COMMENT OF THE DAY: HIGH CONCEPT “Bastards. That’s the spot where I was going to put my retro video game and Peruvian/ Japanese fusion restaurant, “Eatariâ€. Guess I’ll have to keep on looking.” [wilf, commenting on Where the Buffalo Grille Will Roam]
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Shopping Centers
The original Buffalo Grille has at last identified a fallow shopping-center slot to migrate to, about a mile southwest of its current location. The new brunch spot will be at 4080 Bissonnet, on the far western end of West U’s Montclair Shopping Center (the one with the Randalls) at Weslayan. Last seen in this location: The Candle House, next to one of those old retail storefronts for Countrywide Home Loans.
Buffalo Grille’s current building on Bissonnet at Buffalo Speedway — where it’s been for 26 years — is the only section remaining of the shopping center torn down on that site to build H-E-B’s Buffalo Market. The Buffalo Pharmacy next door to it was demolished in 2008. The following year, an H-E-B representative told West U’s city council that Buffalo Grille would stay where it was, but by this April, the grocery company politely announced that its neighbor would be looking for a new home — to open up more spaces for parking.
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.
Got a question about something going on in your neighborhood you’d like Swamplot to answer? Sorry, we can’t help you. But if you ask real nice and include a photo or 2 with your request, maybe the Swamplot Street Sleuths can! Who are they? Other readers, just like you, ready to demonstrate their mad skillz in hunting down stuff like this:
Scuttlebutt on that decrepit parking lot on Richmond, plus what’s ready to pop up on the site of the Hooters on Gessner:
- Upper Kirby: “How many professionals in kenneth cole loafers or nine west heels want to navigate lake Ponchartrain just to get to our restaurant for a meal?†asks a commenter from Yelapa Playa Mexicana, one of three restaurants sharing the potholed (and occasionally flooded) parking lot between Richmond and Portsmouth west of Greenbriar. But . . . nothing’s doing:
We would love to force our landlord to get this mess fixed as soon as possible…any advice from anyone? We’ve been on him for the last 10 months or more (since we took the space in mid-September 09).
Commenter marmer notes a repair job may involve significant drainage work. “Simply patching the holes won’t last long enough to be worth the trouble.†Plus, where are Yelapa, Blue Fish House, and Hobbit Café customers gonna park while the work gets done? Also left unanswered: Is the existing parking lot required to meet any drivability standards?
Next: What comes after Hooters?
Got an answer to any of these reader questions? Or just want to be a sleuth for Swamplot? Here’s your chance! Add your report in a comment, or send a note to our tipline.
- Upper Kirby: “I can assure you that there are some bone crunching potholes underneath the lovely puddles,” writes the reader who sent in these rain-drenched photos of the ancient, multi-layered, and pockmarked parking lot shared by 3 restaurants at 2241 Richmond, just west of Greenbriar. When it rains, the lot gets even worse, claims the reader, who wants to know why it’s so “pitiful”:
While I can kind of understand Blue Fish and Hobbit [Café] not wanting to spend too much money on improving the parking lot since they are not high dollar places, Yelapa [Playa Mexicana] is trying to position itself as this new chic Mexican/Seafood eatery and thus I would have thought they’d care more about a customer’s initial impression.
A related question from the same reader: “Are there any City ordinances that require a parking lot used by the public to have a certain amount of drivability?”
Next: What about the Hooters?
Got a question about something going on in your neighborhood you’d like Swamplot to answer? Sorry, we can’t help you. But if you ask real nice and include a photo or 2 with your request, maybe the Swamplot Street Sleuths can! Who are they? Other readers, just like you, ready to demonstrate their mad skillz in hunting down stuff like this:
- Houston Heights: Is the Kroger on 20th St. at Yale poised to take over the space next door Walgreens is vacating? Walgreens has a new building across the street under construction. Longtime reader kjb434 sees signs of redevelopment in the Weingarten-owned Heights Plaza Shopping Center the drug store chain is leaving behind: “I don’t have hard evidence, but I hear just as much from some friends in commercial real estate and from workers at the Kroger on 11th st. From what I gather, it’ll be a Signature Kroger and the Marketplace version that is currently at 11th.”
We’ll post any more reader questions we get on Tuesday. Send us what you’ve got before then!
Photo of Kroger, 239 W. 20th St.: Swamplot inbox
Got an answer to this reader question? Or just want to be a sleuth for Swamplot? Here’s your chance! Add your report in a comment, or send a note to our tipline.
- Houston Heights: Just one lead this time, but it should be easy enough for some of you to follow up on: Now that Walgreens is busy getting ready to snuggle up to CVS with its new standalone site going up across the street, what’s going to happen to Weingarten’s Heights Plaza Shopping Center at West 20th and Yale? A reader passes on a rumor heard from an employee at Kroger: that the grocery store is going to take over the entire shopping strip — including the soon-to-be-former Walgreens and at least some of the smaller shops facing Yale. The tip arrives with this request, which we pass off to you: “Can you do some more research on that and confirm?”
Photo of Kroger, 239 W. 20th St.: Swamplot inbox
COMMENT OF THE DAY: VALET CONFIDENTIAL “My first job was as a valet at a dinner club, and it was a great job. I set the policy for the lot, and I never restricted or blocked any spaces. Some people would have me park their cars even when all the front spaces were open. Others would cruise the far reaches of the lot rather than let me do it. That was OK with me. There are some good reasons not to turn your car over to a stranger – such as valuables or guns in the car or peculiarities about how the car runs. Also OK was the small percentage of non-tippers. I figured that some people mistakenly though sincerely believed that the service was complimentary by the restaurant. Others did not have the change on hand but would make it up the next time. What I hated was when the driver had a tip ready but put it back in his pocket as soon as he saw that I was not going to pressure him for it. I always ran for the cars and made it a point to remember who drove what car, so I made patrons feel important instead of turning them into claim check numbers. I am particularly offended by shopping centers that block all of the close spaces for valet service. It’s fine to provide the service for those who need or want it, but hogging the front spaces sends the message ‘We’re fancier than you, so you have to pay to get near our stores.’†[erasmus, commenting on Hooked on Valet: The Folks Scaring Away Your Strip Center Parking Spots]
Chron roving videographer Jason Witmer unearths the catalyst of the strip-center parking-cone epidemic: It’s those valet addicts.
“Even if it’s right in front on a Sunday and you’re the first person here,” says Antonio Gianola of Washington Avenue’s Catalan Food and Wine, “some people — when they realize there’s no valet — decide they’d rather leave.â€
Apparently, it’s not too hard to find one of these “customers”: “I have gone and talked to the manager, and said, y’all need valet,†Cathy Mayfield says on camera.
Cathy Mayfield says she just likes the convenience. She doesn’t even look to see if there are parking spaces nearby: “I’m willing to pay a little bit of money not to have to be driving around looking for a parking spot.â€
Others say it doesn’t make any sense that spots right in front of the restaurant are blocked off for valet.
- Is valet parking a must? [Houston Chronicle]
Video: Jason Witmer
It was only closed for a few evenings during construction, but the Merchants Park Kroger at 11th and North Shepherd in the Heights is marking today as its grand re-opening. Work on the project began 13 months ago. A new section of the store, which was expanded by 39,184 sq. ft., opened last October. Today, all the expansions and renovations on the 24-hour market are complete. Total tally: 88,988 sq. ft.
What’s new? A Starbucks with free wi-fi; a “Kitchen Place” featuring small appliances, cookware, and dinnerware; and the now-de-rigueur drive-thru pharmacy. Plus: an “open-air” seafood market, an order-on-the-computer deli kiosk, a “Cheese Shoppe” with more than 300 cheeses, and an Artisan Bread gallery that features store-made tortillas in your five favorite flavors: white, wheat, butter, salsa and cinnamon sugar.
There’s more:
Everybody out by the end of October, the owners of the Village Plaza Shopping Center have told all remaining tenants. Fuzzy’s Pizza and City Dance Studio, of course, are long gone from the center at 5925 Kirby, a block north of Rice Blvd. The Bike Barn has already picked out more than 10,000 sq. ft. in the former Hollywood Video in Weslayan Plaza, at Bissonnet and Weslayan. Kids Kuts will cut south to Bellaire and Stella Link; the UPS Store is looking at a new place “on Bissonnet.” Ticket Stop and Susan Nail & Facial are hunting for space nearby. Mattress Giant just doesn’t want to talk about it.
The property’s owner is its eastern neighbor, the Children’s Assessment Center. A planned expansion to the John M. O’Quinn campus, which now faces Bolsover, would eat the deeper chunk of the shopping center, leaving 0.8 acres on Kirby for somebody else to develop. Here’s the part that’s toast:
COMMENT OF THE DAY: 104-ACRE VACANT FORMER ASTROWORLD SITE IS A DEVELOPER’S DREAM “Can’t wait to see the giant box rolled in and opened to reveal a strip center with: 1) Starbucks on the corner 2) Bed, Bath & Beyond 3) Borders|Barnes and Noble (choose one) 4) High-end Dentistry office not covered under any mere mortal’s dental plan 5) Wine bar 6) $6 ice cream place 7) vitamin/supplement retailer 8) standard set of strip center restaurants (Chinese, Italian, Tex-Mex deli, etc.) 9) if the place is classy enough, may graduate to having Next Tier of ethnic-themed restaurants (Thai, Vietnamese, Indian, Greek, etc.) 10) Starbucks on the opposite corner” [SL, commenting on Fort Worth Developer Buys Himself an Empty AstroWorld]
Come June, promise the owners of SSQQ, the popular social dance studio will reopen just to the west of Restaurant Depot, in the former Kmart beached on the asphalt shores at 20th St. and T.C. Jester near Timbergrove.
Last weekend, SSQQ shut down the Bellaire strip-center site it had occupied for 30 years. Why’d it up and leave? Doctors’ orders, reports the Bellaire Examiner‘s Steve Mark: First Street Hospital, which owns the center on Bissonnet just outside the Loop, is planning an expansion that would slice the center in half, knocking out SSQQ, Sweetwater Pool & Patio, and a Radio Shack. (Not all is lost, though: Charlie’s Hamburgers and that nail salon in the center at 4803 Bissonnet will get to stay.)
Besides easy access to restaurant supplies, what’s in store for students taking a swing at new Bachata and Whip moves at SSQQ’s new location?
COMMENT OF THE DAY: CHIN UP, WEINGARTEN! “I don’t totally understand Weingarten’s defensiveness here. After all, they totally earned the wrath of people in the community who would like to see older, architecturally significant buildings preserved in some fashion when they tore down the north side of the shopping center at Shepherd and Gray. They made a calculation then that peoples’ upset feelings would not outweigh the financial benefit. Given this, why do they care what people think now? Did the negative publicity before actually hurt them in any material way? (I’ve made a point of not shopping at the new B&N even though I am a compulsive book-buyer, but I have no illusions that me and people like me have any impact on their bottom line.)” [RWB, commenting on Weingarten Exec Blames Those Alabama Theater Demolition Drawings on Staples]
Today’s Houston Business Journal features a rather surprising statement from a Weingarten Realty executive about the company’s recent plans for the vacant Alabama Theater. Late last month you’ll remember, Swamplot broke the story that a local construction company was obtaining bids from subcontractors for an extensive interior demolition of the vacant 1939 Art Deco movie theater at 2922 South Shepherd Dr. — using drawings prepared for Weingarten Realty by a local architecture firm.
Since that time, representatives of Weingarten, a publicly traded REIT, have been pushing back on the story to local reporters with a series of carefully worded statements. One such statement, delivered to both Swamplot and its readers the same day the story broke, by a spokesperson under contract to Weingarten, was typical: Weingarten, Swamplot was told, “can’t verify the authenticity of the drawings you posted on your blog one way or the other.”
Aw, shucks. And yet — if this statement in today’s HBJ is to be believed — it appears they certainly could have verified them:
Patti Bender, executive vice president with Weingarten, says the preliminary design that recently hit the streets was part of a site pricing analysis conducted by Staples.
Oh . . . does that mean Weingarten had no part in producing those drawings that showed exactly how the theater was to be gutted and its sloping floor encased in concrete? It was all Staples’s doing? Of course, those of you who have been following the story here on Swamplot realize there are just a couple problems with that statement:
