene:
Fiesta Mart closed its I-10 and Blalock location when the Katy Freeway was expanded because too much of its parking got eaten up by the wider freeway. So how is the new 99 Ranch Market going into that space going to deal with the parking problem?
Suzanne Anderson, a regional leasing director with Weingarten, says the parking lot will be restriped to maximize the number of available parking spaces.
“We’re going to have to re-lay out the parking,†she says. “It’s still going to be under what the typical grocery store might have.â€
99 Ranch Market is owned by Tawa Supermarket and is the largest Asian American supermarket chain, with 25 stores in California. The 84,000-sq.-ft. store opening on Blalock next summer will be the company’s first store in Texas.
- 99 Ranch Market hitches Asian post to Houston with first store in Texas [Houston Business Journal]
- 99 Ranch Market
- 99 Ranch Market [Wikipedia]
Photo of former Fiesta Mart at 1005 Blalock: Weingarten Realty
This too-cute-for-Disneyland drawing depicts Allegro Builders’ new Wild Wild West-y development at the northwest corner of Studewood and 10th in the Heights. It’s going up just north of Allegro’s headquarters building, which is home also to the Glass Wall restaurant, and is known for its vaguely-historicist facade of valet-parked SUVs.
A few vans may front the new building at 1001 and 1003 Studewood, but it’ll only be in 2 spots of handicapped parking: The main lot is in back. That’ll likely be a relief for local filmmakers, who are no doubt eager to film Universal Studios-authentic spaghetti-western-style gunfights off those front balconies.
All of which makes this new retail-with-office-above confection an ideal location for Robert Gadsby’s new restaurant, Bedford, named after the chef’s birthplace in . . . uh, England.
After the jump: The interior is gonna be . . . modern!
A reader sends photos of some recent construction on the garage podium beneath the Cosmopolitan tower and asks:
What are those three giant urinals affixed to the east exterior wall of Randall Davis’ latest glass-clad erection, the one on Post Oak where James Coney Island used to be? . . .
Where is the Colossal Statue of Constantine when you need him? (Well, he’s in Rome, but that’s no help to Post Oak Boulevard!)
Sure, there’s the vaguely Roman theming going on with the marketing for Davis’s next tower across the street, the Titan. But these new constructions might be something much more contemporary . . . think Marcel Duchamp by way of Claes Oldenburg: The big fountains!
Below: the Colossal Head of Constantine . . . and the Colossal Heads of the Cosmopolitan, on display!
Yesterday’s brief Uptown Whole Foods parking mystery has been solved by one of our most helpful tipsters . . . who points to an older but more complete set of Boulevard Place plans. Shoppers, there is no need to worry. You will be able to park above, below, near, or yes — right in front of Whole Foods . . . and you won’t get stuck having to sneak your whole-grain-laden shopping cart past Hermès. Just imagine what awkward social situations that would have caused!
Below: 5 levels of out-of-date Blvd Place site plans explain it all!
Those of you still wondering why Regent Square’s quaint crooked street was axed from the project’s most recent plan — along with a few lush-looking inner courtyards — will be interested to read this explanation unearthed from a variance request submitted to the Planning Commission for today’s hearing:
After careful value engineering, it was determined to eliminate the below grade parking and replace that parking in additional structured garage parking. In addition, the diagonal private street that bi-sected the site has been modified and now runs perpendicular to Dunlavy. This also provided for a more efficient design of the structured parking garages.
After the jump: The new plan. When . . . and what?
In case it hadn’t already become obvious from watching the construction, that uh . . . “stealth” four-level parking garage in back is the real game-changer for the River Oaks Shopping Center.
Clearly, what’s unfolding is a strategy even more ingenious than anyone could have imagined. With a new monster garage looming behind the next targeted would-be landmark, Weingarten will soon have people begging it to rip down more of the north side of the center and build something taller, just to screen those four stories of cars from West Gray. Meanwhile, focusing attention on the complaints of a few pesky neighbors in back is a classic outrage-bait move. Throw in a little hush money to make sure those protests aren’t too loud, but then make sure news of the offer gets leaked, so the decoy works. Send in the demo crews, redevelop, and repeat!
The site plan above comes from a Weingarten variance request that will go before the Planning Commission on Thursday. The city’s landscape ordinance apparently requires the new development to switch out some of those existing sickly-but-iconic palm trees for live oaks. Naturally, Weingarten wants to save the palms!
- Offer made for silence over River Oaks shopping center [River Oaks Examiner]
- Weingarten Realty Investors Letter to Brentwood Residents (PDF) [River Oaks Examiner]
- New River Oaks Shopping Center: a hazy deal? [Houstonist]
- How To Demolish Houston Landmarks [Swamplot]
River Oaks Shopping Center landscape plan: Heights Venture Architects, via Houston Planning Commission
Tonight’s art opening at the new Box 13 ArtSpace will serve as a grand opening for the new East End art venue as well.
The space is a 2-story former furniture store on the corner of Harrisburg and Cesar Chavez (or — as the organization’s website uh, “artfully”(?) calls the street — “Cesar Chivas”). It features 13 studio spaces for artists in residence, three interior galleries, a storefront-window display space, and an “outdoor performance exhibition space,” known more conventionally as a parking lot.
The artist-run nonprofit intends to acquire a second building, at 6701 Capitol (directly behind the 6700 Harrisburg building), within a few months. “The Capitol building lends itself toward sculptors and installation artists,” declares the website.
After the jump: A quick tour of the new facilities!
[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=2O53kp1Te2M 400 330]
Are you an architectural renderer struggling to bring life to yet another vast Houston shopping-center parking lot in the drawings developers have commissioned you to create? This video should bring you inspiration! Go ahead and draw in that parade — that street festival — that touching moment of parking-lot excitement. You won’t be faking anything!
Today’s baton-twirling parking-lot-parade marshal was photographed by Jason of the Around Town Houston blog — as he waited in the drive-thru at Burger King on Westheimer, just east of Highway 6, just around the corner from the West Oaks Mall.
Practice makes perfect!
- Dude Twirling [YouTube]
- He’s Back [Around Town Houston]
- Homeless Twirler??? [Around Town Houston]
- Heights Village: Parking Lots Are the New Main Street! [Swamplot]
Reader photos and reports from the Houston Premium Outlets opening on 290 last weekend:
I had heard somewhere that the mall was supposed to have a Southwest theme, but with all the logos plastered over the entrance towers, it looks like they might have been aiming for Early NASCAR. Aside from that, though, it’s a surprisingly nice place. Yeah, there were lots of people there, but once you get out of your car, the mall handles crowds well. It’s much nicer than a lot of Houston non-outlet malls, and a whole lot less cheesy or pretentious.
After the jump: those logo-festooned towers and more on-the-spot pix! Plus: Chicken Now: Here. Now!
