COMMENT OF THE DAY RUNNER-UP: WHAT’S ON SALE AT THE HOUSTON PERMITTING CENTER? “When visiting the permit palace please ask about their red tag specials.” [lhd, commenting on Newly Historic Renovated Permitting Center To Hold Preservation Workshops on Renovating Historic Buildings]
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ORDINANCE NOW PROTECTS THE VULNERABLE FROM PASSING CARS, PROJECTILES 
Yesterday, city council approved an ordinance requiring Houston drivers to play nicer with others. That means: No throwing things at them anymore, and no passing “vulnerable road users” without maintaining at least 3 ft. of space (or 6 ft., if you’re driving a commercial truck). And how are you supposed to know which road user is vulnerable? Maybe you can print out and keep in your car this list — not organized, presumably, by order of importance —Â from the city press release: “walkers or runners; the physically disabled, such as someone in a wheelchair; a stranded motorist or passengers; highway construction, utility or maintenance workers; tow truck operators; cyclists; moped, motor-driven cycle and scooter drivers; or horseback riders.” [City of Houston] Photo of cyclists on Fry Rd.: Flickr user josephkynguyen
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THAT SLOW-MO BUILD DOWN THE STREET “Builders started 6442 homes, but how many have been finished? One house on my street broke ground almost exactly a year ago and as of today, it has a foundation, framing, Tyvek wrap, most of a roof, a little plumbing, and a little drywall. The house and its ‘dry’wall have been open to the elements for a few months now, including during the torrential rains of a few weeks ago. There have been only 2 workers working on it at a time, and no one has been working on it at all in the past couple weeks. It’s not like I’m in a slow-moving undesirable area; on the contrary, I’m near the border of 77098 and 77006 where houses are going under contract within a week of landing on the MLS, and asking prices are 1.5x –- 2x what they were 5 years ago. I’ve read that all of the construction employees have defected to work on commercial sites. Maybe that rumor is true.” [GoogleMaster, commenting on Headlines: Houston Tourism Boost; Downtown MegaBus Congestion]
COMMENT OF THE DAY RUNNER-UP: HOUSTON’S SHRINKING BLAST! ZONE “I have had enough with Blast! Things went downhill fast at the Memorial City location with the ownership change. No soap in the showers, dirty sauna and steam rooms, weight equipment not being properly maintained, etc., etc. I said I would maintain my membership due to its location. Then in February 2013, Blast announces that the Memorial City location would be closing in a few weeks. I was VERY UPSET! I received a letter in the mail stating that my membership would be transferred to the Sharpstown location. That gym is out of the way for me so I started working out at the Barker Cypress location. On Monday, May 6 I go to work out and the landlord has locked Blast! out of the building due to non-payment of rent! Blast! closed the Galleria, Sugar Land, and Memorial City locations, and it seems as if the Barker Cypress location is shut down indefinitely. It’s time to find another gym!” [Floyd Worsley, Sr., commenting on Blast Begins Total Houston Takeover of Bally Total Fitness] Note: The Memorial City location of Blast! Fitness has closed, but the Barker Cypress location at 17750 Katy Fwy. is still open.
NEW PLANNED PARENTHOOD INCITES PROTESTS IN SPRING 
This 7th Houston-area Planned Parenthood, which signed a 5-year lease and opened last week here at 4747 Louetta Rd. in a Spring shopping center shared by a Chase branch, party supply store, and daycare, doesn’t seem to have received the warmest welcome: Cool Kat Party Supply owner Glenn Mehterian says he moved his main entrance around the corner: “We’ll have more comfort entering our store from the Kroger side,” he tells abc13. And others have been moved to protest the clinic in their own way: Conroe man and Right to Life volunteer Joe Wiegan has come here to pray: “It was a lonesome feeling,” he tells the Montgomery County Courier’s Kimberly Sutton, “but after about half an hour, a man and his young son walked out of the Chase Bank next door and asked if they could join me . . . . He led a beautiful prayer for the unborn and they left with tears in their eyes. . . . .” Then Wiegan was joined by another: “He said he passed by earlier and asked God to please keep me here until he got back by so he could stop and pray with me . . . He was an awesome bear of a man, with a spirit as gentle as a lamb’s.” [abc13; Montgomery County Courier; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Montgomery County Courier
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE ONLY NUMBER I NEED “For me, as someone who routinely buys, restores, and holds these types of property for the long term (including a property right across the street from this one that is roughly the same age / type of construction), the only thing that I consider when determining value (and this a pretty standard / typical metric) is CAP rate. Specifically, I use the CAP rate at current rents and expenses to determine what it is worth today . . . and I calculate a projected CAP rate after renovations to determine what it will be worth with higher rents. The CAP rate is just a simple calculation for the rate of return on your cash in the deal. If you are simply buying a property and continuing on as is, the CAP rate is the return (from cashflow) on your down payment. If you are planning to upgrade the property the CAP rate is the rate of return on your down payment + carrying and renovation costs . . . based on the new rents.” [Jared M., commenting on The End of Another Almost Afton Oaks Apartment Complex?]
A NEW BUILDER FOR THE ASHBY HIGHRISE 
Though it remains to be decided in a court of law whether the 21-story Ashby Highrise will deprive nearby Boulevard Oaks homes of sunlight and rain, there now seems to be a firm at least agreeing to build it: Prime Property’s Nancy Sarnoff reports that Pepper-Lawson Construction has signed on, replacing Linbeck, which decided to back out of the project earlier this year. The Maryland Manor Apartments, shown here standing in the way at 1717 Bissonnet, started coming down last week. [Prime Property; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Candace Garcia
WESTHEIMER RD. CAFE ADOBE CLOSING ON MOTHER’S DAY 
At the palm-obscured corner of South Shepherd Dr. and Westheimer since 1981, Cafe Adobe announced that it will be closing this Mother’s Day, May 12, reports the Houston Business Journal. The property at 2111 Westheimer Rd. was purchased last year by Hines, which has said it plans to tear down the restaurant to build a 215-unit apartment complex. An up-to-date rendering of the complex-to-be hasn’t been made available. [Houston Business Journal; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Candace Garcia
COMMENT OF THE DAY: OUTSIDE OF THE LOOP ON TRAFFIC “Nothing confuses a non-Houstonian like traffic reports in H-town: ‘There’s an accident on the east loop north at 225, traffic is backed all the way from the south loop east to the west loop south.’†[HEYZEUS, commenting on Comment of the Day: Isn’t East of 59 and 288 Inside the Loop Too?]
WILL POWER LINE BIKE TRAILS COME TO HARRIS COUNTY? 
Approved this week and sent on to Gov. Perry was a new draft of that bill proposing bike trails along CenterPoint utility rights of way. CenterPoint didn’t seem too crazy about the first draft of the bill, saying back in February that it wouldn’t allow the trails unless it was assured it wouldn’t be liable should something shocking happen. This revised draft, the Houston Chronicle’s Mike Morris reports, covers CenterPoint all the way up to “willful or wanton acts or gross negligence.” And Morris writes that as many as 142 miles of right of way in Harris County could be available for trails if Gov. Perry signs off on the bill, many of them providing missing north-south connections between the existing trails that run primarily east-west along the bayous. (Houston Chronicle ($); previously on Swamplot) Photo: StateImpact
COMMENT OF THE DAY: ISN’T EAST OF 59 AND 288 INSIDE THE LOOP TOO? “. . . I tell people all the time, I live inside the loop, a few miles from DT. Everyone is all ‘oh, where do you live? in Montrose, the Heights, on Washington, museum district?’ I’m all like ‘um, no, over by UH’ then they’re all like ‘oh, UHD, so like Last Concert, that’s edgy!!!’ then I’m like, sigh ‘no, the real UH, there’s a fleet of taco trucks by my house, and that soccer stadium thingy.’ Then they just start running away.” [toasty, commenting on Houston: The Divided City]
LIVING IN THE SHADOW OF THE ASHBY HIGHRISE Though the demo of the Maryland Manor apartments at 1717 Bissonnet has already started, a group of homeowners still seems intent to stop the Ashby Highrise from going up in their place, filing a lawsuit this week against developer Buckhead Investment Partners that argues the building will cast a shadow — literally — over the neighborhood: Among other concerns about traffic and privacy, the suit alleges that the 21-story tower would deprive neighbors of sunlight and rain, limiting the enjoyment of their yards and making the maintenance of their gardens impossible. [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Candace Garcia
COMMENT OF THE DAY: IS THIS A HOUSTON APARTMENT BUILDING BUBBLE? “. . . it certainly does seem like they are overbuilding. Only time will tell if that’s the case. If it is, it’s going to be a replay of 1982-3. The developers who got in the game early will have sold their complexes and moved on to the next hot market. The guys left holding complexes when the market crashes will lose their shirts. There won’t be a bailout. But a bunch of complexes will fall into bankruptcy. Rents will crash. Real estate values and tax revenue will plummet. Any semblance of maintenance, security, and tenant screening will fly out the window. Oh, and there might be a few half finished complexes that just sit there for a few years gathering graffiti and vagrants.” [ZAW, commenting on The Luxury Trackside Apartments Coming to Briar Hollow]
COMMENT OF THE DAY RUNNER-UP: LOOKING FOR A MULTI-DOME “I also remember how impressive it was to see the bare-steel framework during construction. So, the ‘strip it down to structural elements’ idea does resonate with me. In any case, most of the non-demolition proposals I’ve read about are for a single use facility of one kind or another. In contrast, I think our best hope for success is to remake it into a facility that serves different aspects of the public that have different interests. The dome’s footprint is big enough to accommodate a variety of multiple uses. I’ve tossed about ideas for some possibilities for different parts: hotel, golf driving range and/or putting greens, artificial ponds for fishing, tropical gardens (this might require the roof + AC), additional meeting-room and display space for conventions. These are just some thoughts, all of which have worked elsewhere, but may or may not work here. My main point is that we should be considering multiple uses, not just one that could sink the entire project’s success.” [Guido, commenting on Astrodome Stripped Bare by the Architects, Even]
UPDATED: JEANNINE’S CLOSING IS ONLY, UMM, PERMANENT, SAYS JEANNINE’S 
Why has the Belgium-by-way-of-Montrose Jeannine’s Bistro stopped serving those moules-frites? Culturemap, it appears, has been following the Westheimer Rd. restaurant’s self-demotion on Facebook: “Earlier posts,” reports Whitney Radley, giving a breathless blow-by-blow, “indicate gradually waning hours — the restaurant temporarily dropped lunch service on April 10 — and chronic staffing issues — it issued a call for ‘good waiters and kitchen helpers’ several days after — before warning . . . that the bistro’s kitchen would temporarily close altogether to ‘make some decisions.'” Update, 12:50 p.m.: Another Facebook post from Jeannine’s says that the restaurant has decided to close for good. [Culturemap] Photo: Allyn West
