Neighbors and passers-by have been curious about the renovations taking place at the strip center at the corner of Lower Westheimer and Helena St., where the Hollywood Food & Cigars #3 convenience store at 202 Westheimer Rd. — and its neighbor Tejas Boots — kicked off a couple years ago. The building, once home to Baby Giant #2, has recently been painted a bright white; its sign has been denuded, and sidewalk reconstruction work is underway:
Now we know why the Morgan Group, the developer that applied for a variance last year to allow for a Pearl on Smith apartment complex to fit onto the block surrounded by Elgin, Smith, Brazos, and Rosalie streets, later withdrew the request: To expand the project so that it could include a 40,000-sq.-ft. Whole Foods Market on its ground floor. And here’s a rendering of the design of the whole thing by Houston’s Ziegler Cooper Architects.
What better encapsulation of the recent trajectory of Midtown could you find than today’s news that Whole Foods Market plans to build a new 40,000-sq.-ft. store on the former site of the city’s Social Security Office (pictured above) at 3100 Smith St. in Midtown?
Well, a few details to the story of the ramshackle block surrounded by Smith, Brazos, Elgin, and Rosalie give it even more color as a Houston gentrification parable: Noting, for example, that the former government office, across the street from a couple of bars, had been shuttered by the feds a couple years ago. Or that plans for a Morgan Group apartment complex on the same site were submitted to the city and then abandoned sometime last year. (It would have been called the Pearl on Smith.) Also: When it opens at the end of 2017, Whole Foods Market’s new Midtown location may turn out not to be a Whole Foods Market. The company says it’s developing an unnamed “sister chain” of smaller stores targeting younger buyers, but did not indicate whether the Midtown Houston store would be part of it.
Photo: O’Connor & Associates
Remember that incident last July when real estate investor and renowned neighbor-dismemberer Robert Durst — the Rice Village’s best-known resident — decided to spread his own bodily fluids in the CVS at 6011 Kirby Dr.? Thanks to the enterprising and patient reporting team at KPRC, surveillance video of the episode is now available for all to see. Together with the shocking scene included at the end of the HBO documentary The Jinx — in which Durst, retreating to the bathroom from an interview while wearing a still-live mic, appears to confess to multiple murders — the footage paints a portrait of a man prone to urination surprises. Durst pleaded no contest to charges of criminal mischief for the CVS episode, after he allegedly exposed himself to a cashier and then peed on a display of candy.
The newly released footage isn’t the clearest (and mercifully, any potentially offending images are blurred out) but it does reveal a few things, including where Durst stood when he began urinating — in case that matters to future customers of that CVS Pharmacy.
HOW YOU CAN HELP HOUSTON’S FIRST FULL-TIME HUMAN TRAFFICKING COFFEE SHOP COME TO LIFE 
Been looking for a good coffee shop somewhere around the Heights where folks can get together and discuss Houston’s role as a major hub for human trafficking? Where caffeine-hunters can experience moments of genuine outrage — then find themselves drawn toward information sessions, group discussions, planning meetings, and double espressos — knowing that all profits from their chatting and coffee-drinking habits will go toward charitable stuff like providing classes and counseling for survivors of human trafficking? If so, then you’ll be happy to learn about A 2nd Cup, which opened as a part-time “incubator” project a couple of years ago. Now the nonprofit, led by former junior-high science teacher Erica Raggett, has begun work on a buildout for a permanent, full-time home — in the Vineyard Church of Houston’s Storehouse storefront at 1111 E. 11th St., just east of Studewood St. (pictured above, right next door to longtime late-night cop favorite Andy’s Café). A 2nd Cup’s backers are trying to raise an additional $100,000 toward the effort on Indiegogo now. [Indiegogo] Photo mockup: A 2nd Cup
Runaway Shepherd St. jeweler Fly High Little Bunny has marked up the former Occasions Fine Gifts shop at the corner of Rutland and 19th St. in the Heights as its future home. A separate note posted to the store’s Facebook page late last week indicated that the new location at 301 W. 19th St. wouldn’t be open “for a month or so.”
Photos: Swamplot inbox
Crews working on the site of the former Village Mobil on the inbound I-10 feeder road at 8819 Katy Fwy. have now covered up part of the former gas station sign with a new hood announcing the Starbucks drive-thru now under construction in its place. But only the top part of the sign. “Will the Hedwig Village Starbucks stick with the ‘by the gallon’ pricing strategy of its predecessor?” asks reader (and Metro board member) Christof Spieler, who snapped this photo.
Photo: Christof Spieler
CUPCAKE ATM IS REALLY COMING TO HIGHLAND VILLAGE THIS TIME, SPRINKLES PROMISES 
If news that Sprinkles plans to bring a Cupcake ATM to Houston sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Today’s announcement marks the third time in 3 years that the California chain has declared that its lone Houston location — in Highland Village, snuggled up next to the Apple Store — would soon have one of the company’s signature baked-goods vending machines installed for all-hours use. Houston was to receive the second-ever such machine, after the Beverly Hills pilot (pictured here), in the summer of 2012. A second announcement the following year earmarked Houston for the fourth-ever Cupcake ATM that October (by then Chicago and Dallas stores had received theirs), after a holdup caused by “design issues.” Now Sprinkles is promising Houston the ninth Cupcake ATM in the country, opening this June 11th. It’ll be installed on the back side of the building at 4014 Westheimer, facing the parking lot. Inside, Sprinkles will be expanding its offerings to include cookies, ice cream, and attendant shakes, malts, and floats. Frequent Highland Village shopping center cupcakers will want to mark May 12 through 19th on their calendars — though perhaps only in pencil. That’s when the store is scheduled to be shut down for the installation of dipping cabinets along the back counter and cookie trays in its cupcake display area, as well as the exterior vending station. [Sprinkles Houston] Photo: Sprinkles
SUSANNE DISCOVERS THE GROCERY LURE 
How nice to live where there’s a grocery store just across the street! And how nice to have your apartments across from the supermarket — at least when you’re trying to fill them up: Ellie Sweeney, property manager for Finger Companies’ 396-unit Susanne apartment complex on the site of the former Montrose Fiesta Mart at 3833 Dunlavy St., tells reporter Catie Dixon that 80 percent of traffic to the leasing office from potential residents has been from shoppers at the Montrose H-E-B across the street (where the Wilshire Village apartments once stood). The Susanne’s website speaks highly as well — though somewhat distractedly — of its neighbor: “You’ve got your very own café right across the way,” the marketing copy announces, explaining that the H-E-B was “Designed to be the flagship Lake /Plato [sic] extravaganza.” Nine people have already moved into the Susanne’s first floor; the second floor opens for move-ins next month. All construction should be complete by the end of October. [Real Estate Bisnow; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Finger Companies
Headed into the Loop along I-10 and missed the exit for the Starbucks in the shopping center at Echo Ln.? Construction has already begun on your new inbound coffee-stop backup. The former site of the stone-encrusted Village Mobil gas station at the corner of Brogden and the eastbound Katy Fwy. feeder road (pictured here as it appeared before it was torn down last year) between Campbell and Voss is currently being transformed into a brand-new Starbucks drive-thru, a source tells Swamplot. And you can reach it from the next exit, for Bingle and Voss — if, in your uncaffeinated state, you can move 3 lanes over on the feeder fast enough. (If not, just apologize to the drivers you almost cut off and try to duck into the Sweet Tomatoes parking lot across the way to work your way back; if you miss that, you can take a mile-long turnaround through the neighborhood by making a right turn on Old Voss Rd.)
Framing of the new “Jewel Box” on-garage drive-up pad site Galleria add-on has begun. A reader sends in this view from above, showing how the building has been perched onto the next-to-top level of the Blue Garage, which underlies the mall’s parking-lot approach from Westheimer. Westheimer runs from left to right at the top of the photo.
Photo: Swamplot inbox
Here’s an aerial view of the Royal Oaks Village II shopping center, where the Houston area’s fifth Trader Joe’s is already under construction behind the Harvest Organic Grille. (That’s the unidentified pad-site restaurant at the top right of the shopping center, which is outlined in red.) There the new grocery store take its place among a spread of nearby food-shopping options along the south side of Westheimer, which include the Walmart Supercenter at W. Houston Center Blvd., the Chick-Fil-A and H-E-B at Kirkwood, and the Whole Foods Market at Wilcrest.
Blogger and amateur bedding-sales analyst Christopher Andrews has updated a few of his maps of mattress chain stores in the Houston area (including the one shown above) to include Mattress One (or Mattress1 One, or Mattress 1 One, as the company variously refers to itself). Altogether, that Florida-and-Texas chain, plus Mattress Firm and Mattress Pro (owned by Mattress Firm), operate 166 separate retail locations in the region.
Map: Christopher Andrews
A reader wanted to make sure Swamplot readers had a chance to see the sign that’s gone up on the construction fence surrounding the Park Place Memorial strip center at 5801 Memorial Dr. — on the south side of the street just east of Westcott St. near Bayou Bend — for the new Mattress One store. (It’s the red banner on the far right of the submitted image, above.) When the store opens this August (on the opposite side of the 10,000-sq.-ft. center from Dunkin’ Donuts), it’ll count as the Florida and Texas chain’s fifty-seventh Houston-area location. Also moving in: Express Rolls, Piada Italian Street Food, and Omni Cleaners.
Photo: Swamplot inbox
Crews are hard at work converting the former hair salon (with 2-bedroom apartment upstairs, pictured above) at 6640 W. Montgomery Rd. in Highland Heights (aka the east side of Acres Homes) to an “edible garden center.” Farmstead is meant to become “the go-to spot for Houstonians wanting to grow their own food at home.” It’ll offer fruit trees, vegetable transplants, and herbs for purchase, along with seeds appropriate for this region. Plus gardening tools, supplies and DIY kits for raising your own garden bed above the gumbo line.
