The vacant Settegast Kopf funeral home on Kirby and Colquitt, long the butt of jokes from the proprietors of Radio Music Theater across the street, will soon be home to as many as 4 separate bars, according to plans now working their way through the city permit office. Club Rush, a Railhouse Restaurant and Bar, and Twist Bar are the names attached to the permit applications, though a comment from the fire marshal notes that the plans themselves label the establishments Twist, Fountain Bar, Club R Oak, and Hendricks Pub. It looks like the Hendricks Pub would be carved out of the former Chase Bank drive-thru next door at 3312 Kirby; a TABC application for that building is tied to an attorney by that name.
The entire block of Kirby between Colquitt and West Main, including the 2-story retail building on the north end that includes a Cafe Express, is owned by an entity controlled by New York investment firm Thor Equities, though New Regional Planning broker (and planning commission member) Blake Tartt III, who sold it to them 3 years ago, still has a sign out front. Thor’s plan to build a complex called the Kirby Collection on the site apparently stalled not long after it was announced, though the project still has a placeholder page on the company’s website.
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Culturemap’s Caroline Gallay reports that an unidentified local bar owner told her that he had seen “what looks to be a planned interior pool” under construction in the former funeral home.
Here’s the drive-thru. May we take your order?
- Thor locks up Kirby block [Houston Business Journals]
- The Kirby Collection [Thor Equities]
- Bar/restaurant complex slated for former Upper Kirby funeral home: Where will they park? [Culturemap]
Photos: Aaron Carpenter
I don’t often say this, but tear it down and rebuild. They tried to put restaurants/night clubs into the old Geo. H. Lewis & Sons Funeral Home building at Sage and Westheimer. EPIC FAIL!
Yep, I won’t be doing any drinking in that building. Attended too many funerals there; which would have been helped by an open bar.
Wow – this is a sticky wicket. What say all the preservation sceptics who insist that Houston changes so rapidly that no one will remember what used to be at a particular spot a year from now?
Shepherd Square v2.o
Sorry; I should have qualified that down to something that has been there for a number of years as the funeral home has.
YUCK…
The Corner of Bering and San Felipe has a vacant funeral home that would make a great Brazilian Steakhouse.
A Brazilian steakhouse? What would they call it? Cremainchos?
There will be something different there every year or every few months until they tear it down. This is what happened at the old funeral home that was at Westhiemer and Sage.
“Thor Equities?”
OK, so why are the funeral homes folding? Folks are still gonna die, right? Have these funeral businesses just moved or what? If I counted correctly, that’s three of them that have been mentioned right here.
I don’t think I’d be going to a bar that used to be a funeral home either. It just doesn’t seem …er, seemly.
The George H. Lewis & Sons Funeral Home at Westheimer and Sage moved decades ago to Bering and are still in business. Earthman built right down the street on San Felipe and Bering. When did they shut down?
This is directed to EMME, to answer your question as to why the J.B. Earthman Funeral Home shut down (located at San Felipe at Bering). Earthman Funeral Directors’ parent company- Alderwoods was bought out by SCI in 2006 and to satisfy the anti-trust regulations of the buyout, SCI had to close the J.B. Earthman Funeral Home since it was/is considered to be “top tier” in the Alderwoods company and its direct competitor was/is George H. Lewis & Sons.
Yummy! I’ll have the Formaldehyde Mojito, shaken not stirred…..
There’s something inherently charming about a funeral home named Earthman’s.