09/13/18 8:30am

Photo of the University of Houston-Downtown: Marc Longoria via Swamplot Flickr Pool

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04/11/18 8:30am

Photo of Gus S. Wortham Fountain: Marc Longoria via Swamplot Flickr Pool

Headlines
03/23/18 8:30am

Photo of Eleanor Tinsley Park: Marc Longoria via Swamplot Flickr Pool

Headlines
02/07/18 12:00pm

Today’s sponsor is trash-can cleaning company Blast Can. Thanks for supporting this site!

How dirty and smelly are your home’s city trash and recycling containers? Have you ever tried to clean them yourself after pickup? How’d that go? Well . . . what if you could hire a service to clean them for you?

Houston, meet Blast Can Trash Can Cleaners. The company’s custom-built container-cleaning truck comes to your home and cleans your trash and recycling cans in minutes — in an affordable and eco-friendly way. Blast Can’s approach is unique in this city — and has quickly won it praise from satisfied clients.

“I was in the trash and recycling business for over a decade and saw this problem,” says John Mixon, the company’s founder. “We’re offering a smart and easy way to make stinky trash cans a thing of the past.”

The Blast Can cleaning method helps eliminate the bacteria, germs, odor, and filth that can live in garbage and recycle cans. Cleaning trucks lift and clean the cans right at the side of the curb.

The company’s truck uses extremely hot water during the process, but dirty water isn’t poured back on the street afterward. Instead, it’s all collected in the trucks after washing. Services are scheduled on the same day as your trash and recycling pickup.

If you’d like more information on this service — including pricing, a video of the truck in action, and a map showing where the company currently offers service, check out the Blast Can website. Both one-time and recurring plans are available.

Do you offer a service Houston needs to know about? Become a Swamplot Sponsor of the Day.

Sponsor of the Day
01/23/18 4:00pm

The H-shaped, 1961 structure at 5956 Bayou Glen Rd. now listed at $2.8 million sits right on the elbow of street, where the mostly east-west road turns south before ending 2 houses down, a couple blocks north of Woodway Dr. A set of double doors — shown open in the photo above — fronts the brick courtyard outside the entrance to the 4,732-sq.-ft house. Then a glassy hallway runs sideways when you walk in:

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Center Court
01/09/18 5:00pm

The steel is up on the site of Lamar High School’s new campus, nearly in its sophomore year of construction adjacent to the existing building at 3325 Westheimer. Photos of the new schoolhouse — which will front Eastside St. to the east of the old building — show it still in assembly on what used to be the high school’s track and athletic field. When it’s done, the planned 4-story structure will house 2,800 to 3,100 students, who will spend most of their class time in the new building, but still be able to access its neighbor through a 2nd-story concourse that links to it.

The perspective section below from architect Perkins + Will slices open both the planned and existing buildings and peers south into their classrooms. On the right, it shows the concourse plugging into the old building’s gray exterior:

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Secondary Education Building
06/05/17 3:00pm

There’s been a bit of activity inside the former restaurant space under the slanted roofline at the 2311 W. Alabama St. mini-mall on the corner of Revere St., a reader notes. A dumpster is parked outside; workers have been poking, prodding, and injecting all sorts of reconfigurations to the interiors.

No new restaurant is going in, though: Ruggles Green decamped from the space at the beginning of 2015 — and reopened a few hundred feet to the east the following year. The adjacent Persona Medical Spa is now expanding into the 2,122-sq.-ft. former dining space, making more room for its full range of massaging, de-wrinkling, plumping, resurfacing, pricking, heating, and cooling services.

Photo: sfalumberjack

Revere St. Retail Reinvigoration
06/02/17 8:30am

Photo of the Texas Packing Company building: Patrick Feller via Swamplot Flickr Pool

Headlines
05/31/17 1:45pm

That big metal-skinned house on Centenary St. in West University is on the market as of yesterday, listed for a smidge under $2.2 million.  The home’s construction in the early 2010’s touched off some nasty comments and light contractor harrassment from some of the folks in the area (though architect Cameron Armstrong said around the time of completion that most folks thought the final product was fine).  The big shiny box holds 2 floors and 4 bedrooms, with a rooftop patio that allows visitors to rise above any neighborhood hubbub and gaze off toward the Medical Center:

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Shiny New Listing
05/26/17 6:00pm

Okay. So. There’s a little bit of rain scheduled for Monday — but so far none of the forecasts seem to be showing anything like what turned up during the last few Memorial Day weekends. Swamplot’s gonna go ahead and take the day off anyway. Here’s hoping you and yours have a fun, safe, and largely dry break, if you’re getting one. (And if you don’t — we’ll still meet you back here on Tuesday to wade back into the Bayou City’s murky real estate waters, together.)

Photo of I-45, May 2015: Marc Longoria

Remembering Memorial Day
05/17/17 8:30am

Photo of Spring Branch: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool

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