Fresh paint in shades of purple is but one of the updates to this 1929 East End bungalow with matching back-lot studio unit. Listed Friday at $115,000, the plummy property is on an otherwise toned-down, mixed-use street located a block north of Metro’s East End rail line on Harrisburg, near Milby St.
Houston Pavilions is to be renamed in honor of 2 urban features the troubled 5-year-old Downtown outdoor mall had so far shunned, its new owners announced yesterday: greenery and streets. The newly dubbed GreenStreet appears to be taking a few cues also from Discovery Green, the younger but far more successful urban attraction a few blocks to the east. Midway, which with Magic Johnson’s Canyon-Johnson Urban Funds bought the 3-block-long mixed-use center out of bankruptcy last August (and the adjacent parking garage on Clay St. between Main and Fannin a few months later), plans 6 to 9 months’ worth of renovations to the property as well, to turn it into a CityCentre-style event hub.
The new design, by Houston architects Muñoz + Albin and the Office of James Burnett, a local landscape firm, will try to soften and connect the 3 separated interior courtyards and make them come across as more park-like. Additional changes won’t exactly make the famously inward-looking mall turn itself inside-out, but they do appear to make a few stabs at poking through to Dallas St., adding signage, storefront windows in some places, and a few outdoor seating areas along its northern edge.
This white box, covering up the emergency exit of a vacated belly-dancing studio, will be the new entrance of Houston’s first indoor rowing facility, says founder Greg Scheinman. In West University Place, ROW Studios is building out the former Sirrom Dance behind the Randall’s in Weslayan Plaza and resurfacing the parking lot facing Academy St.
HERE, NOW, A FEW MORE IDEAS FOR THE ASTRODOME 
Making the rounds this week are a couple more long shots for the Astrodome from people who don’t seem very keen on the 2,500 parking spaces the Texans and Rodeo proposed last week. First, you’ve got Ed Seale and his wife of “Keep the Astrodome,” who say they want to see the ol’ thing renovated into an global bazaar, reports KUHF’s Jack Williams, “a space filled with international, ethnic, cultural and business organizations . . . and ethnic restaurants.” And then there’s the UH graduate student Ryan Slattery, whose friend leaked online parts of his architecture master’s thesis that calls for the big baby to be stripped to a skeleton and used as greenspace: “If you don’t need it,” Slattery tells KHOU’s Jeremy Desel, “it does not need to be there. It is never going to be a stadium again. So you don’t need the seats. You need to take those seats out. Concrete on the facade? You don’t need that.” Adds Slattery: “If and when the Astrodome does come down you will see a grown man cry.” [KUHF; KHOU; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Swamplot inbox
DOWNTOWN LANDMARK LANCASTER HOTEL TO BE UPGRADED WITH ‘PRESTIGIOUS PLUMBING ACCOUTERMENTS’ 
The Joseph Finger designed Lancaster Hotel at 701 Texas that dates to 1926 will receive about $10 million in “aesthetic and technological upgrades” designed by Gensler, reports Nancy Sarnoff. She cites a hotel press release that claims the Lancaster will introduce Wi-Fi and “intuitive” keycards that you don’t have to insert into the door, as well as new interiors featuring “premier bedding and bathroom fixtures and fittings by WaterWorks, making The Lancaster the first and only Houston hotel to offer this prestigious brand of plumbing accouterments.” To kick up the Lancaster’s ambience a notch, the new decor will feature “men’s suiting fabrics.” The hotel will remain open during the renovations, which are expected to be completed by this summer. [Prime Property] Photo: The Lancaster
A no-fuss shed dormer and its smaller companion perched on the back roof help make this updated home one of the largest on its block in Hilltop Acres. That’s the name given to a hill-free neighborhood west of the West Belt just south of W. Little York; though the listing for the home names it Silver Meadows. Available since Friday, the home has an initial asking price of $119,900; its listing cites all sorts of updates, from paint and floors to kitchen fittings — and a little landscaping streetside. Perhaps of equal interest, however, are the not-updated features touted: EZ access to the tollway and an absence of deed restrictions.
APARTMENTS IN OLD HUMBLE OIL BUILDING DOWNTOWN TO GO THE WAY OF ITS HOTEL NEIGHBORS 
Back in 2003, 2 of the 3Â Humble Oil buildings at 1212 Main and Dallas St. were turned into hotels. The oil-to-hospitality transformation will soon be complete, reports the Houston Business Journal’s Shaina Zucker: A Maryland company has acquired the 3 buildings for about $80 million and says it will convert the last of them into another hotel. Presently, that tower at 914 Dallas St. holds 82 apartments. By 2015, reports Zucker, it will become a 166-room SpringHill Suites, joining the 191-room Courtyard and the 171-room Residence Inn — each of which is now dubbed a “Houston Downtown Convention Center” hotel. [Houston Business Journal]Â Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Redo work on a 1920 cottage with a watching-the-world-pass porch spun off a mini-me houselet in back (above) and an airy, matching carport. The property, located a few blocks west of I-45 — between the Near Northside and the Heights — listed last Friday with an asking price of $399,000. The property had last changed hands in November 2012, for $119,500. But that was in its pink period (at right); it had first listed last March, for $150,000.
Two years ago, a previous version of this 3-bedroom, 2-bath house dating back to 1940 was sold for $45,675. Near Lawndale and S. 75th St. in Mason Park, it’s within walking distance of a hike and bike on Brays Bayou — as well as a Family Dollar, a food truck that sells pupusas, and several payday and title loan stores. This new version of 1212 Smallwood went on the market earlier this year at $171,500.
This Briarmeadow contemporary with broken-pediment facade bleached its previously ruddy exterior as part of an all-over renovation sometime after last December. That’s when it was bought by its current seller — for $247,000. It’s back on the market now, lighter in color but heftier in price, listed for $449,900. The home’s dog-leg driveway across the front lawn still feeds into a side-entry garage, now showing a newly uncovered cinema-screen expanse of wall to the street. Replacement landscaping at the base of that blankness will screen more of it, eventually. Despite the speedy roof-to-garden change-outs outside and flooring-to-cabinetry swap-outs inside, the listing explicitly declares that the transformed 1977 property is “NOT A FLIP.”
Pumped up by new construction and extensive renovations, this expanded 1920 Eastwood home debuted on the market late last year. The red-crested property lingers still — as does the asking price of $449,990, which is quite a bit more than the $80,000 it went for in June 2012.
Last week, owners Cheryl and David Bowman of 7919 Glenview Dr. were given a Good Brick Award from Preservation Houston for their renovation of this 1954 mod — one of the original 6, says Cheryl Bowman, built in Glenbrook Valley. Purchased in March 2011, the 2-bedroom, 1,834-sq.-ft. home, shown here from the backyard, wasn’t always such a pretty picture . . .
The redo of this Chenevert St. warehouse is complete, Mayor Parker announced yesterday, and the Houston Center for Sobriety is ready to give drunk people a place to dry out. Next to the Eastex Fwy., the 84-bed center at 150 N. Chenevert will operate out of a 19,000-sq.-ft. building behind the Star of Hope homeless shelter, across from Irma’s Mexican restaurant on Ruiz and just a few blocks north of Minute Maid Park.
THE SPORTS BAR THAT’S REPLACING THE SAXOPHONE ON RICHMOND 
Will we soon see a 70-foot red pitchfork here? Now that the Orange Show has moved that big blue horn out of the way, the former Billy Blues club at 6025 Richmond near Fountain View is getting a new sign and a renovation, a Swamplot reader notes, for the sports bar Diablo Loco Wings y Mas. Last week, Bob Wade’s 70-foot “Smokesax,” made out of Beetle parts, was trucked across town to the Orange Show’s Munger St. warehouse. [Previously on Swamplot] Photo: Swamplot inbox
Former star of The Bachelor and Austin bar mogul Brad Womack is ready to open Dogwood Houston: The renovations — including a second-story patio to give the drinkers a view of the skyline — to the former Post Edge Mailing Services building at 2403 Bagby are nearing completion, according to the bar’s Facebook page; Dogwood will be the first foray into Houston by the man who once dumped Emily Maynard over the phone; he’s part of Austin’s Carmack Concepts, which runs Sixth St. bars Chuggin’ Monkey, Dizzy Rooster, Molotov, and, of course, Dogwood.
