NEW HOUSTON STEAK ’N SHAKES READY TO BAKE 
Thirty years after its first big move into Houston (with 5 locations that didn’t last too long), fast-food burger operation Steak ’n Shake is ready to roll into town in a big way again. Chodrow Realty Advisors’ David Littwitz says he’s been working to get 5 new franchises of the national chain open here soon — 1 this year, and 4 next. A Steak ’n Shake restaurant on FM 1960 at Eldridge has been open for 3 years; a second location on the I-10 feeder at Westgreen in Katy opened last year. [Houston Business Journal; history] Photo: Robert S.
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Proposed Developments
The owners of Pub Fiction and Shot Bar in Midtown plan to make over the former Shady Grocery at the corner of Bevis and 23rd St. in Shady Acres into Crisp Wine Bar and Eatery, which will also feature craft beers on tap, an “Italian-influenced” menu (including pizza and deli-style hoagies), a retail wine shop, and a separate entrance for customers who just want to order takeout. Also: a patio next to the kitchen’s new herb-and-vegetable garden that’ll be carved out of the asphalt. Guy-in-charge Al Scavelli tells Swamplot many of the details are still being worked out, but he hopes to open the place at 2220 Bevis up by next January.
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SOUTH-OF-HOUSTON OUTLET MALL COMPETITION SETTLES ON TEXAS CITY Tanger Outlets had hoped to build a new mall in League City, but the land it had its eye on was sold at auction. So the company has announced it will be teaming up with rival mall developers Simon Property Group to build a mall in Texas City, where Simon was planning its own Galveston Premium Outlets instead. The new Tanger Outlets will sit on 55 acres on the west side of the Gulf Freeway, north of the Walmart Supercenter just south of the Holland Rd. exit. The first phase is expected to feature 90 stores in 350,000 sq. ft. Groundbreaking ceremony is scheduled for this month. [Tanger Outlets; previously on Swamplot]
After a 3-year delay, construction is ready to begin on the new Sicardi Gallery at 1506 West Alabama, catty-corner from the Houston Center for Photography at Mulberry St. and across the street from the Menil parking lot. A groundbreaking ceremony was held yesterday. There’s been at least one design change from Brave Architecture’s earlier versions of the project: The latest rendering (above) shows a large window in the building’s formerly blank south-facing forehead, looking onto the parking lot in front.
- Previously on Swamplot: A New Sicardi Gallery Exhibit
Rendering: Brave Architecture
Coming next April to this Studewood corner just across 8th St. from Antidote Coffee, according to My Table: a second, more food-focused location of the Sonoma Retail Wine Bar and Restaurant on Richmond that backs up to the art galleries on Colquitt. Venture Commercial’s leasing package for the property shows the existing 2,160-sq.-ft. building at 803 Studewood spiffed up, with this adjacent apartment building knocked down to make room for 24 parking spaces:
Planned for the Midtown block surrounded by Main, Travis, Francis, and Holman streets: a new 90,000-sq.-ft. multi-tenant performing arts center that might look something like this. And after a city-hall vote this week, it seems more likely to be built: Council approved the sale of the property at 3400 Main St., currently a surface parking lot for the soon-to-be-former city permit office one block to the north, for $2.5 million.
The buyer and developer of the new building is the Independent Arts Collaborative, a consortium of local arts organizations — including Fotofest, Diverseworks, the Houston Arts Alliance, Musiqa, Suchu Dance, Opera Vista, Catastrophic Theater, Nameless Sound, the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra, and Main St. Theater. Also part of the deal: Another one of those 380 revenue-sharing agreements: This one will allow the developer to receive up to $6 million in reimbursements from increases in tax revenue resulting from the project.
Details of the building — as well as plans for several projects proposed nearby — were included in a study produced last year for the Houston-Galveston Area Council:
Startup Buffalo Bayou Brewing Co. will be located much closer to I-10 than to its namesake waterway, but founder Rassul Zarinfar says that’s by design. A Swamplot commenter dug up the address yesterday: The company has leased a 7,800 sq. ft. warehouse at 5301 Nolda St., at the corner of Detering, in Cottage Grove.
Zarinfar tells Swamplot he was happy to find a location that wasn’t “on the outskirts of town in a super-corporate industrial project.” The company plans to hand-deliver all the kegs it brews themselves, so highway access mattered. Having a location people could easily walk or bike to was also important to him. “Plus,” Zarinfar adds, “we wanted a warehouse that didn’t feel too much like a warehouse, but instead more like an art studio (since beer is art!).”
WHAT’S BREWING NEAR COTTAGE GROVE A new craft beer company named after the fine waters of Houston’s premier waterway signed a lease last month for a brewery somewhere near The Usual on Allen St., reports beer blogger Leslie Sprague. The Buffalo Bayou Brewing Company isn’t ready to announce the exact location, but founder and Harvard B-school grad Rassul Zarinfar lets Sprague say it’s “in the area south of I-10 between TC Jester and Shepherd.” [Lushtastic] Update, 6/22: Details on the actual location.
WILL SKANSKA KNOCK DOWN THE HOUSTON CLUB? 
A source tells Nancy Sarnoff that Swedish construction firm Skanska, which has the Houston Club Building at 811 Rusk under contract, may tear down the 1948 downtown building and build an office tower in its place. A couple of clues: the closing of the building’s ground-floor Hunan Downtown restaurant and the “Closed for Cleaning” sign posted in the window of the Travis St. Burger King. The Houston Club’s lease on 4 floors of the 18-floor building doesn’t expire for another 4 years, though. The building’s previous owner, a limited partnership controlled by Cameron Management, gave up the property to its lender last September after declaring bankruptcy a few months earlier. [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Silberman Properties
THE MISSING LINK IN THE BIKE TRAIL FROM OAK FOREST TO DOWNTOWN 
After surveying a stretch of land mostly along White Oak Bayou from 11th St. to Lawrence Park, Chronicle blogger Martin Hajovsky says he doesn’t see any traffic problems that would stand in the way of a connection between the Katy/MKT hike-and-bike trail and the White Oak Bayou trail. A bayou-side hookup, which would create a continuous off-road path from Downtown to Oak Forest, is just one segment of grander bayou bikepath plans contained in the Bayou Greenway Initiative, which the Houston Parks Board is working on piece by piece. Adding the longer chunk planned along White Oak Bayou north of the current trail would extend the Downtown route all the way to Jersey Village. [Home in the Heights, via Off the Kuff; previously on Swamplot] Proposed Bayou Greenway map: Houston Parks Board
FULL SPEED AHEAD ON THE GRAND PARKWAY, WITH EXXONMOBIL AT 12 O’CLOCK A 12.1-mile segment of Houston’s newest and largest ring road, connecting the new ExxonMobil campus to the Tomball Parkway — and eventually to Katy — should be open by 2015, says the executive director of the Grand Parkway Association. TxDOT should start acquiring rights of way along Segment F-2 between Hwy. 249 and I-45 later this year, and construction will likely begin within 2 years, David Gornet tells Nancy Sarnoff. [Houston Chronicle; more info]
MIDRISE APARTMENTS, BEHIND THE WATERWALL The developers behind the flopped Turnberry Tower Houston gave up on plans for their Uptown 34-story plumber-friendly luxury condo project 3 years ago, but waited until last month to sell off the 3-acre site at the corner of Hidalgo and McCue, between the Waterwall Park and the Galleria. The new owner, Hines, says it plans to start construction early next year on 300 units in a 6-to-8-story apartment complex there. [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot]
There’s simply too much local entertainment value packed into this 10-minute video promoting Generation Park, a proposed 3000-acre office-campus development that’s gonna grow just like the Texas Medical Center, except it’s real close to the airport and Summerwood and Fall Creek and the Ship Channel, on land where McCord Development has planted thousands of trees over the years, and it’s responsible- or renewable-energy companies they’re looking to fill it out, not nonprofit hospitals. Here’s the company’s plan of the site, ideally located between Lake Houston and Beltway 8:
The streetclothes are already being shed from the recently vacated office building at the corner of Main St. and Rusk downtown where a Fort Worth development and hospitality company is planning its next hotel project. Pearl Real Estate announced plans to gut and renovate the 22-story building at 806 Main St. early last year. And now, a reader reports, permits are posted in the window and the paneling and windows in a single column have been removed.
Underneath the white-marble and brown-glass slipcover — installed about 30 years ago — is a stone, terra cotta, and brick building built about 100 years ago and expanded 10 stories skyward in the 1920s. The building is directly across the street from the brand-new BG Group Place.
- Upcoming Projects [Pearl Real Estate]
- Previously on Swamplot: Slipping a Hotel Under the Slipcover: Plans from the New Owner of 806 Main
Photos: Swamplot inbox
Is this what the mysterious new 6-story concrete-frame mixed-use building going up behind the 11th St. Someburger in the Heights is supposed to look like? Sort of, but not exactly. The rendering of the project above (and a whole bunch more, below), found on the website of ZDA Architecture in San Antonio, shows a decked-out version of the more boxy structure that’s pictured on this new sign and that showed up on the corner of Studewood and 11th 1/2 St. yesterday:
