Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
They may not go gentle into that good night, but they’ll still go:
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- 11306 Beauvoir Dr. [HAR]
Budding internet etymologist and Albany High School senior Adam Aleksic is out with his latest annotated map (bigger version here), which points out the origins behind some of the Houston area’s most well-known neighborhood names. As you can see in the legend at the top right corner, the author makes a distinction between developers and people — both of which have left their marks in the region’s spacial vernacular. And of course, no map of Houston would be complete without its fair share of wet spots, too, which appear in the meanings behind 6 locations shown above: Lazybrook, Timbergrove, Spring Branch, River Oaks, Clear Lakes, and Denver Harbor.
- Infographics [The Etymology Nerd]
Image: The Etymology Nerd
Words for Places
Last night Houston’s planning and development department spelled out a proposal to run a new pair of protected bike lanes on Austin St. from Buffalo Bayou to HCC’s main campus in Midtown. South of the college, the officially-designated bike route would continue down to Hermann Park along La Branch and Crawford streets but without anything to buffer it from the rest of the road.
Throughout Downtown and the northern portion of Midtown ending at McGowen St., plans show the bike lanes separated from the street by 2-ft.:
A Fairly Straightforward Route
BELLAIRE FOOD STREET SCRAPS FOOD HALL PLANS, WILL GO FULL STRIP-STYLE INSTEAD 
The 10,000-sq.-ft. food hall that had been planned as part of the 24,000-sq.-ft. pan-Asian restaurant building just in side Beltway 8 dubbed Bellaire Food Street will not come to be, reports Eater’s Alaena Hoestetter. Instead, that space will be used to give a 3 more not-yet-named restaurant their own individual storefronts. So far 10 restaurants — Shi Miao Dao, Fat Ni BBQ, Peppery Lunch, Beard Papa’s, Popfancy, Migo, Meet Fresh, Waistation, Chatime, and a South Korean coffee chain called Tom N Toms that serves a “baked sweet potato latte” — have been announced as tenants. Upstairs is reserved for developer Kevin Kan’s office. [Eater Houston; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Bellaire Food Street
A Swamplot reader sends this photo from Arnott St. showing ominous new chain-link fencing wrapping what’s left of the Memorial Club apartments at the Washington Ave roundabout. New Years was the deadline for residents to move out of the four 3-story buildings to the west of Westcott St. so that Greystar could tear them down and build a new set of apartments in their place. It already replaced Memorial Court’s other, former 5-building half on the east side of Westcott with a 297-unit Elan Memorial Heights building in 2016. Back when the developer purchased the complex in 2013, Greystar said it hoped to have a grand total of 550 units spread across both sides of Westcott.
- Previously on Swamplot: Everyone Ordered Out of Memorial Club Apartments’ Remaining Half, New Apartments Set To Rise in Its Place; Crews Have Begun Clubbing the Memorial Club Apartments by the Washington Roundabout; New Apartments Facing Washington Ave Roundabout Will Have Retail on the Ground Floor and Maybe a Trader Joe’s; A Trader Joe’s Coming to Washington Ave.?
Photo: Swamplot inbox
Back for the Last of ‘Em
- Understory Food Hall Adds Fast-Casual Mona Fresh Italian to Roster [Eater]
- White House May Now Redirect Money Intended for Harvey Relief to Border Wall [abc13]
- New 68-Acre “Elevated†Housing Development To Be Built in 500-Year Humble Flood Plain [Houston Chronicle]
- Houston Makes New York Times List of 52 Best Places to Travel in 2019 [New York Times]
- Cost of Downtown Historic Esperson Complex’s Debt “Attractive†to Office Owners [GlobeSt]
- Looking for 3 More Tenants, Asiatown’s Bellaire Food Street Scraps Food Hall Plans Less Than a Month from Opening [Eater]
- TxDOT To Close 288 in Pearland, I-45 in The Woodlands for Bridge Work this Weekend [HBJ]
- Houston Among 17 Cities To Announce Bid To Host 2026 FIFA World Cup [Click2Houston]
Photo of the vault at Hotel ICON: elnina via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
These buildings are not-so-boldly going where so many buildings have gone before:
- 32819 Whitburn Trl. [HAR]
In an email sent out to constituents earlier this week, a staffer for City Council member Greg Travis writes that the little red rectangle above — marking where Randall Davis has plans for a 50-unit condo tower — is subject to single-family deed restrictions. That doesn’t prohibit the developer from going ahead with the highrise at 3723 Westheimer, she explains, although it does mean Davis perhaps jumped the gun by submitting a variance request for the development to Houston’s planning commission last week. It’s now withdrawn that request and instead plans to hold a public hearing before the commission. The date is TBD, but it will “likely take place on February 28,” according to the staffer.
Residents of Westgrove Court — the subdivision along Eastgrove and Westgrove streets that the tower wants to move into — and others nearby will receive a written notice 15 days before it goes down. “If residents of the 38 single family home sites in Westgrove Court jointly file a protest (a letter signed by them),” she writes, “the Planning Commission will have to approve by 75% and not simply by a majority.”
On Monday, Nancy Sarnoff over at the Chronicle reported Davis was under contract to buy the 17,300-sq.-ft. property. It isn’t the first time someone’s tried to put something other than single-family on it: For decades, the single-story retail building shown above has been there. It sports a fenced-in patio at its corner:
The Fine Print
A building permit filed yesterday for renovations to the former Brown Bag Deli at 702 Main St. has this familiar name on it: Shake Shack. The photo at top of the storefront’s north side along Capitol St. show its windows completely whited-out to prevent passers-by from getting too curious about what’s going on inside. On Main St., Brown Bag Deli’s December 21 closure notice remains stuck to the front door.
The storefront takes up the northeast corner of the 10-story Great Jones Building and is right next door to the WeWork that arrived in the structure last year. At the opposite, south end of the block, the adjacent Chase Building (formerly known as the Gulf Building) became home last month to Houston’s newest food hall Finn Hall.
Photos: Swamplot inbox
Main and Capitol
ALDI IS MAKING ITS MOVE AT THE CROWDED CROSSROADS OF WESTHEIMER AND S. GESSNER 
Aldi punched its ticket for entry into the Tanglewilde Center yesterday by filing a building permit to convert the closed 21,300-sq.-ft. Batie’s Ace Hardware at 9525 Westhimer into a supermarket. It’ll be the third grocery store within a 2,000-ft. radius of the intersection of Westheimer and S. Gessner Rd. Randall’s sits at the northeast corner, and Kroger is just west of the crossroads. The hardware store being converted closed down late last year. [Previously on Swamplot] Photo: Swamplot inbox
- Heights Mercantile, Other Radom Heights Properties Sold to North Carolina Developers [HBJ; previously on Swamplot]
- Houston Developers Swindled Chinese Investors Who Poured $50M into Alleged Mixed-Use Project [The Wall Street Journal ($)]
- After 2-Plus Years of Construction, Bissonnet Reopens in Both Directions Between Buffalo Spdwy. and Kirby [Culturemap]
- Bayshore Medical Center Opens 15,800 Sq. Ft. Center for Neurosciences and Orthopedics on Spencer Hwy. in Pasadena [HBJ]
- After Yearlong Absence, Cousins Maine Lobster Food Truck Returns to Houston, Enters Talks To Join Lyric Market Food Hall [Culturemap]
- Former DoubleTree Downtown Begins New Life as C. Baldwin Hotel This Summer [HBJ]
- How Minneapolis’s Multifamily Rezoning Plan Got Approved, And How the City Will Put It in Play [Curbed]
Photo of Sculpt Fitness, 3334 Edloe St.: Swamplot inbox
Headlines
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
Unto sheetrock dust they shall return:
