Note: This story has been updated.
The first tenant slated for the soon-to-be redone Imperial Linen & Cleaners building a block west of the Green Line’s Coffee Plant/2nd Ward stop is now on its way there courtesy of Mike Sammons, one of the partners behind Midtown’s 13 Celsius, Mongoose vs Cobra, and Weights + Measures. A TABC notice is up on the building, reports a keen HAIF user, and last month an entity linked to Sammons called How To Survive on Land and Sea LLC filed plans to start converting 2,371 sq.-ft. of interior room into a bar.
That’ll still leave lots of space for the other attractions that developer Jeff Kaplan wants to usher into the 19,969-sq.-ft. structure shown above that he’s now calling the Plant at Harrisburg. (One of them would’ve been Xela Coffee Roasters; it announced plans to move into the building in 2016 but has since rerouted to an forthcoming spot on Canal St., 5 blocks west of Lockwood) Before Kaplan made public his intention to transform the former cleaners, it played host to an art space that presented “visual art, literary readings and guided meditations; in the interest of, open-minded exploration of the transubstantiative properties of art and space.”
That creative endeavor is over — but speaking of transubstantiation, new windows shown above fronting both the south and west sides of the building will reopen its planned retail spaces to look out on Harrisburg and Sampson St. like they used to:
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And in place of the IMPERIAL LAUNDRY & CLEANERS lettering up above the front glass, signage for one of the new tenants will appear.
The laundry business, formally known as Imperial Linen Services, recently left the building where it’d been since 1943 for this way bigger, 50,000-sq.-ft. facility in Stafford off W. Airport Blvd.:
- 3401 Harrisburg Blvd. [LoopNet via HAIF]
- New Facility [Imperial Linen Services]
Photos LoopNet (historical); Self Actualization (current); Imperial Linen Services (new facility). Rendering: LoopNet
So nice to see new life given to this old building. Kudos to the developers!
Is there really going to be a wood shop? Power tools and beer don’t mix well.
Not the Red Line.
@Robert Anthony Rutherford
Thanks for catching this! We’ve made a correction.
Have you ever traveled down Harrisburg from downtown parallel to the too short to really use Metro Green Line in a line of traffic hoping against hope you are driving in the correct lane to go straight? When there are a lot of cars you can’t see the pavement markings and there’s no straight is this a way you bobo arrow signs on the street light poles above. Whoops, right lane is straight. Oh, Hells Bells, next light, left lane is straight, then left , then right is straight. Whatever. Sympathetic drivers help a lot.
When driving Harrisburg into town I witnessed a weary-of-waiting resident come flying out of one of the neighborhood side streets sans a signal only to T-bone and spin a car like a toy top in front of me. Stop sign? What stop sign? The train is coming! How many incidents like that are there along the Green Line? I waited with the driver for the law to come (forever it seemed because they said they had to locate a Spanish speaking cop to make the call) all the while watching the empty Metro train cars go by both ways and trying to keep the dazed driver safe. Depending on your perspective, providence would have it the automobile didn’t land on the tracks.
For those that call the on the patron Saints Christopher, Menas and Bibiana a holy war continues with Saints Arnulf, Gambrinus, and Wenceslaus to make it through.