- 20630 Appaloosa Trl. [HAR]
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Get a load of this multi-chromatic character that’s recently taken shape on York St., between Lamar and McKinney streets: EaDo Storage. Built in place of the Randolph Office Furniture Exchange warehouse that bit the dust in early 2017, the new 107,677-sq.-ft. facility takes up the entire block. It isn’t yet open.
You can see a few cherry-pickers applying the finishing touches to the structure’s exterior in the photo above. If the rendering the business put out last month is to be believed, new trees and hedges should be on the way, too:
EaDo Storage
Our sponsor today is Houston’s own Central Bank. Thanks for the continuing support of Swamplot!
Central Bank has 4 (central) Houston branches available to meet your business or personal needs: in Midtown, the Heights, West Houston, and Post Oak Place.
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Last year, Boxer Property told reporters it wanted to do something “iconic” with the St. Joseph’s Professional Building along the Pierce Elevated. Well, how about this idea: bringing the 18-story Midtown office building to life by attaching 2 massive, swinging arms to its east and west sides. Boxer engaged The Art Guys (Jack Massing and Michael Galbreth) shortly after purchasing the building in September 2017 to make it happen. They worked on the project in secret, dubbing it The Walking Building. It had an estimated budget of $2.8 million.
Alas, the vision of a giant robotic pedestrian attempting to cross a busy section of I-45 into Downtown was not to be. Boxer informed The Art Guys 2 months ago that it would no longer pursue the project.
The arms would have swung back and forward roughly once a minute, making for a somewhat leisurely gait:
St. Joseph’s Professional Building, Reimagined
- Rebuilding Commission Reports Urgent Need To Prepare for Future Natural Disasters on Gulf Coast [Houston Public Media]
- Houston Developers Settle Fraud Case for Improper Use of Funds [Houston Chronicle]
- Homebuilder K. Hovnanian Considers 15-Acre Development in South Houston [HBJ ($)]
- Parents Cheer as HISD Trustees Vote 5-4 Against Charter School “Transfer†Proposal [abc13]
- Austin-Based Dine-In Movie Theatre Chain Joins New Woodlands Retail Development [HBJ]
- Floyd’s 99 Barbershop Joins Heights Waterworks Redevelopment on 19th [Houston Chronicle]
- Developers Cautiously Optimistic About Downtown Opportunity Zones, Consider Flipping Vacant Office Buildings into Apartments or Hotels [Bisnow]
- City Council Member Proposes Flat Monthly Garbage Collection Fee To Cover Firefighter Raises [Houston Public Media]
- Gensler Designs 2-Story, 130k Sq. Ft. River Oaks Surgical Center with Room for Retail Downstairs [HBJ ($); previously on Swamplot]
Photo of The Galleria Christmas Tree: Marc Longoria via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
A River Oaks relic serves as a reminder to live in the present, for the future is never certain.
- 220 Mulberry Ln. [HAR]
“What, after all, is the majesty of the Hill Country compared to the majesty of the orange and white Whataburger logo?” asks Texas Monthly’s Dan Solomon. It’s a question that feels wrong to pose — How dare you put Texas’s natural charm on the same plane as the sprawl we’ve layered over it — but also feels wrong to ignore. “Texans often display their enthusiasm for homegrown chains without a hint of irony,” writes Solomon. So why not just embrace our freeway-side icons in good-old-fashioned oil-and-canvas style?
San Antonio artist Michael Esparza’s done just that with his work, which the internet recently discovered after one well-followed editor tweeted out a link to his Etsy shop. There, he offers prints of paintings like the ones above that range from, er . . . hyper-realist:
Texana, Reimagined
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHAT ELSE LEFT MIDTOWN WHEN RICHMOND AVE MET WHEELER ST. 
“In addition to the Delman Theater, an adjacent retailer named the Delman Juvenile Shop was also destroyed. The popular 1950s children’s clothing store featured a behemoth machine, the “Shoe-Fitting Fluoroscope,†that zapped the kids’ feet with unshielded x-rays, ostensibly to make sure the new shoes were a correct fit. In reality, it was used as a babysitter while Mom shopped. I couldn’t wait to grow tall enough to actually peer down the metal tube to view my wiggling skeletal toe bones.” [Patsy Schillaci, commenting on Comment of the Day: The Delman Theater Lives On, on Google Maps] Photo of Delman Theater and adjacent retail: Predator [license]
So long to that double-decker dwelling on the corner of 20th and Ashland St. After being tagged for demolition on Monday, the 1904 house came down yesterday. It’s departure leaves 8 contiguous lots, totaling 28,000-sq.-ft., lined up for development along 20th St. And recent permit filings reveal what’s likely to be next: a hotel.
It’ll shoot the gap between 2 existing commercial neighbors: the Heights Hospital for Animals to the east, and Heights Floral Shop to the west, across Ashland. As noted when commercial realty signage first sprouted in front of the house at 347 W. 20th St. last year, it’s the only property at the intersection not already occupied by some kind of money-making enterprise.
- Previously on Swamplot: Daily Demolition Report: The Tale of 20th; Corner Lot Hidden Away for Decades Beneath 1904 Heights House Could Join the Commercial Crowd
Photos: Swamplox inbox
Hidden Heights Holdover
- Texas Lawmakers Want To Give State More Authority over Houston-Dallas Bullet Train [Texas Tribune; previously on Swamplot]
- What Chevron’s Demo of Old Houston Press Building Says About Preservation in Houston [Houston Public Media; previously on Swamplot]
- Houston Home Sales Down in November but Sales to Date Still Higher Than 2017 [Houston Chronicle]
- After Bitter Fight, City Council Agrees to Spend $3 Million Renewing Airport Music [Houston Public Media]
- Service Industry Veteran Opens Eclectic Cottage Grove Eatery Elliot’s Table [Culturemap]
- Nearly 20% of People Under 65 in Harris County are Uninsured—the Highest Rate in the Country [Houston Public Media]
- Popular Houston Tex-Mex Staple Molina’s Cantina Picks Fulshear for Third Location [Culturemap]
- Historic 1937 River Oaks Home Designed by John Staub Hits the Market for $7.4 Million [Houston Chronicle]
- Montgomery County Woman First West Nile Virus-Related Death Of 2018Â [Houston Public Media]
- Study Shows Houston Has Second-Most Expensive Commute for Workers in the Country [abc13]
- TxDOT Announces List of Completed Sections of 290 Opening Dec. 17th [HBJ]
- Houston Matters Investigates Houston’s Peculiar Urban Grackle Infestation [Houston Public Media]
Photo of 909 Texas St.: Marc Longoria via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
Sooner or later, all things must come to an end:
- 533 College St. [HAR]
The new owner of 812 Main St. (shown above) is the same entity that owns the JW Marriott next-door at 806 Main St. Well, sort of. Technically, the properties belong to 2 separate entities, but they both tie back to the same real estate overlord: Pearl Hospitality, a Houston-based hotel operator with a few extra properties in Lubbock. Pearl closed on the 812 Main St. building last month for $3.6 million.
Designed by Houston architects Joseph Finger and George Rustay the recently-transacted tower was completed in 1950 for the Battelsteins’s department store — which occupied each of its 10 floors. It’s now been vacant for roughly 30 years. Battlestein’s signage has been replaced by the smudges visible above the mural-ized storefront face in the photo at top. But 2 naked flagpoles remain on either side of where the lettering once was.
After visiting the property in December, 2015, PDG Architects estimated it’d cost nearly $17 million to renovate it into something suitable for office tenants to inhabit. Just bringing it up to code could cost $8 million, according to public records.
The JW Marriott next-door at Rusk St. — formally known as the Samuel F. Carter building — underwent its Pearl-Hospitality redo starting in 2010 with a bit of financial help from the city and HUD, as well as architectural know-how from Gensler:
Department Store Skyscraper
Landing with a thud on the city planning commission’s dais this week: the rendering above depicting what Arizona-based beer and pizza chain Bottled Blonde wants to do to the former Weiner’s Dry Goods Store No. 12 at 4901 Washington Ave. Most of the building’s original architectural details — for instance, the signage and storefront entrance shown above at Durham Dr. —Â are long-gone according to Tim Cisneros of Cisneros Design Studio, the firm responsible for the planned makeover.
And so the renovations Bottled Blonde has planned will look more forward than backward in order to reshape the structure from what it is now, a shuttered Cash America Pawn branch:
4901 Washington
