WHAT THEY’RE TWEETING ABOUT YOUR LEASE RATES 
We now join the Twitter discussion of the potential lease of spaces at 2502 Dunlavy St. just north of Westheimer Rd. in Montrose, currently home to the offices of Eurostone Marble and the Bacchus Mediterranean Winebar and Coffee Shop (both still open), already in progress. [Twitter] Photo: Davis Commercial (PDF)
Sign up for the Newsletter
Real Estate Marketing
TAMPICO HEIGHTS RISES AGAIN, THIS TIME IN A BUMPER STICKER CAMPAIGN 
In a setback for the upstart movement to rename Brooke Smith and portions of East Sunset Heights east of N. Main St. and west of I-45, the appearance of the name “Tampico Heights” on Google Maps got shut down late last month by a couple of eagle-eyed citizen editors who noted that the name was “being used by a small group of residents to try and encourage the adoption of the name for this neighborhood, much to a larger group’s displeasure.” The newfangled designation has now been removed. But pro-Tampico campaigners have taken to the streets — or at least the shopping-center parking lots: A reader sends Swamplot this photo of a Tampico Heights bumper sticker spotted on a Chevy TrailBlazer parked in front of “Party” Kroger on Studemont St. over the weekend. [previously on Swamplot] Photo: Mel
COMMENT OF THE DAY: GOODBYE TO WOODCREST 
“. . . I contend that Rice Military has eaten up Woodcrest whatever the original boundaries were. I have lived about a mile from that Knox Street house for five years, riding my bike through there several times a week, and have never seen any evidence of the Woodcrest brand. (Though the pic of the sign in the TC Jester esplanade on the crickets-empty Woodcrest Neighborhood Association website looks vaguely familiar. It’s in black and white so no telling how old it is.) Rice Military, Crestwood/Glen Cove and Cottage Grove all have Wikipedia pages. Woodcrest does not. 999 out of 1000 Houstonians would not have a clue where Woodcrest was, but lots more know Rice Military. Its original identity has been erased in the last ten or 15 years and it’s now a Condo Canyon like Rice Military so let’s just let that boring Woodcrest name go, especially since there’s a Crestwood right down the street.” [John Nova Lomax, commenting on Hearsay Doubling Up Downtown; Touring the Inner Loop’s Second-Cheapest Rent House] Illustration: Lulu
‘TAMPICO HEIGHTS’ IS NOW A THING ON GOOGLE MAPS 
Near Northside residents who didn’t want their neighborhood to be called Tampico Heights have been successful in their campaign to keep the new name out. But it looks like Tampico Heights may be settling in as a new neighbor. A reader reports — and a quick online search confirms (see screen capture at left) — that Google Maps has now begun applying the new name Tampico Heights to area maps. Northside Village has been spared the Heights creep: The Tampico Heights name appears to have been applied to inner-loop neighborhoods Brooke Smith, East Sunset Heights, and portions of Sunset Heights west of I-45 and east of North Main, and not to Northside Village or the Near Northside, which lie east of I-45. That’s a more reasonable spot for a Tampico Heights to land anyway, since it incorporates the Tampico Refresqueria at 4520 N. Main St. and Tampico Seafood & Cocina Mexicana, at 2115 Airline Dr. [Previously on Swamplot]
A bulletin board with a request for “comments” went up last week on the fence fronting the now-vacant site at 411 Lovett Blvd. in Avondale, where the 1906 Bullock–City Federation Mansion was torn down earlier this year (see photo at right). Yes, the metal fence along Lovett Blvd. is still standing. Passers-by have been adding their thoughts.
Suggestion Box
If you’re as impressed as we are by the free-rotated and seemingly free-spirited snapshots attached to the listing (see actual screenshot of the entire HAR photo gallery, above), you may be interested in the curious for-sale history of the property at 11718 N. Kathy Ave. in Fondren Park — as recorded by the MLS, at least. The 3-bedroom, 2-bath 1967 home is currently marked “pending,” but records show it’s had that same status since April 18th of last year. The current listing appears to date from September 2012, when it went on the market for $70,000. That’s still the current listed asking price. And $70,000 is also the amount the 1,771-sq.-ft. home on a 12,280-sq.-ft. lot sold for in 1999, according to MLS records.
- 11718 N. Kathy Ave. [HAR]
Still Pending
A map-making trio headquartered in San Francisco has turned out its 11th “neighborhood culture map” of a U.S. city. And here we are . . . Houston! Well, after a fashion. How’d the team from Urbane come up with this particular collection of graphic geographic platitudes? Directly from sources: “For this map, we had an army of Houstonian contributors who talked a lot about their local haunts.” Isn’t that enough? “We do very thorough research, interviewing of people from there, and fact-checking to present our best efforts,” the Urbane team explains on its website. “Instead of critiquing our viewpoints, it is helpful for everyone if you would like to help our next project. Nobody can truly be a local to an entire city, can they? Nobody knows everything about every city. Maybe you’re an expert on your block, but it’s rare to find a full city expert.” So there. With its latest venture in Las Vegas, the group is trying another tack: Going onsite and asking passers-by to tag the neighborhoods they know with scribbled-on Post-It notes.
Tag, You’re That
You may have seen some harrowing home listings in your day, but for sheer, ballsy “abandon hope, all ye who enter here” bravado, it would be hard to imagine outdoing the agent’s MLS presentation of the single-bedroom condo at 12748 Huntingwick Dr.
How fearsome is this place? Well, let’s just say the featured photo in the listing is the down-the-hole toilet-bowl shot shown at right. Yes, if while trawling through listings, you are attracted by a full-on view of dank toilet water, surrounded on the floor and porcelain by brown bits that bear more than a passing resemblance to dead cockroaches, this might be the place for you. If, that is, the agent’s sage discouragement, dispensed in contract-friendly all-caps, doesn’t drive you away:
Fair Warning
NEW NORTH MONTROSE APARTMENTS LEAVE HANOVER, MOVE TO RIVER OAKS 
Residents of the recently opened Hanover West Gray apartments at 1340 West Gray got an unexpected notice in their mailboxes this month: Their new homes at the corner of West Gray and Waugh (replacing the Tavern on Gray and some neighboring structures) now feature a River Oaks address. Hanover sold the 275-unit structures effective March 13 to AMLI. And the new owner is calling the complex AMLI River Oaks, after the tony no-apartments-please neighborhood whose eastern border is three-quarters of a mile to the west. [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Hanover Company
In what appears to be a bid to get more people to pronounce Houston’s major industry in a stilted quasi-drawl, the parent company of Reliant Energy has decided to rebrand Reliant Stadium and Reliant Park. The Houston Chronicle‘s Kiah Collier reports that henceforth (or after a vote by county commissioners at least) they shall be known as NRG Stadium and NRG Park. Collier’s sources don’t seem to have mentioned whether the name-change will result in similar switches for the other structures in the sports-and-convention complex, labeled the Reliant Center, Reliant Arena, and Reliant Astrodome since 2002.
The New Old Home of the Texans, Etc.
- 5017 Wayne St. [HAR]
No, the lawn-parked Chevrolet Corvette in the sepia-filtered listing pic at the top of this post isn’t the result of a clumsy home-staging effort — it’s the prize that comes with your Woodforest Estates homebuying Happy Meal. Simply purchase this 2,488-sq.-ft. yellow-brick 2-story for the low low price of $138,500 (marked down from $142,500 earlier this month) and you’ll find this “awesome” Corvette in unidentified condition absolutely free in the box! Er, garage. Useful for shuttling family members, one at a time, to and from the home’s 7 bedrooms.
If this kind of Chevy-chasing carrot throw-in sounds vaguely familiar, that’s because it is: A similar deal for a Corvette Stingray with brick suburban home combo in Richmond at more than 3 times the price (pictured at left) was featured on Swamplot last month — and is still available. (No, it’s not the same car; that one was an older model convertible, though it appears to be a similar color.)
Buy 7-Bedroom, Get 2-Seater Free!
Houstonia’s John Nova Lomax, incessant chronicler of things-far-gone in the city, has put together a handy guide to the boundaries of a dozen-and-a-half retired Houston placenames, though a number of them (Astrodomain and Freedman’s Town, for example) aren’t so distant from regular use. But if you always wanted to know the way to Frenchtown, Chaneyville, or El Alacran — or the distance between Catfish Reef and Pearl Harbor — here’s your go-to map.
- Catfish Reef, Happy Hollow, and Vinegar Hill [Houstonia]
Map: John Nova Lomax
Local Extinctions
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOUSTON’S MAIN STREETS OF DISTRACTION 
“The fact that its not facing the freeway is progress. For too long, Houston has used its freeways as a super fast main street.
One of the reasons why the traffic is so bad in this area is that people gawk at the purdee buildins facing the freeway in addition to the excessive on/off ramps within a 2 mile stretch.” [DNAguy, commenting on This 21-Story Office Tower Is Headed for the West Loop’s East Side] Illustration: Lulu
