Retail

Mixed Use
08/11/10 12:05pm

A New Gallery-Ready Office Tower at Montrose and 59

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Montrose, Office Space, Proposed Developments, Retail
23 Comments

That’s 4,000-sq.-ft. of art-gallery space on the second floor of M Fifty-Nine, a new 13-story office building Midway Companies is planning for the northeast corner of Montrose Blvd. and the Southwest Freeway. This view is from the southwest, looking toward Downtown (in the lower left, you can see the ghostly image of a portion of the Montrose Blvd. bridge that would actually be in the foreground). The design, by local architects Muñoz + Albin, includes 64,000 sq. ft. of office space and 7,000 sq. ft. of “restaurant ready” retail on the ground floor facing Montrose. Behind the gallery space: an enclosed parking garage for more than 200 cars. Midway Companies, the developers of CityCentre, hopes to begin construction on the project early next year.

What’s on the site now?

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CityCentre
08/09/10 1:57pm

Flora & Muse Imports Quaint to CityCentre

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Openings and Closings, Retail
1 Comment

Scheduled to open a little later this month amidst the mixed-use toniness of CityCentre: Yet another bistro-patisserie-tearoom-bar-coffeeshop-library-flower shop and performance-space hybrid, this one called Flora & Muse. Financing for the new venue comes in part from Turkish television star BaÅŸak Köklükaya (you may know her as Findik from “Uy Basuma Gelenler”). The store promises a “whimsical, neo-Victorian interior” designed by Laura Umansky (her Laura U Collection is on Westheimer near Hazard). Chef David Luna, formerly of Shade and Canopy, at last steps out from beneath all those overhangs to develop the menu for the mini-mixed-use mashup, which will include a 1,200-sq.-ft. patio.

Photo: Swamplot inbox

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Katy
08/05/10 12:29pm

Katy Main Street Looks Like a Parking Lot: Opening the Newest H-E-B

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Openings and Closings, Retail, Shopping Centers
6 Comments

A few snippets from yesterday’s grand opening of the new 88,000 sq.-ft. H-E-B at the new “Katy Main Street” shopping center at the southwest corner of I-10 and Pin Oak Rd., just west of the Katy Mills Mall: a “Texas Front Yard” at the entrance where you can pick up mulch, bug spray, and that giant parrot-like watering yardbird you were looking all over for; a solitary “Fudgie Wudgie” fresh fudge stand; a guacamole station; and H-E-Buddy giving hugs and high fives to shoppers in the produce section. This is the fourth H-E-B in Katy. It’s adjoined by a new strip center with no current tenants.

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Parking
08/04/10 10:20am

Blue Fish Gets a Smooth New Parking Lot — on Washington Ave

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Restaurants, Retail, Washington Corridor
6 Comments

Update, 9/15/11: Our error. 5820 Washington is now the home of The Blue Fish, a restaurant chain based in Dallas — not to be confused (as we did) with Blue Fish House, a Houston-based restaurant with locations at 2241 Richmond Ave. and in Sugar Land at 2735-C Town Center Blvd. The Dallas chain also has a location in Bayou Place. We’ve updated the story.

This new parking lot across Knox St. from Benjy’s on Washington recently replaced the Thomas Collection fabric store that used to sit directly on the corner of Washington Ave. Dallas’s Blue Fish chain will be opening a new location in the building behind it, at 5820 Washington Ave. Yes, this is the same building that, a few weeks ago, a Swamplot reader identified from a state license application as the future home of Washington Wine Storage. That facility’s address will be 1120 Knox St.:

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Openings and Closings
08/03/10 11:44am

Now and Forever Doesn’t Live Here Anymore

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Retail, Strip Centers, Upper Kirby, West University
7 Comments

All that’s left of the Now and Forever Bridal Boutique — looking wistfully at Lakewood Church from across the Southwest Freeway — is this lonely sign by the shop’s old entrance. But don’t fret: Next door, in the same feeder-road strip center, Party City still rages! Now and Forever’s new location: the 3701 Kirby office building a block south of Richmond, not far from Hardcore Pilates.

Photos: Swamplot inbox

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Lancaster Place
08/02/10 11:51am

Is This Your Montrose Supermarket on Stilts? A South Beach Model for the Wilshire Village H-E-B

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Proposed Developments, Retail
23 Comments

KHOU reporter Tiffany Craig says her news team “did a little digging” and has discovered that one of the design options H-E-B is considering for its new Montrose store across from Fiesta at the corner of West Alabama and Dunlavy is “similar to” Carlos Zapata’s famous Publix supermarket in South Beach — aka “the Mothership.” That’s good to hear, because as we all know since about 1987 all new buildings built in Houston have been required to look kinda like some more famous structures from somewhere else.

But Zapata’s 12-year-old Publix by the Bay is an actual 50,000-sq.-ft. grocery store, with carts and ramps and everything. The parking is above the store — on 2 levels:

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First Colony
07/30/10 9:55am

First Colony Mall’s Used-Car-Dealer Valet

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Malls, Parking, Quicklink, Retail, Sugar Land
2 Comments

FIRST COLONY MALL’S USED-CAR-DEALER VALET Your keys, please? A local used-car dealership is the new sponsor of the “free” valet parking service at First Colony Mall in Sugar Land. Independent used-car giant Texas Direct Auto, which has its roots in eBay (and still sells most of its cars online), now has its blue and white umbrellas parked in front of the Cheesecake Factory and on the mall’s interior street near Kona Grill, with valets ready to take your car. The company’s main dealership is just 5 miles north of the mall, on the 59 feeder road. And yes, the company does take trade-ins. [Ultimate Fort Bend]

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Galleria
07/28/10 1:41pm

Destination XL: Rochester Big and Tall Getting Bigger and Taller

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Openings and Closings, Retail
5 Comments

A sign inside the Rochester Big and Tall store at the Uptown Collection strip center on Westheimer at Yorktown describes the new-concept superstore soon to take it over: Destination XL will be “an experience . . . where life, style and size has no boundaries!” Conveniently, exercise equipment store Hest Fitness Products has vacated the space next door. That’ll make it easier for the large-size men’s clothing store to . . . expand: Workers will bust through the wall separating the 2 spaces, and Destination XL will take over all 11,000 sq. ft.

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Proposed Developments
07/27/10 8:05am

The West End Walmart and the Disappearing Variance

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Retail, Signage, Streets, West End
23 Comments

Will construction of a new Walmart off Yale St. just south of I-10 and the Heights require any variances from the Planning Commission? This sign appeared over the weekend across the street from where Koehler St. ends at Yale, just south of Dirt Bar. It appears to refer to the proposed extension of Koehler St. to Heights Blvd. shown on the Ainbinder Company site plan for the property. That’s not for the portion of the property Walmart will be occupying, but for an adjacent tract.

By Sunday night, though, the sign had been taken down. According to Kent Marsh of planning firm Marsh Darcy Partners, it was removed “erroneously” and should be reinstalled soon. Meanwhile, a separate set of signs are up along Koehler and on the other side of Yale, closer to where the Walmart is likely to go. But they appear to be for the Yale St. pad sites in the Ainbinder plan. And they aren’t for variances:

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Afton Village
07/23/10 8:18pm

Walmart Can’t Wait

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New Construction, Quicklink, Retail
4 Comments

WALMART CAN’T WAIT Scratch that bit about “within a couple months”: A representative of Walmart told neighbors yesterday that construction of the new Supercenter behind the Marq*E Entertainment Center at Silber Rd. and I-10 will begin next week: “Several Afton Village residents spoke highly of Ikea, which they say reached out to the neighborhood well before plans were drawn for its larger store, which required the permanent closing of Afton Street from the I-10 feeder road. [Public affairs rep Kellie Duhr and Houston operations manager Jerry Peacock] said that Walmart believes in community and has a record of being a good neighbor. They said that philosophy would continue at the Silber store. ‘We bought the property. We can build there,’ Duhr said. ‘We’re here now, and it’s important to work with the community.’” [Memorial Examiner, previously on Swamplot]

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Lancaster Place
07/23/10 10:39am

H-E-B Looking for $2 to $3 Million for a 2-Acre Montrose Park

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Montrose, Parking, Parks, Proposed Developments, Retail
68 Comments

H-E-B Houston division president Scott McClelland tells the Chronicle‘s Mike Morris what he’s been telling members of the Montrose Land Defense Coalition for several months: That the grocery company is willing to include a 2-acre park adjacent to its planned Montrose store on the site of the former Wilshire Village apartments at the corner of West Alabama and Dunlavy — but only if community fundraisers can come up with “some offset” of the $2 to $3 million in extra costs required. “I’m not saying it has to be dollar-for-dollar,” McClelland says. “If we get close to raising that kind of money, we’ll find a way to do it. But if we can’t raise any money, it’d be tough for me to justify putting a park in.”

The company plans to have its new store back up to West Alabama and face south. If enough money can be raised, McClelland says the store can be raised — on stilts, so parking can fit underneath. That would leave room for a 2-acre park on the site’s south end. The “H-E-B on stilts” plan would also include space for a farmers market. Without the extra funds, that park area would be used for parking instead — though mature trees on the south portion of the property would still remain.

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Comments
07/22/10 2:32pm

Comment of the Day: The Lure of the Empty Parking Lot

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Parking, Quicklink, Retail
7 Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE LURE OF THE EMPTY PARKING LOT “If I am driving around town and need to stop to buy some bars of soap, and I see a store on the left with a crowded parking lot and the store on the right with a spacious parking lot, which one do you think that I would normally choose to go to? I don’t want to spend 5 minutes looking for one of the 50 remaining parking spaces. Do you? Plus, if the parking lot looks crowded, don’t you think that a driver is going to say, ‘ummm..that store looks really busy. It might take a while to get in and out of there. I think I’ll pass and go to the store across the street.’” [Random Poster, commenting on On Top of Old 1,1-Dichloroethene: The New Silber Rd. Walmart]

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Afton Village
07/22/10 11:13am

On Top of Old 1,1-Dichloroethene: The New Silber Rd. Walmart

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New Construction, Retail, Toxic Sites
18 Comments

A little more detail on that other Walmart headed for I-10, from Memorial Examiner reporter Rusty Graham: Construction will begin within a couple of months on the 185,000 sq. ft. Supercenter just north of the Marq*E Entertainment Center, on the remaining 23 acres of the former Cameron Iron Works plant. The company has quietly owned a portion of the TCEQ remediation site, which features soil and groundwater rich in cleaning solvents, since 2008. (“Most of the soil at the site has now been cleaned to meet residential standards,” Cooper Cameron claims.) Six of 7 surrounding pad sites will line Silber Rd. The Walmart itself will form a scenic backdrop to an expansive 880-space parking lot:

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East Downtown
07/16/10 7:08pm

Coming to the Street That Warehouse Live Built: An EaDo Corner Grocery

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Openings and Closings, Retail
4 Comments

A 3,500-sq.-ft. grocery store called Epicurean Express will open next month across the street from live-music showcase Warehouse Live in East Downtown. It’ll fit next to Cork Soakers Wine Bar — which opened earlier this year — in a sixties-vintage strip center at the corner of St. Emanuel and Rusk that used to house a massage parlor. (The PODS pod in the photo above is in front of the market space, at 2018 Rusk.) Both the grocery and the wine bar, the renovation of the strip center, and Lucky’s Pub across the street (next door to Warehouse Live) are the work of corner entrepreneur Anthony Wegmann. Wegmann says he’s still looking for other businesses for the strip center’s remaining 3,500 sq. ft.

Wegmann’s publicist says he’s hoping Epicurean Express will be “more appealing than an access road gas station corner mart.” It’ll sell fresh produce, meats, spices, and cleaning supplies, among other things. A coffee bar will be included when it opens; prepared meals are scheduled to arrive in the fall.

Photo: Swamplot inbox

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Apartments
07/15/10 2:50pm

Modern Urban Warehouse: Where the New West End Walmart Is Going

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Proposed Developments, Retail, West End
43 Comments

Walmart has not completed its purchase of 15 acres of the former Trinity Industries steel fabrication site on Yale St. just south of I-10 and the Heights, but an executive with the Ainbinder Company, which has owned the property for 3 years, has been quoted as saying it is no longer negotiating with any other potential buyers (H-E-B was one), and that the deal should be complete within a few weeks. A site plan obtained by the Chronicle‘s Nancy Sarnoff shows 2 bank-style pad sites and a park-in-front strip center facing Yale, in front of the 152,000-sq.-ft. Walmart’s 664-car parking lot. Also shown in that plan, as part of the proposed development: a sprawlerrific future for the current site of the Heights Plaza Apartments to the northeast of the site, featuring a strip center along Heights Blvd. and a “bank” site just to the north, at the southern edge of White Oak Bayou. Yet another strip center is shown on the back side of the bank site, facing Yale St. to the west.

Ainbinder has the Heights Plaza Apartments at 205 Heights Blvd. under contract. Speaking at a meeting organized by city council member Ed Gonzalez, Michael Ainbinder said he expects to close on that property this fall and include the land in the retail development, bringing its total land area to 24 acres. Nicgk, who took extensive notes on the meeting and included them in his blog, They Are Building a Wal-Mart on My Street, reports that the developers are claiming that the development will not be “a ‘typical suburban’ project.” Nicgk reports an Ainbinder representative noted the

‘warehouse’ type of architecture; they noted the ‘Core’ apartments, and ‘Berger Iron Works’ on the corner plot of land. They intend to keep that type of neighborhood feel to the development
-It was described as a more modern warehouse/urban type of feel . . . Ainbinder assured that the infrastructure of the land, and surrounding, would be brought up to appropriate specs to support.

Below: a few photos of the site from a larger set and scouting report by another neighborhood blogger, Charles Kuffner.

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