09/05/12 12:15pm

What’s going to replace the Willowick Court Townhomes (at right) at the corner of West Alabama and Las Palmas, west of Weslayan? Newer townhomes — at least for the strip along the west side of Las Palmas, on the western edge of the property. It’ll be covered with 38 3-story townhomes, about a dozen of them with rooftop patios. For the larger portion of the 11-acre site, Martin Fein Interests is planning 2 big blocks of apartments. The block pictured above from West Alabama will have 325 units in 6 stories on top of a 2-level parking garage, with a garden and pool in the courtyard and towers at the corners. Another 188-unit block lining West Main will have 7 stories on top of a single-level garage and feature an 8th-floor wine bar on the southeast corner (at left in the above image), a source tells Swamplot. The view below shows that building’s southeast corner, with the larger structure visible beyond it:

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08/09/12 2:07pm

“The thing went up in about two weeks,” writes the camera-toting bicyclist from the First Ward who sends us these photos of the new Kroger under construction at 1400 Studemont, just south of I-10. “I was hoping they would link it through to Target,” continues the tipster. “As all this industrial stuff redevelops in that area they are going to have to break up some of the super blocks or the traffic is going to be a mess.” As part of a “380” tax-reimbursement agreement approved by the city last year, Kroger promised to build a block of Summer St. behind the store (part of which is labeled Hicks St. on the plan shown here) to connect it through to Studemont. There’s also a tighter route:

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06/15/12 10:24am

That new vaguely Mayan looking mound with the flat roof suspended above it at the head of Rice University’s forlorn upper quad is artist James Turrell’s latest Skyspace — one of only 73 in various incarnations he’s made so far, and the the second in Houston. But it’s the first Skyspace designed for music — the kind you’d want to listen to while staring through a 14-ft.-by-14-ft. opening in a raised roof at the darkening sky around sundown, or a lightening one at dawn.

In advance of any unique OMG-the-sky-is-changing-color experiences you might have while sitting in it, the structure has been named Twilight Epiphany. It sits just outside the east entrance of Rice’s Shepherd School of Music. A sold-out, silent performance in the space last night marked the space’s public opening. Last month, the new structure, designed by Turrell with New York architects Thomas Phifer and Partners, posed for a photo shoot with photographer Karen Dressel:

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05/11/12 10:28am

“A couple things still remain up in the air,” about the new Walmart going in just south of Idylwood, reports East End blogger Lauren H. from that neighborhood’s front lines: “Like whether they are going to hire security or whether they are going to be able to sell alcohol.” After recent plan changes, the neighborhood’s southern border will end up with a buffer of at least 61 ft. from the big-box store’s parking lot. The store has grown, too: an additional 35,000 sq. ft. from a reduction announced early last year, made easier after the company bought the property directly on the corner of Wayside and the Gulf Fwy. feeder. It’ll end up at approximately 185,000 sq. ft., according to the recent plans she’s posted on her site. The corner purchase makes possible a second entrance from the feeder road, and resulted in a shift of the store’s garden and auto center to its Idylwood side:

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05/09/12 8:30am

Photo of Blumenthal Sheet Metal’s “MetalHenge” in the Fifth Ward: Candace Garcia via Swamplot Flickr Pool

04/25/12 1:48pm

GROWING UP WITH MCDONALD’S If it seems like there’s a McDonald’s on every corner in Texas, it’s because the hamburger giant keeps building 40 to 50 new pad sites a year, says the company’s regional real estate manager. Reporter Catie Dixon explains: “The company isn’t increasing its density; it’s just trying to keep up with Texas’ rapid population growth.” [Real Estate Bisnow] Photo of McDonald’s at 1421 Nasa Rd.: Hua Bao

04/12/12 12:21pm

Schemes for half-billion-dollar eco-resort theme parks are delicate things. To make them happen, it sure helps if everyone believes! Close your eyes and wish it, then: a 500-acre eco-themed, dinosaur-flavored earth science fantasyland, resort, conference center, and retail development just 30 miles northeast of Downtown Houston on Hwy. 59, and just a short drive from Bush Intercontinental airport. Imagine the synergy: Rides, a water park, a museum and scientific institute, ecotourism, a volcano and retreating glacier, shops, restaurants, and shows! Pterodactyls!

But darn, wouldn’t you just figure a ragtag bunch of cynical, self-proclaimed investigating journalist types would get in the way, asking all sorts of annoying questions? Like: How come the East Montgomery County Improvement District has been funneling millions of dollars to various development entities connected to the proposed EarthQuest Resort in New Caney, a hefty chunk of which appears to have been spent on lavish travel junkets for the developers, EMCID officials, and their families — to view theme parks in Las Vegas, Florida, Canada, the Bahamas, Japan, China, and Vietnam? And: How come EMCID officials now claim not to know the current status of the now apparently bankrupt EarthQuest Institute, which for several years listed the EMCID’s address as its own on tax forms, and when the 2 organizations have the same board chairman? And: Who’s even gonna build this thing now that the landowner has declared bankruptcy and the developer won’t show up to community meetings?

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02/21/12 10:29am

Is this the right address? As Swamplot noted last week, Trader Joe’s received a sales-tax permit for a Memorial-area location at 1440 S. Voss at the end of last year. But the company hasn’t officially announced the locations for its Houston stores yet. Swamplot photographer Candace Garcia poked around the scene on Voss between San Felipe and Woodway over the weekend, to scope out any preparations going on there for a TJ’s landing. There didn’t appear to be any.

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02/14/12 1:59pm

There are more than enough bugs to go around in the NuHabitat beta that officially went live yesterday, but the brand-new real-estate listings website does have one killer feature with the potential to shake up Houston’s real-estate landscape. To registered users, NuHabitat coughs up a set of details that until now were available only to real estate agents: date-by-date, blow-by-blow pricing histories for listed properties — even if the MLS numbers have changed. With these little kittens wandering out of the bag, there aren’t a whole lot of top-secret MLS data fields left to the exclusive domain of real-estate agents.

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01/10/12 12:29pm

Yesterday a few technical glitches got in the way of Swamplot’s plans to post videos showing the last moments of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center’s Houston Main Building, the iconic 18-story limestone-clad building at 1100 Holcombe Blvd. once known as the Prudential Tower, which was demolished over the weekend. But they’re here now. Enjoy!

Jarringly, the official video below tacks an animated version of M.D. Anderson’s “Making Cancer History” tagline onto the end of the well-documented urban rupture — allowing us to imagine that this violent implosion is merely the urban expression of the institution’s core cancer-eradicating mission. Cancer be gone! in 10 . . . 9 . . .

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12/14/11 5:40pm

Last week, Trammell Crow Residential shared preliminary plans for its proposed Alexan West University apartments with its future neighbors in Houston’s Sunset Terrace and Montclair subdivisions. The design presented to the civic association is taller, denser, fancier, and more brightly illuminated than the 40-year-old garden-style apartments it will replace. Currently home to the Courts at West University, the site is located at Law and Bissonnet streets. That’s near but not in West U. The developer’s replat of the 2.54 acre site goes before Houston’s planning commission tomorrow.

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12/14/11 10:44am

Last night, nominations closed for 2 more categories in this year’s Swamplot Awards for Houston Real Estate. The ballots in only 3 categories remain open, but they’re biggies: 2011’s Best Neighborhood Upgrade, Neighborhood of the Year, and Greatest Moment in Houston Real Estate. If you’ve got a great suggestion for any of these award categories, you have just a short time left to get it to us (until midnight tonight for the first 2 and until midnight Thursday night for Greatest Moment). And here’s a tip: Sure, it’s nice to get all those standard one-word nominations — like, say, “Katy!” But to make it onto the official ballot, a nominee needs something more: Your unique and quotable explanation for why it deserves that particular award.

One by one, we’re now posting the official ballots for the other categories. We’ve got 2 of them available for voting already: Favorite Houston Design Cliché and Best Demolition. Have you voted yet? Next up: Best Parking Lot Dining Experience.