Last Wednesday, a new paintjob completely erased the blue and gold artwork on Reeve’s Antiques’ Taft-St. side. The whitewashing, Reeves owner Matt Reeves tells Swamplot, has created a blank canvas upon which a rotating series of new murals will appear over the next few months before a final, more permanent work takes their place.
He didn’t comment on the flying fish now levitating above it all:
The building that the Texas Junk Company left in 2016 is now home not only to a brand-new Verizon 5G broadband connection, but a whole array of gadgets designed to show off the service that the carrier launched in Houston a few months ago. Pictured above is the mock living room where for the next week, anyone can make themselves comfortable in front of a 4K resolution TV and a host of other mobile devices while they stream video through the telecom company’s new, purportedly higher-speed lines.
For a more immersive experience, try the virtual reality basketball range shown below off to the right:
A Swamplot reader sends the photo at top showing new signage up on the eaves of the former Shadow Oaks Drive-In convenience store at Long Point Rd. and Conrad Sauer Dr. in Spring Branch West. And a little bit of zoom reveals what’s now being advertised: a new business called Lazy Oaks Beer Garden. That same moniker has shown up on a number of permits filed on the 10158 Long Point Rd. address over the last 2 months, as well as an application for a TABC license.
Built in 1958, the convenience store remained in the family for nearly 60 years until the death of its second-gen owner, whose estate sold the property last September.
Photo: Swamplox inbox
The former Ascent Fitness building next to West Alabama Ice House is taking on a new life as Blue Mambo Hair Salon, according to a building permit filed yesterday. The gym’s 3-year run in the 4,260-sq.-ft. space at 1911 W. Alabama ended last October following the on-site sale of all no-longer-needed exercise equipment. (It took over the building in 2015 from 713 Pilates, now located down the street in the strip center it shares with Siphon Coffee.)
“For lease” signs went up early this year around the property, which includes a back parking lot that wraps the next-door hardware store and kicks out onto Hazard St. That arrangement should give Blue Mambo a bit more space than it’s got currently in the Chelsea Market shopping center off Montrose Blvd., long rumored for some kind of highrise replacement.
Photos: Margo
A new indoor golf venue is on its way into the Shops at Sawyer Yards, where it’s laid claim to the empty space marked “B” in the site plan above, adjacent to Sawyer St. It’ll be Loft18‘s first step outside Metairie, Louisiana, home to its only existing location. There, an array of 5 golf simulators — essentially turf teeboxes fronted by large video screens — offer customers 95 different courses to play. Along with bar and kitchen service, it’s all wrapped up within 7,000 sq.-ft.
The rendering at top shows what the west face of the converted warehouse building at 2313 Sawyer St. could look like once Loft18 gets situated. No building permits appear to have been filed yet on that address, however, HAIF users note that both a Houston-specific website and Facebook page for the business recently went live.
Rendering: Loft 18. Site plan: Lovett Commercial
Work is underway to divvy-up the abandoned Chuck E. Cheese’s at the Weslayan Plaza shopping center into handful of new retailers. Among them: Torchy’s Tacos. It hasn’t fully materialized yet but looks good on paper in the updated site plan that Regency Centers is now showing off on its website. Next-door — and east of longtime tenant Skeeter’s Mesquite Grill — Sola Salon Studios (number 16) and Sally Beauty Supply (15) are also newcomers, themselves carve-outs from the former mouse-themed pizza and arcade joint as well.
It served its last slice earlier this year, by which time the house animatronic band — once a staple of all Chuck E. Cheese’ses — had presumably left the building. Company leadership axed the mechanical Pizza Time Players from all store locations last August, ending their 41-year nationwide run. “Back then,” Chuck E. Cheese’s top brass Tom Leverton told NPR’s Morning Edition, “kids’ expectations of technology were much, much lower.”
Photo: Phil L. Map: Regency Centers
Coming soon to the former CVS Pharmacy building at Westheimer and Eldridge Pkwy.: La Michoacana Meat Market. A group with ties to the grocery chain bought the 1.9-acre property earlier this year and filed a building permit last week to get started on the conversion. The photos above show what the 19-year-old building looked like during CVS’s tenancy. It’s been sign-less for the better part of this year.
Photos: Chinh (first) Colliers (second)
Frenchy’s Chicken is gearing up to open a new restaurant on Scott St. so that it’s original — there since 1969 — can get out of the way of Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church‘s planned expansion. (You can see the church’s slated roofing peeking out behind Frenchy’s in the photo above.) The restaurant’s new location: 2 blocks south of the current one, in the former O’Sat Auto Detail shop pictured at top on the northwest corner of Blodgett St. There, a spate of building permits filed within the last few months reveal Frenchy’s management is about to get started on renovations.
It’s a bit of a detour from the chain’s original relocation plan. Last May, Frenchy’s top brass Percy Creuzot III (the son of the chain’s founder Percy “Frenchy” Creuzot, Jr.) told the Chronicle‘s Cindy George he’d staked out a spot 5 blocks north of the current one where Alabama St. ends across from UH’s indoor football practice building. Sure enough, Creuzot’s business partner Anthony Gaynor consolidated several adjacent lots he owned at the southwest corner of Alabama and Scott 2 into a single property last year — and a few months afterward, demolished the building it that’d done stints on it as number of different barbecue joints:
The art venue formerly known as galleryHOMELAND has selected Bayou City Cycles‘ old shop at 1303 Cullen Blvd. for its new exhibition space, headquarters, and — as shown in the rendering above — curbside landscaping. The 6-year lease it’s taking across from Kroger should allow it to make a new name for itself as Space HL, a rebranding that Glasstire‘s Brandon Zech explains is supposed to call attention to the organization’s new focus on stuff besides art, like lectures, experimental performances, and other programs. About 1,000 sq.-ft. of the building will be for exhibitions, reports Zech, but don’t discount the backyard — which could host outdoor events, or you never know, he writes, maybe even “built-out shipping container projects spaces.”
That’d be a new one. The gallery’s last location across in the industrial row across Commerce St. from Tout Suite was a shared parking lot. It’d flirted with relocating from there to a quarter portion of the Imperial Linen & Cleaners building on Harrisburg Blvd. that’s slated to get redone as something retail- and restaurant-ready but changed its mind when the building took on Harvey damage, writes Zech.
What’ll become of the paint-job Bayou City gave its building when it took over from El Miramar Bar in 2016?
Black Dog Records blew the lid off its classified relocation plans yesterday by filing a permit on its soon-to-be new address: 726 W. 19th St., the strip center storefront previously home to kids’ karaoke venue Gipsy Girls. Incoming management now plans to redo about 1,700-sq.-ft. of space inside and fill it with the vinyl that populated its last shop — shown above — at 4900 Bissonnet St. until about a month ago. (The location between S. Rice and 610 had been a fertile spot for record junkies since even before Black Dog got there thanks to its longtime previous tenant Don’s Record Shop.)
A few of the neighbors Black Dog can expect to meet once it gets situated in its new Heights environs: alcoholic art joint Painting With a Twist (to its immediate west), Gold Rush Collective Tattoo Parlour, Replay Games old school video game shop, and Texas Dry Clean InStep Pilates. Across the street lies Re:Vive Development’s new-ish 2-building retail complex made up of a standalone Benjamin Moore paint store and a strip home to — among others — Fat Cat Creamery.
Photos: Gipsy Girls (Gipsy Girls); Mark B. (Black Dog Records)
  
A handful of building permits filed recently over at the Marq’e Entertainment Center indicate that kids training center Soccer Hub is kicking off renovations directly behind the spot reserved for the new Spaghetti-Warehouse-like eatery the brand’s parent company is calling Warehouse 72. Together, both new venues will be taking over the space Korean buffet Kpop gave up last year on the shopping center’s non-movie-theater side, across the arch-fronted alley from Dave and Buster’s‘s almost-but-not-entirely standalone building. (There’s now a mystery-themed escape room up in its business, as indicated on the map above.)
It’s not an entirely even split: Soccer Hub is getting about 6,000 sq.-ft. while Warehouse 72 will have 8,600 — enough room for seating, prepared food retail fixtures, and a double-sided bar serving both the restaurant’s insides and a planned 750-sq.-ft. patio, reports Eater‘s Alaena Hostetter. Until the 2 get situated — or get beat to the punch by the Hugh O’Connors Irish-themed restaurant opening in space number 25 on the map —specialty soda and candy shop Rocket Fizz will remain the only thing inside the Marq’e’s center building. It’s been there by itself since Cafe Adobe closed in what’s shown on the map as spot number 26, leaving 10,000 sq.-ft. up for grabs.
Here’s another highlight from the city council’s meeting this morning: Plans to get rid of the cloverleaf interchange that moves traffic between Waugh Dr. and Memorial Dr. got the green-light and will be sent over to the Houston Galveston Area Council as part of an application for funding. The idea first emerged in the Buffalo Bayou Partnership’s 2002 Master Plan as a way to make room for more bayou-side park space at the crossroads. Right now, all the land adjacent to the ramps — shaded gray in the map above — is vacant, except for the portions lassoed by the circular roadways, where 4 isolated tree groves continue to undergo seasonal color changes. You can see they’re gone in the east-facing rendering at top included in the Partnership’s plan — replaced by inlets, islands, stormwater detention, and what looks to be a boathouse at the southeast corner of the 2 roads — all accessible from a network of new walkways that link up to existing bayou-adjacent trails.
In total, 16 new acres are expected to become part of the park — providing a continuous swath of green between Spotts Park and Cleveland Park, shown below on opposite sides of Waugh in a map from the 2002 plan:
PAVING THE WAY FOR A BIKE LANE ON W. FUQUA 
This morning, City Council plans to vote in support of some roadwork that’d add on-street bike lanes to W. Fuqua St. between Chimney Rock and Houston’s border with Missouri City, just west of Fondren Rd. Over that 1.7-mile stretch — which crosses over the Fort Bend Pkwy. — a couple upgrades for cars would be put in as well, including turning lanes at Fondren and traffic lights at W. Ridgecreek Dr. in place of what’s now a 3-way stop. It’s all lumped into that application the city plans to submit to the Houston Galveston Area Council in order to get funding for a bunch of other transportation projects around town, too, like that widening and heightening effort on Dairy Ashford. [Houston City Council; previously on Swamplot]
The indie coffee shop and practitioner of advanced siphon-brewing techniques suspended its service last Wednesday so that big-name instant and pre-ground coffee producer Cafe Bustelo could take over barista duties inside for the week. The photo above shows the storefront going off-brand with temporary fixtures that dub it a “Cafecito” using Bustelo’s classic color scheme. Closer to ground level, you can see the new matching window dressings, too — added on too along the store’s glass facade.
Even Siphon’s standalone sign at the corner of W. Alabama and Greeley St. has been transformed:
CITY WISHLIST FOR DAIRY ASHFORD: WIDER ROADWAY, HIGHER BAYOU BRIDGE 
On city council’s agenda for tomorrow: a vote of support for widening Dairy Ashford Rd. from 2 to 3 lanes on each side between Westheimer and I-10. As part of the roadwork, the existing bridge across Buffalo Bayou would be rebuilt — potentially above 500-year floodplain level, though the city hasn’t decided yet. New, wider sidewalks are on the table, too. With the council’s blessing, Houston’s public works department would next submit an application for the project to the Houston Galveston Area Council, which could choose to help pay for it with state and federal money. [Houston City Council Agenda] Map: Houston City Council
