MIDTOWN SEARS CLOSURE NETS RICE 9 ACRES NEAR THE WHEELER TRANSIT CENTER 
The company that manages Rice University’s $5.3 billion endowment last week bought out the 28 years remaining on a 99-year lease the university had signed with the Sears department store on its Midtown property back in 1945. The Sears at 4201 Main St., which opened in 1939, will close in late January, after a liquidation sale beginning early next month, it was announced today. Rice also bought 3 adjacent acres owned by Sears, giving the university a multi-block 9.4-acre chunk of land near Metro’s Wheeler Transit Center and the Southwest Fwy. it can now decide what to do with. Among the properties on that land: the Sears Auto Center at 4111 Fannin and the Fiesta Mart at 4200 San Jacinto, which has a lease that runs for 2 more years. The Sears’s original art deco façade was covered with metal panels in the 1960s. Rice prez David Leebron says the university will now “initiate a process of thoughtful planning for the future use of this land,” with a yearlong study of options directed by the Rice Management Company. [Houston Chronicle; Click2Houston] Photo: Pete Molick via Swamplot Flickr pool
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Skanska is touting the green roof it’s planning atop the 11-story parking-garage portion of the Capitol Tower as a “Sky Park”: It’ll be the “first and largest green roof in Downtown Houston to be open to all building tenants,” the development company says. The 24,000-sq.-ft. roofscape will feature pathways surrounded by plants, grasses, and a few decorative trees; arbors with roofs modeled after the pipe-assembly structure seen at Rice’s Brochstein Pavilion, and “an infinity edge that makes it appear as though the park is floating in the sky.” Plus: an automated irrigation system that’ll pull water from the building’s 50,000-gallon rainwater cistern. Looming neighbors will include the Esperson Building, 712 Main, and Pennzoil Place.
Access to the roofscape, which was designed by OJB Landscape Architecture, will be through west-facing doors on the building’s 12th floor, the 35-story building’s lowest office level:
Green Roofs Downtown
Here’s a timelapse video showing workers creating a plaza in front of the lone extant office building in Generation Park’s Redemption Square development just inside the northeast corner of Beltway 8. The pavers were laid a little more carefully than shown here late last month in front of the brand-new 5-story, 86,523-sq.-ft. building at 250 Assay St.
Other than the 5-level parking garage structure now behind it — and the landscape improvements now going in — there’s not a whole lot crowding the building so far, as the earlier aerial photo above shows. The Beltway is in the foreground of that image; here’s a closer-in view of the east side of 250 Assay St. shortly before the trees and pavers went in:
Generating Generation Park
- Only 7 Out of 39 Texas Counties That Flooded During Harvey Have Flood Maps That Are Based on Rains from This Century [Houston Chronicle ($)]
- More Than 100 City-Owned Cars and Trucks Were Parked in Underground Parking Facilities Flooded During Harvey [abc13]
- TxDOT Lightens Load on I-69 San Jacinto River Bridge Damaged During Harvey [Houston Chronicle]
- Houston Captured Nearly One-Third of the Annual Market for Condos and Townhomes in Texas Year-Over-Year in July [Houston Chronicle]
- Houston Ranks No. 1 Nationally for Industrial Construction in the Past Decade, According to CommercialCafe [Houston Chronicle]
- Allen Harrison Co. Starts Construction on Citadel Apartment Complex in the Heights [HBJ ($)]
- 2-Story Restaurant Pelican Joe’s Opening on the Strand This Month [HBJ]
- Surface Parking Lot Now Open at Former Houston Chronicle Building Site Downtown [abc13]
- Los Angeles Boozy Boba Shop Mint Thai Kitchen Opening in River Oaks This Week [Eater Houston]
- Momentum Indoor Climbing Gym Opening Second Houston Location Next Month in the First Ward [Houstonia]
- Frankel’s Costume Shop on Polk St. To Close Before the End of the Year, After 67 Years in Business [Houston Chronicle]
- Number of Craft Breweries in Texas Grew 990% in the Past 12 years, Finds CBRE [Bisnow]
Photo of crape myrtles near Buffalo Bayou after Harvey: Marc Longoria via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
Merciless is the law of nature, and rapidly and irresistibly we are drawn to our demolition.
- 29411 Commons Forest Dr. [HAR]
Here’s the backside of the 12-story former KBR office building that Midway has for the last week lit up with a new message in hopes of signaling to Amazon and avian passers-by that it buys into the concept underlying many of Jeff Bezos’s business decisions. Also: That the surrounding 150-acre property on the north side of Buffalo Bayou east of Downtown Houston that the company has renamed East River would make a fine second headquarters campus for the online and offline retailer. Day 1 is the name assigned successively to 3 different Amazon buildings in Seattle, the latest a new 37-story downtown tower that itself features a lit-up sign on its lower floors that reads HELLO WORLD. Day 1 is also a common catchphrase in the company, a reminder to itself, among other things, to focus on outcomes rather than process and to make decisions quickly, even if you have less information available than you’d like.
Day 1 for this Houston sign was October 2nd. As a reader reported last week, since then the vacant building has been sporting the company’s NASDAQ ticker symbol on the opposite side to match:
Day 1 on Clinton Dr.
Somebody carefully disassembled the recently installed quilting sculpture in front of the Bermac Arts Building at 4101 San Jacinto St. just south of Cleburne St. late last week, leaving behind a patchwork of colorful powder-coated-steel pieces on the former bus-stop platform next to the sidewalk. The 8-ft.-tall blue, orange, magenta, yellow, and metallic silver sculpture, called Quilt Peace, was erected at the site on September 20th. It was meant to remain there for 3 months — through next month’s International Quilt Festival at the George R. Brown Convention Center — before being moved to a different Midtown site.
Street Art Taken Apart
The anticipated departure of Hyde Park gift shop Corazon from its perch at the corner of Fairview and Waugh has been delayed by 3 months at least. Although the property it sits on has been sold to a new owner interested in building a trio of townhouses, demolition of the former smithy, antique store, and glass-blowing studio won’t take place this year: Corazon now has a new short-term lease that runs until December 31st and will convert to a month-to-month status after that.
If the lease does get extended for a few months into 2018, it’ll mark the store’s 20th anniversary at 2318 Waugh Dr. In either case, it’ll probably be an awkward extended goodbye: A clearance sale begun in August on the store’s current inventory of Lucha Libre masks, guyaberas, and other items from South and Central American artisan cooperatives is ongoing, but popular items will probably be restocked for the holiday season. The store’s owner is searching for a new location.
- Previously on Swamplot:Â Corazon Now Being Removed from Its Big Red Dot Spot at Waugh and Fairview
Photo: Corazon
Townhome Fodder
- Federal Claims Judge To Consider Consolidating the 46 Lawsuits So Far Filed Over Barker, Addicks Flooding [Houston Chronicle]
- U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Studied But Never Pursued Flood Warning Plan Around the Addicks and Barker Dams in 1995 [Houston Chronicle ($)]
- Greater Houston Partnership: Harvey Business Impact Will Be ‘Short Term’ [CNN]
- What Houston Can Learn from The Woodlands, Springwoods Village, and Cross Creek Ranch [OffCite]
- Spaghetti Warehouse Still Assessing Harvey Damage [KHOU]
- Keeping Track of How Much Money Has Been Raised for Harvey Relief, and Where It’s Going [The Texas Tribune]
- FEMA Extends Hotel Help for Hurricane Harvey Victims to Oct. 24 [Houston Chronicle]
- The Pitfalls of Navigating the FEMA Elevation Grant Process [Houston Public Media]
- Bellaire HS Grad Dennis Quaid Throwing Bellaire Block Party To Raise Money for Harvey Relief [InstantNewsBellaire]
- MetroNational To Open Apartments at Hotel ZaZa Memorial City in January [HBJ; previously on Swamplot]
- Elite Street Capital Acquires 16-Story 2100 West Loop South Office Building [Realty News Report]
- Denver REIT Buys Industrial Distribution Facility in Northwest Houston [Realty News Report]
- 4 Swank Homes on the Market for $6.95M and Up [Houston Chronicle]
- Tilman Fertitta Closes on $2.2B Deal To Buy Houston Rockets [HBJ]
- Big Companies Relocating to Urban Environments To Attract Millennials [Yahoo! Finance]
Photo of Crawford Boxes during game 2: Marc Longoria via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
All that we see or seem is but a demolition within a dream.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: DON’T SAY I DIDN’T WARN YOU ABOUT THE WHOLE MOLD BUSINESS 
“So for homeowners you just cut the sheetrock, and rebuild all of the stuff at 3 feet and go down the road? My feeling is that every house that flooded has some trace of E. Coli and mold. Pretty soon you’ll see mold lawyer commercials suing every contractor that worked in these places. Doctors will soon get in on the action too. Hell, back in 2000 when mold lawsuits were born my framer had a magnetic door sign for ‘mold testing and remediation’ in the back seat of his pick-up. Get ready for it again.” [Sporey McGee, commenting on Housing Authority Ready To Demolish More Than a Third of Clayton Homes After Harvey Flooding] Illustration: Lulu
THE HEIGHTS HISTORIC DISTRICTS’ NEW HEIGHTS 
The public comment period for the latest (and presumably final) draft of the design guidelines for the Houston Heights’s 3 historic districts ends today. The latest version of the 223-page document dates from August and covers a range of issues important to the historic districts, including proposed standards for construction and renovation — from roof pitches and “character defining elements” to maximum allowable foundation height (30 inches from natural elevation for new construction and additions) — but does not appear to include any mention of flooding. The guidelines, once adopted, would be used by the Houston Archeological and Historical Commission in its determinations of what proposed building projects would be allowed. [Planning & Development Dept.; previously on Swamplot] Photo of home at 8th St. and Arlington St., in Houston Heights Historic District South, during Harvey: Swamplot inbox
The tallest of the 5 vacant structures remaining in the 136-acre former KBR campus fronting Buffalo Bayou east of Downtown that new owner Midway has dubbed East River has been sporting a new night-time look as of this week. The lights in the photo above, taken last night by a reader, spell out the NASDAQ ticker symbol of Amazon — which has announced a nationwide search for a second headquarters campus.
Previously, the lights in the 12-story office building at 4100 Clinton Dr. in the Fifth Ward had been tuned to HTX:
Hey Lookie Here!
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