A STANDOFF TO BUY HISD’S LAW ENFORCEMENT HS CAMPUS 
The 11-acre parcel for sale in Magnolia Grove where the High School for Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice stands has been the object of some poker-faced one-upmanship between two interested contenders: In one corner, you’ve got St. Thomas High School, whose campus is immediately south of here, and in the other you’ve got AV Dickson Street, a recently formed LLC named for the street the HISD magnet school stands on. The first round, reports the Leader’s Charlotte Aguilar, yielded a $40 million offer from little-known AV Dickson, with St. Thomas countering and raising it by $100. The next round will go off early next week. Aguilar adds that whoever buys the campus will be required to lease it back to HISD for the next 5 years, while a new spot is sought: “In keeping with a move by HISD to relocate its specialty high schools close to beneficial community resources –– the DeBakey High School for the Health Professions to the Texas Medical Center, the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts to the Theater District downtown –– a downtown location near police and sheriff’s headquarters and courthouses is being scouted.” [The Leader] Photo: HISD
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IS HISD KEEPING REBUILDING JOBS FROM MINORITY-OWNED FIRMS? 
That’s what the Houston chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architects (or HNOMA) seems to suspect, having sent a letter to HISD superintendent Terry Grier alleging “disenfranchisement” and wanting to know why so few jobs funded by last year’s $1.89 billion bond to rebuild 40 schools have been awarded to African-American-owned firms, reports Hair Balls: “Only two percent of the monies assigned have gone to the six [Houston-area] architectural firms run solely by African-American owners,” says Jeff Balke. “According to the letter, it appears that none of the six firms in question were even interviewed for projects pertaining to the four traditionally African-American high schools being rebuilt,” one of which is Yates High School, shown here. Adds HNOMA veep Anzilla Gilmore: “In the 2007 Bond, all of these firms got work, so we assumed that with a Bond this big, these guys shouldn’t have any issues. . . . They just need the chance, and if they don’t get the chance, they should be told why.” [HISD; Hair Balls; previously on Swamplot] Photo: HISD
Here’s a rendering of the classroom studio (and vegetable garden and recycled shipping container) that’s now under construction at the Monarch School in Spring Branch. North of the Katy Fwy. near Kempwood and Gessner, the school serves students with neurological disorders, and it says that the design elements and architecture of this very green 1,120-sq.-ft. studio from Architend will become part of the curriculum:
THIRD WARD’S RYAN MIDDLE SCHOOL TO BECOME MEDICINE MAGNET 
HISD voted on Thursday night to reopen the closing Ryan Middle School next year as a magnet for students interested in the medical field. Though community protests have tried to move HISD to keep the Third Ward school open, a vote a month ago decided that the 263 Ryan students — the fewest at any HISD middle school, reports the Houston Chronicle’s Ericka Mellon — would be consolidated at Cullen Middle School, about 4 miles away on Scott St. The 1926 Elgin St. building that was the original Yates Colored High School, reports abc13, will be reopened as the Baylor College of Medicine Academy at Ryan to “allow more students to compete for admission into the highly selective DeBakey High School for the Health Professions.” Also approved in Thursday’s vote is a second magnet, the Energy Institute High School, though HISD has not yet chosen where that will be. [Houston Chronicle; abc13; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Wikimedia Commons
This is what’s going up on some prime spurfront property at the University of Houston. Next to a Chinese restaurant and that prideful parking garage on Spur 5 that inspired the Houston Chronicle’s Lisa Gray and some student rappers back in 2010, the 2-story building at the end of Calhoun Rd. on campus is being billed as Cougar Den Plaza.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHY DON’T SCHOOLS LEASE? “HISD needs to get out of the real estate business and set themselves up as a 40 year build to suit lease with AA credit and 10 year options to the end of time, thus allowing private development to be holding the bag in year 41 if the neighborhood has turned and students have migrated elsewhere. Oh, they haven’t? Still top notch? Great, we renew, and will again in 10 years. Hell, the deal would/could even include mandatory capital infusion from the developer (or assigns, sells) upon exercise of option! Why am I not in charge? I welcome people to explain the downside of this idea, truly. I’ve been unable to see it, myself. Oh, and if the peanut gallery tries saying that there would be a developer on the planet who wouldn’t jump on a 40 year lease commitment build to suit with an HISD guaranty is just lying. If HISD defaults on the rent, first of all we should all be stocking up on shotgun shells and bottle water, but more over IF they default the developer has permanent debt, favorable loan terms, and can easily shop the market to backfill with any number of learning institutions who would be licking their chops to get that deal.” [HTX REZ, commenting on Third Ward Residents Protest HISD Proposal To Close Historic School]
HISD TO CLOSE THIRD WARD’S RYAN MIDDLE SCHOOL Despite the community’s protests, HISD voted 5-3 last night to close Ryan Middle School at the end of the school year, reports the Houston Chronicle’s Ericka Mellon: “Roughly two dozen speakers — mostly alumni and community activists — blasted the Houston Independent School District over the closure plans, at times nearing tears and shouting from the audience. They called the Ryan closure ‘blatantly discriminatory.'” Ryan’s 263 students, reports Mellon, are the fewest among HISD middle schools; the students will be consolidated about 4 miles away at Cullen Middle School on Scott St. HISD superintendent Terry Grier says that Ryan’s 1958 Elgin St. building might be repurposed into a DeBakey-like health-careers magnet. [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Wikimedia Commons
THIRD WARD RESIDENTS PROTEST HISD PROPOSAL TO CLOSE HISTORIC SCHOOL The steps in front of Ryan Middle School were the site of a rally yesterday in protest of an HISD proposal to close and consolidate the historic Third Ward school. HISD says the proposal calls to move students to Cullen Middle School on Scott St. because of low enrollment at Ryan, shown at right, which opened on Elgin St. when Yates High School moved to a new location in 1958. But teevee reporter Demond Fernandez says that the protestors see it “as a pattern of closing schools in predominately African-American communities. . . . And they say if HISD trustees move to pass a decision like that tonight, they may be prepared to go to court.” [abc13] Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Thieves made off with copper wiring from UH’s University Center late Saturday night, a UH public safety department bulletin reports: A contractor noticed early Sunday morning that the wiring had gone missing; a reader tells Swamplot that this knocked out the building’s power and is delaying renovations. The Barnes & Noble and Cougar Byte stores inside the UC have been scrambling to set up temporary locations elsewhere on campus.
Note: Story updated below.
This mud pit on Rustic St. is not long for the world; eventually there will be a 3-level parking garage here at very congested HCC Southeast. The East End campus is pressed up against the back of a strip center that faces the I-45 feeder road between Woodridge and Wayside. To make room for the garage, appearing to allow students and faculty to enter from both Rustic and Garland, the 100-seat Carlos Garcia Theater and some inadequate surface parking had to go. This is an otherwise expanding campus: last summer saw the opening of a brand-new Workforce Building (shown here), a 3-story, 60,000-sq.-ft. Brave Praxis Brave Architecture job where many of the campus’s vocational programs — including HVAC, cosmetology, massage therapy, and accounting — are now based.
- President’s Mission [Houston Community College]
- Project Update: HCC Southeast College Workforce Building [Brave Praxis]
Photos: Brave Praxis (academic building);Â Allyn West (site)
St. John’s School has purchased 13 acres of land, expanding its 29-acre campus in River Oaks. Headmaster Mark Desjardins tells the Houston Chronicle that the school on Westheimer won’t be developing the new acreage right away and hasn’t decided what will become of the businesses already there at the intersection of W. Alabama and Buffalo Speedway. Those include a fortune teller, the River Oaks Plant House, known for its oversized topiary-like Chia pets (dancing at left), and Blanco’s Bar & Grill, sitting there in a dusty parking lot as though it’s on a far-flung farm road and not right across the street from the 23-story Lamar Tower. (It’s hiding behind the Blanco’s sign in the photo above.)
- Exclusive private school buys River Oaks-area land [Houston Chronicle ($)]
If you look closely at these new renderings of Robertson Stadium’s replacement that UH released a couple of weeks ago, you can see the Downtown skyline. UH, a member of the Big East starting in 2013, says that this 40,000-seat, $105-million stadium — whose naming rights are still being shopped around — will be built with a new east-west orientation, at least in part because that’ll make the skyline look real nice on teevee.
More details and even more renderings:
COMMENT OF THE DAY: BOOING A DEBAKEY HIGH SCHOOL FOR HEALTH PROFESSIONS MOVE TO THE OLD SHAMROCK HOTEL SITE “Any biomedical educational institution gains considerable strength by being closely associated with TMC. There’s a much higher credibility and visibility factor. And as a bonus, students may be visited by Glenn McCarthy’s ghost.” [Chef, commenting on Headlines: Houston Club Shacking Up with Plaza Club; Galveston’s Port of Call Dreams]
A NEW TEETOTALING CIRCLE LANDS ON LANCASTER PLACE 
By a vote of city council, St. Stephen’s Episcopal School today became the seventh private school in the city to be granted a 1,000-ft. alcohol-free zone around its campus. Included within that circumference around 1800 Sul Ross St.: the H-E-B Montrose Market that opened last November on the former site of the Wilshire Village Apartments. Last year St. Stephen’s lost a court battle over restricting alcohol sales at the grocery store, though the battle did end up delaying the start of H-E-B beer and wine sales until shortly before New Year’s. The new restrictions will not apply to businesses that already hold alcohol licenses, but they could make a difference to other developments planned near the corner of Dunlavy and West Alabama. [St. Stephen’s; previously on Swamplot] Photo of Divino restaurant, 1830 West Alabama: Gabe C.
Residents of the Cambridge Court Apartments at 6500 S. Gessner will get to stay until the end of their leases, but after that they’ll need to find new homes. That’s the word from the complex’s neighbor and new owner, Strake Jesuit. The Catholic boys’ high school is also the property’s old owner; the 7.55 acres the apartments sit on is a portion of the land Strake Jesuit lost as a result of a 1971 bankruptcy. Developer Harold Farb built what was then called the Newport Apartments on the site 6 years later.
School officials plan to tear down the complex “at the earliest possible date” and use the land, which sits just north of the school’s Gessner driveway, for parking and athletic fields. The acquisition will also allow planners to “re-examine where it will construct its new Science and Engineering Building on the campus without a net loss of parking or green space,” the school announced.
- Jesuit Reacquires Portion of Land Lost 40 Years Ago [Strake Jesuit]
Photos: Strake Jesuit (aerial), Apartments.com (Cambridge Court Apartments)
