COMMENT OF THE DAY: READING BETWEEN THE LINES OF A LEASES-NOT-UP-YET STORY 
“Translation: current tenants have murderously cheap rents and would not leave for a million bucks. Buyer is trying to play hard ball by threatening to let the property sit until the leases are up unless tenants take a crappy buyout offer.
Prediction: Buyer will eventually pay what it takes to get tenants out once they realize that no one will want to pay market rate to be in that old dog of a strip mall.” [Old School, commenting on Apartments and Retail for Westheimer and Montrose Corner? Not Until Half Price Books and Spec’s Scoot] Illustration: Lulu
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APARTMENTS AND RETAIL FOR WESTHEIMER AND MONTROSE CORNER? NOT UNTIL HALF PRICE BOOKS AND SPEC’S SCOOT 
The owner of the once-Art Deco but now slathered-with-stucco shopping center at the southwest corner of Westheimer and Montrose says it’s willing to wait 7 to 10 years for the center’s leases to run out before building something new on the site. Unless, of course, they can negotiate an early exit (or time-out while construction takes place) for the Half Price Books, Spec’s, Papa Johns, 3-6-9 China Bistro and Jack in the Box currently on the site. If they can’t buy out the tenants, PM Realty’s Wade Bolin tells Shaina Zucker, they’ll start leasing out the still-vacant spaces in the former Tower Community Center, which the company calls the Westmont Shopping Center. “PM Realty Group did not share early design plans,” Zucker adds, “but several sources confirmed the mixed-use structure could include residential with retail on the ground floor.” [Houston Business Journal; previously on Swamplot] Photo: PM Realty
The undisclosed location of the planned Fluff Bake Bar retail location and bar is somewhere in Midtown, owner Rebecca Masson tells Swamplot. But there’s a bit of fundraising to do before the former Top Chef Just Desserts contestant can sign the lease she’s been getting ready for the space. The self-described “Sugar Hooker” currently operates her wholesale dessert business out of space she shares with 5 other businesses in the Kraftsmen Cafe kitchen at 611 W. 22nd St. in the Heights, selling fluffernutters, cake-in-cup cupcakes, and macaroons to retailers such as Revival Market, Double Trouble, Southside Espresso, and Inversion Coffee House. But if her just-launched Kickstarter campaign bears fruit . . . er, compote, she’ll move all operations to the new space. In addition to desserts, Masson is hoping to serve beer and wine at her “proper dessert bar.” She’s hoping to bring in $50,000 in crowdfunded donations within a month.
- Fluff Bake Bar: A Toast to Just Desserts [Kickstarter]
- Sweet! You Found Us! [Fluff Bake Bar]
- Rebecca Masson [Top Chef Just Desserts]
Photo of Kraftsmen Cafe: Soo Kim
A Dessert Bar Bar
A Downtown office building named after an oil company featuring a new drive-in in its basement? Well, minus all the close-in parking spots. Swamplot reader Doug Gober sends pix showing signs advertising a new Sonic Drive-In plastered earlier this week on the darkened windows of the spot occupied until a few months ago by a General Joe’s Chopstix — in the tunnel-access basement space of Pennzoil Place at 711 Louisiana. Walk-in seating for underground customers is already available, but you’ll probably have to place your order inside.
- Previously on Swamplot: Route 44 Cherry Limeade from Mason Rd. Sonic Draws Out FBI Fugitive
Photos: Doug Gober
Slurp!
A note in a newsletter from a restaurant website hints that some long-rumored changes to that quaint shopping district on the west side of Mid Lane north of Westheimer, just west of the Highland Village Shopping Center, are about to begin: “Yes, the block that Crapitto’s Cucina Italiana is in has been sold. No, Crapitto’s is not closing and will remain there. The block will be developed and most of the businesses have moved out so construction can begin in a few weeks.”
COMMENT OF THE DAY: A LINEAR SHOPPING DISTRICT FROM HIGHLAND VILLAGE TO THE GALLERIA 
“I love that all these projects are coming to fruition on Westheimer.
As more and more private investment comes to this area of Westheimer between Post Oak and Weslayan, will the city of Houston invest in the walkable infrastructure to make this one coherent district as it fills in?
What would we call it?
East Uptown? Lower River Oaks? Highland West?” [DNAguy, commenting on The River Oaks District’s New Box of Dior] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY RUNNER-UP: IF WE SHUK UP THE DOWNTOWN TUNNELS 
“We need to turn the tunnel system into a public souq, similar to those in many Arab cities. A cool, covered area connected to the city streets that acts as an open market for various vendors and restaurateurs. Replace the bland tunnel surfaces with quality materials, carve out small market stalls, and offer them cheaply for any kind of business use. Connect the tunnels to street level every couple blocks. Each entry area could also house market stalls to offer a transition into the tunnels. This would help provide the ‘street’ life that lacks in downtown Houston. Cheap rents could attract vendors from every type of ethnicity that has come to Houston. It would be a real attraction worth visiting.” [Carpetbagger, commenting on A Park-Size Tunnel Entrance Concept for Downtown] Illustration: Lulu
WHERE THE FOOD TRUCKS ARE PARKING ON HWY. 6 
One advantage of the new Energy Corridor-area food truck park that officially debuted last week at 800 Hwy. 6 South, backing up to the Addicks Reservoir: the 3.5-acre grounds mean there’s room enough for a variety of trucks — as well as seating areas that comply with City of Houston regulations by keeping 100 ft. away. Katharine Shilcutt finds plenty of parking, music, fire pits, and ambition there too: “‘We want to make a farmers market over there,’ [My Food Park HTX co-owner Liz Gandy] told me, pointing to a series of metal structures that already form the shape of a roadside produce stand. ‘We get so much shade in the afternoons right here. It’s just beautiful.’ Behind the future market area, the acreage goes from gravel to grass, surrounded on three sides by dense thickets of trees. Back here, where many people choose to dine, it’s quiet. You can barely hear the traffic from Highway 6; you feel like you’re in the country.” [Houstonia] Photo: My Food Park HTX
A rendering showing a standalone-look Dior boutique in the new River Oaks District has made an appearance in a brochure now available on the website of the project’s developer, San Diego’s OliverMcMillan. And while rumors that the not-so-far-from-the-actual-River Oaks development might feature a boutique from the French fashion house have been bandied about since Christian Dior shut down its Galleria store last year, neither the project’s developer nor the retailer have officially announced the company’s return to Houston. A slightly different version of the above rendering appears directly on the River Oaks District page of the developer’s website, but in place of the Dior logo is the word “Tread”:
Going into the 2,034-sq.-ft. former Washateria space at the back of the little shopping strip across Greeley St. from the Blue Bird Circle Shop on West Alabama: a soon-to-be beer-and-wine-licensed coffee shop called Siphon Coffee, set to open late this year or early next. The space is shown on the far left of the photo above. Owners Michael Caplan and Edward Treistman write on the coffee house’s Facebook page that there’ll be food enough for breakfast and lunch too, once the place opens, after they get help from former Brasserie 19 chef Amanda McGraw with the menu and training.
BALLY’S I-10 SHOPPING CENTER TO BE BLASTED AWAY FOR NEW OFFICE TOWER 
MetroNational has immediate plans to tear down this 2-story 12-year-old former Bally Fitness Shopping Center on a 3.44-acre site facing the I-10 feeder at the northeast corner of the Memorial City Mall — and replace it with some sort of new office tower, Real Estate Bisnow‘s Catie Dixon reports. The health club (along with all 9 other Houston Bally’s locations) was taken over by Blast Fitness last year — and shut down entirely this spring. As of the end of last week, all remaining tenants in the building at 9801 Katy Fwy. have closed up shop as well. MetroNational (as usual) wouldn’t comment on plans for the site half a mile east of its headquarters, but Dixon gets the scoop from the stores themselves: Le Peep plans to be gone from the site only for 14 to 16 months, however; it’s been promised a ground-floor retail space in the new building. T.N. Tailor Alterations also says it has a spot in the new development; no word on the Starbucks. [Real Estate Bisnow] Photo of Bally Total Fitness at 9801 Katy Fwy.:Â MetroNational
Woodlands organic shoppers: Do not let the parking garage that appears to be enveloping the new Whole Foods Market in this rendering scare you off. The press release announcing the grocery chain’s first Woodlands store declares there’ll be “ample surface parking” adjacent to the market. Whew! Construction will start on the 40,000-sq.-ft. store soon, the Woodlands Development Company announced this morning. It’ll be part of Hughes Landing, the new 66-acre office, hotel, retail, and apartment complex going in on the northeast bank of Lake Woodlands. The store will be near the intersection of Lake Front Circle and Lake Woodlands Dr., with the main entrance shown above coming off Lake Front. That likely places it in the spot marked “Grocery” in this rotated plan of the development’s southern half:
BLOCKBUSTER BUSTING ITS LAST BLOCKS 
Did you realize there was still a Blockbuster Video store open near you? There are 13 of them in the Houston area, in fact — though only 2 of them (at Studewood and North Main and South Post Oak at Bellfort) are in Houston proper. (The rest are in Katy, Seabrook, Baytown, Kingwood, Spring, Humble, Sugar Land, Channelview, Pearland, and Pasadena.) Well, at least until January. The company announced today it will close all 300 remaining stores in the U.S. by early next year — and shutter its DVD-by-mail service by the middle of next month. When Dish Network bought the company out of bankruptcy more than 2 years ago, Blockbuster had 1,700 U.S. stores. [Bloomberg] Photo of Pasadena Blockbuster, 3950 Spencer Hwy.: Yelp
That little 84-year-old barber shop spot at 219 E. 11th St. in the Heights featured in Wes Anderson’s movie Rushmore has survived an eviction scare. Proprietor Doug Dreher tells the Houston Press‘s Dianna Wray that a Saturday-night email from the building’s landlord, J. Conti Interests, assured him that Doug’s Barber Shop wouldn’t be kicked out: “Dreher remembered dropping off the October rent check before going out of town for a few weeks. When he got back to town, just before the end of the month, he was notified that his business, located at 219 East 11th Street, was being evicted in two weeks.”
A reader writes in with the latest potential future scenario for the Hot Bagel Shop on S. Shepherd south of Welch: “I’m not sure if this has already been reported on, but [earlier this week] at Hot Bagel Shop, I was told that the lot next door is being scraped for the first half of a new strip center, which the bagel-ers and the nail people will move into once it’s complete. The gold retailer will not be renewing his lease. Afterwards they’ll knock down the existing building and construct the other half of the new building.”
This design for a strip center at 2015 S. Shepherd is featured on the website of Houston’s Dang La Architecture:
