04/12/18 1:00pm

Coming soon to the strip of vacant 1920s storefronts along Main — catty-corner to the Greyhound bus station at Webster St. and directly north of the Shell station at Hadley: a new bar dubbed Pour Behavior. The 12,600-sq.-ft. building — once home to the Houston Spinal Pain Center, Ambassador Shoe Repair, Liviko’s Printing, Gold & Silver Buyers & Sellers, and the Salvation Army — sits on just over 3 quarters of an acre. A parking lot neighbors it on the corner of Travis and Webster where Downtown Body Shop was demolished a couple of years ago.

The aerial above pictures the whole property with some two-tone manipulation courtesy of the Oxberry Group, which had — but dropped — plans to redevelop it and bring in new restaurants and retailers a few years after the auto shop vanished. A new developer bought the building last year. The rendering above — released on Facebook by the bar’s proprietors last week — views the building from the corner of Travis and Webster streets and shows a patio fronting the current parking lot. Further down Webster to the east, a few windows reopen what was once the entrance to Webster St. Pharmacy, adjacent to the parking lot.

Here’s what the Salvation Army’s front face next to the gas station looked like before it closed:

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Pour Behavior
04/06/18 4:30pm

Aside from some interior remodeling and roof repairs, the 5,362-sq.-ft. Hilliard House on Del Monte Dr. has been mostly untouched since J. Leon Osborn built it in 1936. According to the city planning department’s historical commission: “no updates to any electrical, structural or other systems have been performed.” In February, that commission approved the owners’ application to tack an extra 3,000-sq.-ft. onto the backside of the structure. The portion they’re now set to build — adjacent to a new pool — will include a network of new living rooms on the first floor and a new master bedroom suite with an adjacent office and exercise room upstairs. An added 2-car garage should also bring the property’s parking situation up to modern speed; right now, the only garaging option is a carriage house.

The site plan above shows how the building will sit on its almost-21-acre just-over-half-acre lot after the add-on — designed by Rogelio Carrasco — is complete. Nearly everything running back adjacent to the pool is new.

Right now, the house’s backyard stretches straight back behind the rounded side tower:

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Hilliard House
03/27/18 12:00pm

The massive illuminated crosses that once adorned the St. Joseph Professional Building next to the Pierce Elevated have been stripped from the structure’s east and west sides by its new-ish owner, but haven’t yet been removed from the block. West of the tower and adjacent to the highway, the fenced enclosure pictured above now holds the de-crucified metal parts along with the Scrabble-like remnants of the lettering that once spelled out the building’s name below the crosses.

The scrap yard borders the surface parking lot that fronts the 135,586-sq.-ft. building’s garage podium on La Branch St.:

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Cross-Word Jumble
03/23/18 12:45pm

Workers are now applying paint to the 5-level garage stump of the former Americana building at 811 Dallas St. Over the last year, the 10-story office tower that sat atop the southern half of the garage was removed.

9-in. aluminum louvers were added to the portion of the parking podium pictured above on the corner of Dallas and Travis streets during a renovation in 2000. That exterior layer was stripped off as part of the recent work on the building, however, exposing the original clay block surface underneath.

30,000-or-so-sq.-ft. of ground-floor retail are also receiving touch-ups as part of the current work on the property.

Photos: Drew (parking garage); Boxer Property (Americana)

Clay Tile Refresh
03/22/18 9:45am

The building on the corner of Montrose Blvd. and Bomar St. is showing signs of rebranding as Les Ba’get’s owners prepare to open a new, more pho-friendly joint in its place — dubbed Les Noo’dle. February 2 was closing day for the original Vietnamese restaurant; it’s now getting situated in a new Oak Forest shopping center on Ella Blvd. where it will double its space.

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Apostrophe Intact
03/21/18 12:00pm

In the wake of Snooze, 2 more businesses with names suggesting AM activities are on their way to the new Lowell Street Market on 18th St. between Shepherd and Durham. Radom Capital began transforming the 3-building former warehouse complex in something retail- and restaurant-ready back in 2016. Since then, Snooze  has been the only restaurant to open in the development.

Building permits filed for the empty spots neighboring Snooze and Smoosh now show reveal the name of a third eatery that could be on its way to 718 W. 18th St.: Teapresso Bar. The Hawaiian tea shop chain has most of its current locations on Oahu, with a few on Maui as well. Lowell Street Market would be its first step onto the mainland.

The site plan below indicates all 3 buildings in the complex:

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The Early Risers
03/20/18 12:30pm

Crews are now digging a hole through the middle of the Sojourn Heights church campus off Gostick St., south of Aurora in Sunset Heights. The rendering above looks west across Gostick to show the fenced-off lawn that will eventually grow in place of the demolished building. The new green space is bookended by renovated street-fronting structures and backed by a smaller addition that’s planned on the far west side of the just-over-an-acre church property.

Before the takedown got started yesterday, the complex consisted of 3 buildings that lined Gostick:

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Prayer Semi-Circle
03/13/18 4:30pm

COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHAT’S STILL MISSING FROM THE TOP OF THE CENTRAL SQUARE PLAZA REDO “After all the beautiful exterior enhancements, does Claremont plan to update and restore functionality of the enormous electronic retro clock on top of the building? The building now looks so nice. I can’t believe the clock sitting on top has not been restored, paint peeling off and not turned on, especially when it completes the whole retro-mod feel of the entire project.” [Unsure About This, commenting on Midtown’s Redone Central Square Plaza Looking To Lure Tenants to Its Empty Ground Floor] Photo of former Central Square Plaza clock: meltedplastic [license]

03/12/18 4:00pm

A building permit filed recently on the Central Square Plaza complex that takes up the block of Travis St. between Gray and Webster reveals Kraftsmen Coffee as the latest restaurant slated for the renovated tower’s empty ground floor. Work to install plumbing for the 1,768-sq.-ft. space that the owners of coffee shop plan to take over began last year.

The photo at top views the west portion of the building’s ground floor, which sits about halfway down the block on Gray St. and faces Milam. A parking garage is off-camera to the right. Around the corner — on the building’s north side — a TABC flyer for Malawi’s Pizza still hangs in the window of the empty storefront on Gray where it was originally posted back in 2016:

 

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Kraftsmen Coffee
03/09/18 12:45pm

Crews are now clearing out the northern portion of the strip center at the corner of Airline Dr. and Parker Rd. that Kroger departed last year. The photo at top, sent in by a Swamplot reader, shows the no-longer-automatic doors fronting the former grocery store space next door to Tostada Regia, Yumar Beauty Salon, Texans Discount Liquor, and others.

A building permit filed just over a week ago on location at 6749 Airline lists its occupant as El Ahorro. The grocery chain specializing in Mexican foodstuffs already has one nearby spot in Northline — on Irvington Blvd. just north of Berry Rd.

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Dietary Cleanse
03/09/18 11:00am

No longer the Eternal Food Ministry food pantry, the awninged brick building at 6801 Hwy. Blvd. is about to become Katy’s first board-game-themed brewery. The location is a short drive west from Katy High School and was abandoned when the food bank relocated to Pin Oak Rd. within the past few years. Now, the owners of the new competitive drinking venue, dubbed Wood for Sheep Brewing, are getting ready to resurface their parking lot and pipe in new plumbing for the 6,000-sq.-ft. building. Only a fifth of the space in the brewery will be devoted to its main feature: a pub and cafe area with a library of board games. The rest of it will be used for brewing, storage, offices, and other logistical functions.

Photos: Wood for Sheep Brewing

Wood for Sheep Brewing
03/08/18 2:15pm

Construction fencing is now up in Uptown Park, marking the last call for cornices, pilasters, pediments, faked balcony windows, and assorted handcrafted Styrofoam façade detailing slated for removal as part of renovations planned for the vintage 1998 shopping center parked along the West Loop feeder road.

The new project — announced last October by owner Edens Investment Trust — will pare down the complex’s Olde World gewgaws, leaving behind simpler and more modern exteriors. Live oak trees are to be planted near some of the parking lots’ sunnier spots. (Former owner AmREIT’s plans for adding hotel and residential buildings to the complex were scrapped when Edens bought the entity in 2015.)

The 2-story space shown in the photo at top (next to Cafe Express) was abandoned by women’s wear store BB1 Classic at the end of last year. Soon, it will be remade into a restaurant dubbed Flower Child. The vacant, porticoed east side of the building in the northwest corner of the center — pictured above — is also now fenced. (Class, however, is still in session at the MISS Academy finishing school on the west side of the structure.)

This parking-space corral is now up at the building’s northeast corner:

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Just a Trim Trim
03/02/18 2:00pm

Repairs on PJ’s Sports Bar’s patio have the outdoor space back up and running after a sports car hopped the curb near the corner of W. Gray St. and Stanford and nearly totaled the seating area in January. One driver was hospitalized, but there were no major injuries at the scene pictured above; it was past last call when the accident occurred. The bar’s patio, however, remained in pieces for nearly 2 months after emergency workers removed the projectile.

Now, only one pre-crash item remains absent from the bar’s frontage at 614 W. Gray: the fluorescent crosswalk sign shown on the ground in the photo below:

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High-Speed Corners
03/01/18 11:15am

SIGNS ARE ON THE DOOR TO WEWORK’S NEW DOWNTOWN BRANCH AT 708 MAIN The building on the corner of Main and Capitol — known since 2003 as the Great Jones building — is showing signs of the new WeWork office that’s heading into it. Last April, the workspace provider signed a lease for 86,000 sq. ft. in the building — originally billed as its first Houston location, although a smaller WeWork branch snuck in and opened on 3 floors of the Galleria I tower last December. 708 Main St. has been undergoing renovations since 2016 when its developers Midway and Lionstone Investments announced they planned to link the structure to its neighbor — the JP Morgan Chase building on the corner of Main and Rusk — via a first floor and mezzanine common area dubbed the Currency Lounge. The entire block between Capitol and Rusk is now being marketed as a single property termed The Jones on Main. [Previously on Swamplot] Photo of WeWork entrance: Swamplot inbox

02/28/18 1:30pm

Facial adjustments to the building at 3701 N. Main have left it rustier than it was when El Taquito Rico shuttered in the same space last May. The former Woodland Heights Mexican restaurant’s yellow sign has been removed, as has the standing seam mansard roof-style awning that wrapped its frontage on N. Main. In their place, a headband of corrugated metal now hugs the top of the structure — which sits on a narrow 8,375-sq.-ft. lot at the end of Pecore St., just west of I-45 (and across the street from the O’Reilly Auto Parts building that Asia Market is moving into).

Floor-to-ceiling windows that lined the restaurant’s entryway have also been truncated:

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Heights Wrap-Up