Strip Centers

Avondale
04/10/13 4:10pm

A Change Afoot at Old Tejas Boots Home on Westheimer

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Demolitions, Land Development, Montrose, Openings and Closings, Proposed Developments, Redevelopment, Retail, Shopping Centers, Strip Centers
2 Comments

Why did Tejas Boots leave 208 Westheimer? Owner Mike Kuykendahl says that the family that owns the li’l strip center (above) that Tejas Boots shared with Hollywood Food & Cigars asked them to: The family gave the tenants 2 months to move, explaining that they’re considering upgrading the 4,100-sq.-ft. building, says Kuykendahl, or tearing it down and redeveloping that corner of Helen and Westheimer. Tejas Boots had been here since 1984; they’ve relocated just a few blocks west into the browner, newer retail strip stack shown at right at 415 Westheimer. It’s not much as signs go, but that faint horizontal smudge beneath the Green Park Pilates logo marks the spot where the bootmakers can now be found.

Photos: Allyn West

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Avondale
04/05/13 11:30am

Westheimer Bootmakers To Reopen Shop a Few Blocks West on Westheimer

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Commercial Real Estate, Montrose, Openings and Closings, Retail, Strip Centers
3 Comments

This photo of the strip center just west of the Lower Westheimer restaurant row shows the recently closed Tejas Custom Boots and Hollywood Food & Cigars. A Swamplot reader says that a sign posted in the window here at Helen and 208 Westheimer says that the alligator- and ostrich-unfriendly bootmakers will be moving the stretching and stitching operations farther west to the 400 block of Westheimer. As of Friday morning, calls to Tejas Custom Boots for comment about the relocation and reopening haven’t been returned. City records show that the 4,100-sq.-ft. 1960 building and 11,322-sq.-ft. property are owned by a single family.

Photo: Swamplot inbox

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Northside
04/01/13 2:00pm

Alamo Tamales Now Serving in the Northside

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Openings and Closings, Restaurants, Strip Centers
No Comments

And it looks like the Alamo is standing on its own again: Previously demolished, Alamo Tamales re-appeared last summer as nothing but leaning walls and steel rods, but it re-opened with a stalwart uprightness on Berry Rd. on Friday. Architect Tim Cisneros of Cisneros Design Studio sends the photo of the restaurant’s finished facade sandwiched between a dessert bar and cantina in the 21,000-sq.-ft. Northside strip center west of Irvington Blvd.

Photos: Cisneros Design Studio

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Comments
03/25/13 1:30pm

Comment of the Day: The Strip Center Mandate

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Quicklink, Retail, Strip Centers
7 Comments

COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE STRIP CENTER MANDATE “Wait, so there’s no nail salon now? Is that legal? I thought that municipal laws required all strip centers of a certain size to have tax prep, a dry cleaner, a nail salon, and a coffee shop/ice cream parlor/yogurt bar.” [Sihaya, commenting on Telephone Road’s New Sweet and Sweat Shops]

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Gulfgate
03/13/13 11:15am

Frank’s Grill To Move to New Telephone Rd. Strip Center

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New Construction, Openings and Closings, Restaurants, Strip Centers
7 Comments

Just outside the Loop on Telephone Rd., Frank’s Grill — or Rank’s Rill, as Hurricane Ike rendered the standalone greasy spoon’s sign — will be closing and moving south about a tenth of a mile into the larger suite shown here in the recently completed strip center on Telephone and Fairway. The strip center replaced a car dealership and a body shop. There’s no date set for Frank’s move, but an employee tells Swamplot that it should be happening in about two months.

Photos: Allyn West

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Buying and Selling
02/20/13 4:15pm

Office Monopoly

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Commercial Real Estate, Franchises and Chain Stores, Quicklink, Strip Centers
8 Comments

OFFICE MONOPOLY Note: Story has been updated. Houston Business Journal reports that Office Max and Office Depot are combining into one global office force to be reckoned with. The $1.17-billion, all-stock deal between the two big-box paper pushers is expected to create a single company — with less overhead and less overlap, too, you’d think — that’s worth $18 billion. Also, the Houston Chronicle‘s Nancy Sarnoff reports that developer Ed Wulfe says that “9 or 10 of the 40 Office Depots and 19 Office Maxes in greater Houston are close enough to each other that one will have to close.” One of those, pictured here, is located in the strip center at Richmond and Kirby. [Houston Business Journal; Prime Property] Photo: Panoramio user Wolfgang Houston

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Openings and Closings
02/08/13 11:35am

Swingers Club Opening Soon in I-10 Strip Center

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Retail, Strip Centers, Town and Country Village
6 Comments

Sharing Benignus Plaza with Jason’s Deli, Texas State Optical, and a salon, this 2,500-sq.-ft. suite at 10321 Katy Freeway will be the first Club Champion store in Texas. The Chicago-based company sells custom golf clubs built to fit, and it provides a demo space for practice. Sitting just east of Town & Country Village, the Benignus Plaza store will be almost directly across I-10 from Hicks Ventures’ proposed Block 10 West Office Park.

Photos: Swamplot inbox

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Buildings for Sale
12/10/12 2:06pm

Yale St. Grill Says It’s Unlikely To Be Bothered by Building Sale

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Houston Heights, Restaurants, Strip Centers
16 Comments

The proto-strip center that houses Yale St. Grill in the Heights went up for sale earlier this month, but Barbara Guidry, who’s been the vintage-y diner’s manager for 30 years, doesn’t expect any changes: “[The building’s] been sold before,” she tells Swamplot, “but this is like an institution.” The 1952 building has been listed at just under $3.2 million. The restaurant shares the 18,000-sq.-ft. structure — located a couple blocks north of the 19th St. shopping district — with Heights Antiques and Dr. Ullman, an optometrist. All 3 are long-term tenants on triple-net leases. Guidry says, “No, this place is a gold mine.”

Photo: Flickr user jgeo

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Cypress
10/05/12 3:01pm

Unbaking a Lonely Strip Center Spot

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Financing, Quicklink, Retail, Strip Centers
4 Comments

UNBAKING A LONELY STRIP CENTER SPOT Saddled with a “terrible” location — a lonely strip center on Barker Cypress Rd., halfway between Katy and Cypress, year-old Ranch Bakery is taking to Kickstarter to raise funds to — break its lease? No — start up a food truck, explains owner John Homrighausen. It’ll be a souped-up delivery truck with “a giant pair of longhorns for the front & a horn that plays ‘The Eyes Of Texas,'” he promises. The spot at 5431 Barker Cypress is good for his catering company, Homrighausen explains, “but an unfortunate one for a retail store.” He hopes to lure fans of kolaches and Big John’s King Kong Ding Dongs to donate a total of $19,965 towards the effort by the end of the month. [Kickstarter, via Eater Houston] Photo: Ranch Bakery

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Openings and Closings
09/19/12 1:34pm

Maybe the Westchase SmashBurger’s Successor Will Do Better, Dollars to Donuts

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Restaurants, Strip Centers, Westchase
3 Comments

There’s a changing of the guard at the strip-center endcap at 10705 Westheimer in Westchase. Workers have been taking down the signs; the Smashburger in that location closed for good on Monday. A reader claims that the burger joint, on a small strip directly adjacent to the McDonald’s at the corner of Wallingford Rd., was the chain’s worst-performing store. And: that the location has already been reserved for Dunkin’ Donuts. A franchise group plans to open 16 new Dunkin’ Donuts stores in Houston over the next 6 years.

Photos: Swamplot inbox

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Near Northside
07/20/12 5:29pm

First Stand-Up at the Alamo Tamale

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New Construction, Nightlife, Restaurants, Retail, Strip Centers
6 Comments

The Alamo reinforcements have arrived! Okay, they’re just temporary steel props, but they’re now holding the tilt-up concrete facade out of the mud around the tamale-themed strip center Warwick Construction is putting up on Houston’s Northside. The 23,000-sq.-ft. Alamo Tamale Company development at 809 Berry Rd. just west of Irvington will include a bakery, a reception hall, a restaurant and cantina, a dessert bar, and — yes — an on-site tamale-construction facility. Plus: a drive-thru meant to accommodate about 20 tamale-pickup vehicles.

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Buying and Selling
06/19/12 2:24pm

Strip Center at the Corner of Westheimer and Montrose: Sold

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Commercial Real Estate, Houston Architects, Houston Landmarks, Lower Westheimer, Montrose, Strip Centers
20 Comments

The half-empty strip center left over from a series of unfortunate redos of City Hall architect Joseph Finger’s 1937 Tower Community Center (which once served as an art-deco companion piece to the former Tower Theater across the street) is now under contract to a new owner, along with the entire 2.86-acre block at the southwest corner of Westheimer and Montrose. That’s the word from a posting on the property’s listing site noted by Going Up! City, but the listing brokers at HFF aren’t providing any additional information.

Unless someone wants to spill the beans on the purchaser’s identity or any plans for the current home of Half Price Books, Spec’s, Papa John’s, and 3-6-9 China Bistro (along with the standalone Jack-in-the-Box at Montrose and Lovett) before then, you’ll have to wait until the seller issues a press release — which will happen sometime next week, a source tells Swamplot — for additional details. The property went on the market in early March.

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Quicklink
04/18/12 1:20pm

Strip Center Punishment

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Retail, Strip Centers
7 Comments

STRIP CENTER PUNISHMENT Houston’s “preeminent BDSM dungeon,” writes the Houston Press‘s Jef with One F, “started out as a simple one-room space in the Galleria area in 2010, but now hosts a multi-room facility that serves as one of the few full-time dungeons in the city.” A FourSquare listing reveals that Maison Noir is lodged inside “erotic fantasy superstore” Bizarre Times, in the crotch of a strip center on Winrock just north of Westheimer, across the street from the Penthouse Club and the Super Clean Carwash. “The facility is outfitted with many pieces of bondage furniture such as a vertical steel cage, a St. Andrews Cross, a CBT chair . . . multiple spanking benches, a vertical rack, and a bondage table.” [Art Attack] Update, 4/20: A couple of dominatrixes have sternly corrected us; Maison Noir moved from its Winrock location earlier this year. Photo: LoopNet

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Historic Preservation
03/12/12 1:22pm

Houston Preservationists Move to Strip Center, Change Name

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Office Space, Quicklink, River Oaks, Strip Centers
12 Comments

HOUSTON PRESERVATIONISTS MOVE TO STRIP CENTER, CHANGE NAME The Greater Houston Preservation Alliance’s days as a scrappy preservation organization housed in offices in the historic 1929 Gulf building downtown are over. From now on, it’ll be a scrappy preservation organization housed in offices in a Westheimer Rd. strip center. Okay, it’s that fancy brick-clad River Oaks strip center with the argyle tower across at 3272 Westheimer, across from Lamar High School. And it’s name is gonna change too. The GHPA shall now be known as Preservation Houston. [GHPA Preservation Houston; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Jim Parsons/Preservation Houston

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New Construction
02/21/12 1:55pm

Research and Technology: Solving the Latest Woodlands Sushi Case

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Proposed Developments, Restaurants, Strip Centers, The Woodlands
3 Comments

Turns out this “mysterious construction” going up on the corner of Technology Forest Blvd. and Research Forest Dr. in The Woodlands isn’t meant to house some company’s secret R&D project — instead, it’ll house investigations of a more familiar technology. No name has been announced, but the operator of 2 Sakekawa Japanese Steak House & Sushi Bars (there’s another one Indian Springs Village already) bought the 1.21-acre pad site last year. These photos came from a Swamplot reader who was curious about the unidentified project — but then answered her own question by uncovering the secret sushi plot for us:

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