08/31/16 10:45am

Krispy Kreme shell, 4601 Spencer Hwy., Pasadena, TX 77504

A field of rippling grass between the Denny’s and the Comerica Bank branch on Spencer Hwy. currently holds the half-finished form of one of the Krispy Kreme donut shops planned as part of the chain’s post-lawsuit re-emergence into the Houston market. The chain still has the location on its list of upcoming grand opening donut-campouts (labeled as down-the-street 4601 Spencer Hwy., though both Eater Houston and a look at neighboring addresses put the property number at or around 4061), but arch-ive-ist and daily demo reporter Lauren Meyers notes the overgrown site is pretty light on signs of active work.

Some of Fisher Elementary’s T-buildings can be seen loitering to the rightt, with the stadium lights of the McGuire baseball field and track facility rising distantly in the background on the right; on the west side of the building is a would-be drive-thru window:

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Cold Now on Spencer Hwy.
08/29/16 12:15pm

2-story H-E-B proposed at 5106 Bissonnet St., Bellaire, TX 77401

H-E-B Bellaire Market, 5130 Cedar St., Bellaire, TexasDrawings submitted this month to the city of Bellaire for approval outline how H-E-B plans to fit 6-acres of parking and replacement store onto its 3-acre lot at the intersection of Bissonnet and Cedar streets. The renderings and accompanying documentation show a roughly 75,000-sq.-ft. single-story store footprint sitting on the upper level of the planned structure, with an acre-plus of parking out front atop the all-parking lower level. The drawing at the top shows the would-be view of the design from Bissonnet (near the late-50’s supermarket building currently occupied by Randall’s); below are the proposed layouts of the upper and lower story once the existing H-E-B (also pictured above) and its retail strip friends are cleared of the way:

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Building Up on Bissonnet
08/17/16 10:45am

Heights Mercantile treesHeights Mercantile treesThe shot above, facing south along the eastern edge of the 7th-St.-straddling site of the Heights Mercantile development, shows a few of the new meant-to-catch-eyes green sashes now adorning a series of trees along the Heights Blvd. sidewalk. But just what kind of message are those low-slung stripes sending to workers at the site, a reader wonders? Does green mean made the cut, or cut ’em down?

Renderings of plans for the project include a double-wide strip of trees framing a walking path parallel to 7th St. (labeled an outdoor art gallery), with additional greenery arranged in front of the Heights Blvd. bungalows being recruited into the retail center:

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Marked at 7th St.
08/11/16 1:45pm

The Cheese Course, 1001 McKinney St., Downtown Tunnel System, Houston, 77002 The Cheese Course, 1001 McKinney St., Downtown Tunnel System, Houston, 77002Swamplot’s anonymous tunnel correspondent sends another dispatch from beneath the former City National Bank building at 1001 McKinney: chain cheesemonger The Cheese Course Bistro & Cheese Market is now open in the nook formerly employed as one of Subway’s more literal Houston locations. Following a spot in Boulder, CO, and another in The Woodlands, the Houston shop makes for chain’s 3rd foray beyond its native Florida.

The basement space doesn’t look to be offering wine pairings like many of the chain’s stores do, perhaps in connection to the shop’s pre-5-o’clock hours of operations; the store will open for breakfast at 7 am and close at 4. Here’s a look around the shop’s interior seating arrangements, allowing cheese-nibblers to see and be seen by the tunnel lobby set:
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Underground Cheese Storage
08/10/16 10:15am

Former Chirps Chicken and Rice, 300 W. 20th St., Houston Heights, Houston, 77008

Former Chirps Chicken and Rice, 300 W. 20th St., Houston Heights, Houston, 77008A reader caught sight of some recent stirrings at the southwest corner of W. 20th St. and Rutland, where food truck The Rice Box looks to be setting up a second non-mobile operation in the former home of Chirps Chicken and Rice. Braun Enterprises snapped up the 1,584-sq.-ft. building in mid-2015, when Chirps flew the coop; a TABC permit for the dry zone address was issued to Black Dragon Private Club — an entity listing The Rice Box as a trade name — in early May. Braun also owns the retail strip across Rutland, which replaced those Baptist Temple buildings that were demolished in 2013; the photo above was taken from the Zoe’s Kitchen at the corner.

Photos: Jason B. Cockerell (top), Chirps Chicken and Rice (bottom)

Rutland Remake
08/01/16 4:30pm

Revised Plans for Heights Central Station, Heights Blvd. at 11th St., Houston Heights

Fresh from the architects (Kirksey), here are revised plans (above) for Heights Central Station, the retail-and-office center MFT Interests is planning for the site at the corner of Heights Blvd. and 11th St. (and Yale) in the Heights where the former main post office for the Heights still sits, awaiting its fate. And whaddya know, the strip-mall-style parking that in the previous plan for the new development was shown fronting Yale and 11th St. has now been stripped away, allowing twin 10,000-ish-sq.-ft. 2-story buildings to front 11th St., right on up to the sidewalk:

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Heights Station
06/28/16 11:45am

Rendering of Heights Mercantile Building 3, 3A

Experimental ice cream shop Cloud 10 Creamery looks to be collecting building permits for a space at 711 Heights Blvd., one of the 1920s bungalows prepping for a second career in retail (as shown above) as part of the Heights Mercantile development. The project, which straddles 7th St. and its bike trail companion between Yale St. and Heights Blvd., hit a potential snag last year when the city didn’t approve a variance request that would have lowered the number of required new parking spaces. But the updated site plan below shows the workaround — the Golden Eagle Binder & Tab Co.’s former spots at 717 and 724 Heights, which were purchased by the developers last May, are depicted as additional parking lots:

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7th at Yale
06/27/16 1:15pm

Good Dog, 1318 W. Alabama St., Montrose, Houston, 77006

Good Dog, 1318 W. Alabama St., Montrose, Houston, 77006The second non-mobile location of Good Dog  is now hiring, per the signage spotted by a reader at 1312 W. Alabama St. The food truck that started the chain camped out in the building’s driveway on Father’s Day, but no official opening date for the new space itself has been announced yet.

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Montrose Rollover
06/23/16 4:45pm

Tout Suite, Memorial City Mall, 303 Memorial City Way, Houston, TX 77024

Tout Suite’s second outpost is now open in the pedestrian crossroads at the west end of Memorial City Mall. The kiosk version of the East Downtown cafe is currently serving drinks and pastries along with at least a few larger entrees. The opening follows the removal of the construction barricades formerly surrounding the space, finishing work previously started by mall vandals or impatient caffeine addicts:

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Mall Mini
06/16/16 11:00am

shops-at-sawyer-yards-rendering
Leasing Materials for Lovett's Sawyer Yards

Lovett Commercial’s latest
markup of the warehouse-turning-strip-mall at the corner of Edwards and Sawyer streets includes the B&B Butchers logo, which has wandered about a third of a mile from the carve-it-themselves steakhouse’s year-old spot 6 blocks away on Washington Ave. All of the other logos included on the Shops at Sawyer Yards flier seem to check out: Hair salon Satori and tooth salon Bayou City Smiles are already up and running in the space, while nail salon Polish Parker & Roe, stop-calling-us-Crossfit gym chain Orange Theory Fitness, and Vietnamese noodle shop Local Pho all appear to have at least a few of their permits in place.

Both the updated rendering of the site (up top, facing southeast) and the labeled plan show a restaurant space at the end of the development with a patio facing Sawyer; the flier also labels the slot as a brasserie (as opposed to a steakhouse). The shaded aerial view below shows the development (labeled as just Sawyer YARDS) in place amid a few of the nearby artsy redevelopment projects (marked in green), new townhomes (marked in purple), and the Lovett office:

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First Ward
06/14/16 11:00am

Jimmy Chew Asian Kitchen, 1609 Westheimer Rd., Lower Westheimer, Houston, 77006

Windows and wood are now covering much of the front of Vinoteca Poscól’s previous strip center location at 1609 Westheimer Rd. The spot is being prepped to open as Jimmy Chew Asian Kitchen, which touts a laundry list of east- and southeast-Asian countries as contributors to its particular fusion mix. About Online reports that the business is connected to Irwin Palchick of F Bar Nightclub, and will cater to the post-last-call crowd as well as to lemonade enthusiasts. 

The wooden addition, which appears to be establishing the restaurant’s patio territory, engulfs the space previously fenced off as such by Poscól, along with some former sidewalk acreage.  Here’s what the space used to look like, before the wine bar’s midsummer departure:

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Montrose Makeover
06/13/16 12:45pm

Proposed rendering of 1815 Washington Ave., Memorial Heights, Houston, 77007

The spot Braun Enterprises has been sprucing up at 1815 Washington Ave appears to have been leased out last week to the folks behind the Texas expansion of Tennessee’s Gus’s World Famous Fried Chicken. Documents filed with the county show that an entity called Texas All Fry (registered to the address of the Gus’s location in Austin) signed for the space on Wednesday. Pandora and Throne Ultra Lounge are among the latest in the succession of night clubs and bars to have recently occupied the late-1940s structure, which sits across the street from B&B Butchers.

The above rendering (from the same leasing flier that accidentally leaked word of H-E-B’s negotiations for the Archstone Apartments spot at the corner of Washington and Heights Blvd.) shows the front facade with a new patio and a few more windows. A careful look at the building’s past listing photos show that some of the apparent reshaping may actually involve the un-bricking of some former doorways: 

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Coming to Roost
05/26/16 1:30pm

River Oaks collection redevelopment, 1705 W. Gray St., North Montrose, 77019

River Oaks collection redevelopment, 1705 W. Gray St., North Montrose, 77019

The Panera marker previously spotted all by its lonesome in the leasing flier for Braun Enterprises’ redevelopment of 1705 W. Gray has picked up a companion in the form of the Kriser’s Natural Pet logo. The marker for the grain-averse pet supply and grooming store now appears on the freestanding former home of International Hair Salon & Nail Spa (shown above), previously marked up in Braun’s renderings as a possible coffee shop. 

The reader who snagged the shot above also spent some time sniffing around the back and sides of the complex (to be known as the River Oaks Collection). The wall in the shot below is starting to get its coat of grey paint cleaned off to match the mottled brick exterior shown in the redo renderings:

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River Oaks Collecting
05/23/16 10:00am

2410 Woodhead St., Hyde Park, Houston, 77019

The retail strip at 1927 Fairview St. is now being gutted and cleaned out into a large dumpster parked in front of the former Te House of Tea and Trudy’s resale boutique. Permits to clear out some interior walls and redo the space were issued at the start of this month to an entity named Riel Restaurant; also listed on those permits are the company phone number and CEO of South Union-based seafood importer Marine Foods Express. 

Out back behind the retail strip, the nextdoor 1935 bungalow at 2410 Woodhead St. appears to be joining Te’s former backyard garden in becoming a parking lot — purportedly a green one:

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Something Fishy on Fairview
05/06/16 10:30am

Future site of Gipsy Girls, 726 W. 19th St., Houston Heights, Houston, 77008

Signs of the impending turnover at 726 W 19th St. west of N. Shepherd Dr.: a banner bearing the curly pink logo of Gipsy Girls teen-and-tween gift shop. The spot formerly hosted Pink Studio cosmetics, which has headed north to a space in the Northwest Gessner Center along the 290 feeder; following the departure of a business geared toward holding on to the things of youth, the W. 19th St. space is being remodeled to host children’s karaoke and birthday celebrations.  

The children’s party venue will move in between Mark’s Hair Studio and adult party venue Painting with a Twist, down the row from Insomnia Video Game Culture and Vinyl Toys, TxDryClean, and Replay Games. Across the street is the mid-Phase-2 Re:Vive development; here’s the rising frame of the apparent Benjamin Moore paint store, which should help strengthen the center’s nascent dessert-and-real-estate theme:

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Pink in, Pink Out