NINTH HOUSTON-AREA SPROUTS DEBUTS IN SUGAR LAND THIS MONTH 
Workers are putting the finishing touches on the Sprouts Farmers Market inside Sugar Land’s new University Commons Shopping Center off 59, a 150,000-sq.-ft. complex that includes everything depicted in the rendering above, plus a whole extra crop of retailers and restaurants that are already open on the other side of University Blvd. The grocery store’s opening date: January 16, at which time it’ll become the ninth Sprouts store operating in the Houston area (and the only second one in Fort Bend County). About 150 new hires will be on duty inside following a successful job fair Sprouts hosted on December 6 at the Hilton Garden Inn Houston-Sugar Land just up the street in the University Plaza shopping center. [Houston Chronicle] Site plan of University Commons Shopping Center Phase II: Capital Retail Properties
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Retail
In just under a month, longtime Richmond Ave record shop and turntable repair destination Sound Exchange will move from the brick house pictured above to a Second Ward spot near the corner of N. Milby and Commerce. The 39-year-old business didn’t originally open in Montrose, but it got there right away: After a one-year stint in Rice Village, it moved to the strip at 1617 Westheimer, where it spent 19 years before relocating to its present digs at 1846 Richmond.
Already in the works for the block where Sound Exchange sits: rejiggering the property lines to create a new 29,466-sq.-ft. parcel out of the lot shown above, plus 2 additional lots behind it on Colquitt St. that house apartments. Houston’s city planning commission is set to review the proposed replat at the beginning of next year.
Photo: Vinylhub
Winlow Place
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHAT ELSE LEFT MIDTOWN WHEN RICHMOND AVE MET WHEELER ST. 
“In addition to the Delman Theater, an adjacent retailer named the Delman Juvenile Shop was also destroyed. The popular 1950s children’s clothing store featured a behemoth machine, the “Shoe-Fitting Fluoroscope,†that zapped the kids’ feet with unshielded x-rays, ostensibly to make sure the new shoes were a correct fit. In reality, it was used as a babysitter while Mom shopped. I couldn’t wait to grow tall enough to actually peer down the metal tube to view my wiggling skeletal toe bones.” [Patsy Schillaci, commenting on Comment of the Day: The Delman Theater Lives On, on Google Maps] Photo of Delman Theater and adjacent retail: Predator [license]
The new owner of 812 Main St. (shown above) is the same entity that owns the JW Marriott next-door at 806 Main St. Well, sort of. Technically, the properties belong to 2 separate entities, but they both tie back to the same real estate overlord: Pearl Hospitality, a Houston-based hotel operator with a few extra properties in Lubbock. Pearl closed on the 812 Main St. building last month for $3.6 million.
Designed by Houston architects Joseph Finger and George Rustay the recently-transacted tower was completed in 1950 for the Battelsteins’s department store — which occupied each of its 10 floors. It’s now been vacant for roughly 30 years. Battlestein’s signage has been replaced by the smudges visible above the mural-ized storefront face in the photo at top. But 2 naked flagpoles remain on either side of where the lettering once was.
After visiting the property in December, 2015, PDG Architects estimated it’d cost nearly $17 million to renovate it into something suitable for office tenants to inhabit. Just bringing it up to code could cost $8 million, according to public records.
The JW Marriott next-door at Rusk St. — formally known as the Samuel F. Carter building — underwent its Pearl-Hospitality redo starting in 2010 with a bit of financial help from the city and HUD, as well as architectural know-how from Gensler:
Department Store Skyscraper
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE DELMAN THEATER LIVES ON, ON GOOGLE MAPS 
“If you look at Google Maps satellite view, you can still see the patterned terrazzo floor of the theater.” [Benjy Compson, commenting on How the Marriage of Richmond and Wheeler Came Too Late to the Midtown Sears Building’s South Side]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE MONTROSE DUAL DEALERSHIP WELCOME THAT WASN’T 
“Too bad . . . I had imagined an identical building being constructed, and as bookends would have made a fantastic ‘gateway‘ into the Montrose/Museum area.” [city cynic, commenting on Stahlman Lumber Up for Sale by Landowner That Didn’t Replace It with a Car Dealership] Photo of Audi Central Houston: Audi Central Houston
Evidently, those plans to put another car dealership across 59 from the existing 7-story Audi Central Houston won’t be panning out since the land where it would’ve gone is now up for sale. A newly-erected sign at the corner of the Greenbriar and the Southwest Fwy. feeder road advertises its availability.
A group connected to Sonic Automotive bought the property — which stretches all the way east to Shepherd Dr. — in January 2017. When news orgs got wind that it’d changed hands, Sonic’s executive vice prez Jeff Dyke told them he’d have more info on what the dealership would end up looking like near the end of the year. The parcel’s 2.4-acre size prompted at least one guess that’d the plans — like those Sonic implemented across the street — would involve something tall.
Amidst all the hubbub, it’s been business as usual at Stahlman. It’s entering its 59th year at 4007 Greenbriar Dr.
- Previously on Swamplot: Southwest Fwy. Midrise Showroom To Get a Dealership Neighbor on the Stahlman Lumber Land
Photo: Lulu
59 at Greenbriar
NOW EVERY KATY BUC-EE’S BATHROOM STALL WILL HAVE A LIGHT ON IT TELLING YOU WHERE TO GO 
Tooshlights is the brand name of the latest amenity that the Guiness-World-Record-winning Buc-ee’s off the Katy Fwy. wants to add to its 40 bathroom stalls, reports Dan Solomon over at Texas Monthly. It’s a spin on the technology you’ve probably seen on twinkling in certain parking garages: individual LEDs that light up red when a spot is occupied and green when it’s vacant. Along with Buc-ee’s’s Temple location, the Katy store will be the first of the chains 34 branches to roll it out. [Texas Monthly; previously on Swamplot] Photo of restroom at Buc-ee’s #40, 27700 Katy Fwy., Katy, Texas: Jennifer N.
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:
And Aerial Fish
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:
East Montrose
Nearly the entire block-face of Richmond Ave between Roseland and Stanford streets is now up for sale; altogether: just over 19,400 sq.-ft. for $4.2 million. The offerings include the 2-story former Drew’s BBQ house pictured above, the residential lot behind it, the eastern half of the Chapultepec Lupita restaurant next-door to it (the portion of the restaurant with a red awning has a different landlord), and the former notary shop between the restaurant and the Koelsch Gallery on the corner of Stanford St.
The restaurant’s lease on its building at 817 Richmond — shown below — runs until next April:
Fitze Homestead
At least one new retail building is about to sprout on the vacant 2.6-acre strip of land across from the Wayside Dr. Walmart, according to a recent building permit filing. The rendering above shows the Good Stuff that could end up in the middle of the new building next-door to a More-Or-Less-occupied storefront that’s bounded by apastrophic endcap tenant Pete’s.
It’ll all be set back quite a distance away from Wayside in order to leave some room for a future building that’s planned directly east of the strip later on:
Good Stuff Inside
Here’s a toilet-side look at the new Regions Bank that’s going up at Fountain View and San Felipe in place of the Dino’s Texaco gas station torn down there in September. It’s a replacement of sorts for the bank’s shuttered branch inside 5005 Woodway, a lowrise office tower about a mile and a half away, near Sage Rd. It’s also one of 14 new branches the bank announced plans to open earlier this year, at which time it had 29 existing locations in the Houston area.
The new building hasn’t yet gotten off the ground, though excavators are busy prowling the half-acre site across from the Tanglewood H-E-B. The bank’s 20-year lease (with 4 consecutive 5-year renewal options) officially begins next March.
- Regions Bank appoints Houston market leader, plans several new branches [HBJ]
- Previously on Swamplot: Daily Demolition Report: Last Chance Texaco
Photos: Swamplox inbox
San Felipe at Fountain View
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
Dearborn Place
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.
- Previously on Swamplot: Awesome Bites Will Take a Chunk Out of Shops at Sawyer Yards’ West Side; B&B Butchers Bull Marking New Territory in Shops at Sawyer Yards; Where Lovett Commercial Is Really Developing That Restaurant in the First Ward
Rendering: Loft 18. Site plan: Lovett Commercial
Teeing Off
