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12/29/16 10:45am

J. Black’s Spot Marked For Lease near Future Wash Ave. H-E-B Midrise

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J. Black's, 110 South Heights Blvd., Memorial Heights, Houston, 77007

J. Black's, 110 South Heights Blvd., Memorial Heights, Houston, 77007The building housing the Houston expansion of Austin’s J. Black’s at the southwest corner of Washington Ave and Heights Blvd. now bears a new for-info-please-call sign, a reader notes. The bar appears to have events planned through at least New Year’s Eve; the 5,948-sq.-ft. space was only listed online as up for lease about 2 weeks ago. Back before 2012, the property was home to Phil’s Texas Barbecue, for about the same amount of time as it took Phil himself to restaurantize the corner’s original muffler shop setup. And soon another corner at the intersection will be getting a full workover as well, if all goes as planned — J. Black’s sits across Heights Blvd. from the subsection of the Memorial Heights apartments slated to go away some time next quarter, to make way for that planned Midway midrise with the H-E-B at the bottom:

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Cornered in Memorial Heights
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Headlines
12/29/16 8:30am

Last Days of Wexler Jewelry; Giant Lazy River for Westside Tennis and Fitness

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houston-rural-horses

Photo: o texano via Swamplot Flickr Pool

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12/28/16 4:00pm

An Eerie Survey of Northwest Mall’s Apaches, Alcoholics, and Christmas Cast

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AN EERIE SURVEY OF NORTHWEST MALL’S APACHES, ALCOHOLICS, AND CHRISTMAS CAST Northwest Mall, 555 NW Mall, Spring Branch East, Houston, 77092A spiritual throwback to John Nova Lomax’s semi-regular walkumentaries of various Houston neighborhoods is part of January’s edition of Texas Monthly: an account of his recent trek through sorta-back-from-the-dead shopping center Northwest Mall. Lomax ponders the center’s past, present, and future while interviewing the locals (like the photo-ready Santa and elf team) and collecting dramatic snippets of eavesdropped conversation outside the mall’s Alcoholics Anonymous meeting facility (located not too far from the alcoholic bundt cake shop). Lomax writes that he sees the decidedly not-as-decrepit-as-it-used-to-be complex, complete with mysteriously closed Southern Apache Museum and $2 hurricane simulation tube, as a “window into modern, cosmopolitan Houston,” noting that “today’s Northwest Mall is more identifiably Bayou City than it was in the boom times. Where it was once just another outpost of corporate American capitalism, it is now as diverse as the city around it. . . . What you will find among these [one-off shops] you will find nowhere else, and the scenes you will take in are often exotic, quirky, or somewhat spooky — and occasionally some combination of all of the above.” [Texas Monthly; previously on Swamplot] Photo of Northwest Mall Entrance C: Moni

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Adaptive Reuse
12/28/16 2:45pm

Interior of EaDo Interior Design Shop Art Hous Scooped Out To Make Room for Burgr Hous

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Art Hous, 811 St. Emanuel St., East Downtown, Houston, 77003
wahlburgers

The folks at ACS studio architecture say that the insides of the former Art Hous art and interior design center on St. Emanuel St. are being cleared out for the planned installation of Burgr Hous. Demo permits for the interior walls of the space, which is wedged between Warehouse Live and Lucky’s Pub, came through early last month. When it’s wrapped up, the remodel may have a vibe kinda like the space shown above, which ACS currently has up on their website for the project as a visual reference for the redesign — though the image depicts the branding of the Boston-based reality-teevee-starring Wahlburgers chain. The firm has a floorplan out as well, however, showing a different layout:

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E-Less in EaDo
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12/28/16 12:00pm

Swamplot Sponsor: Jamestown Estate Homes

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Winner of the First Annual Jamestown Estate Homes Holiday Decorating Photo Contest Winner of the First Annual Jamestown Estate Homes Holiday Decorating Photo Contest

Today on Swamplot we thank our latest sponsor, Jamestown Estate Homes. Thanks for supporting this site!

The results of the first annual Jamestown Estate Homes Holiday Decorating Photo Contest are in! And here you have them — well, half of them. Above, we have the winners of the Best Interior and Best Exterior categories. To see the winners of the Most Fun/Creative and Best Tree categories (as well as larger versions of the winning pix), you’ll want to click on over to the Jamestown Estate Homes Facebook page and take a look.

Yes, entries in this competition were limited to current residents of homes built by Jamestown Estate Homes. If you’d like to join this select group in time for next year’s competition, check out the properties Jamestown Estate Homes currently has for sale on this page of the company’s website. And while you’re on the website, take a look at some of the company’s other work — it’ll help you get a sense if the kind of work they do would be a good fit for your home-construction project. (For more information on Jamestown Estate Homes’s custom building programs, contact Victoria Hawes — (832) 296-1663 or victoria.hawes@jamestownestatehomes.com.)

Jamestown Estate Homes was named Custom Builder of the Year by the GHBA in 2013. The company has active projects in the Memorial Villages, Oak Forest, and the Heights, and is looking to expand into Meyerland, Bellaire, and Tanglewood. (Jamestown Estate Homes will also build on a client’s land in surrounding areas.) The company completes 6 to 12 homes a year, with projects starting around $500,000 (for the house only).

Some smart Houston companies are building names for themselves by sponsoring Swamplot. Find out more about how to become a sponsor.

Sponsor of the Day
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Featured Posts
12/28/16 11:30am

Original 59 Diner Building Now Open Again as 24-Hour Mexican, Breakfast Spot

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El Beso Cantina, 3801 Farnham St,, Upper Kirby, Houston, 77098

A reader on the inside sends a shot of the ex-59 Diner on Farnham St., now up and running as El Beso Cantina. As of Christmas, the space is once again open 24 hours a day, though the pale turquoise paint and Elvis kitsch have been swapped out for warmer earth tones and decorative sombreros. The new occupants also appear to be attempting to fill the area’s 3am pancake niche, covered for nearly 30 years by the departed diner, by offering an array of American breakfast items along with the Tex-Mex fare.

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Shepherd Triangle Swap-In
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12/28/16 8:30am

New Life for a Second Ward Warehouse; First Look at Biggio’s Bar Downtown

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eado4

Photo of EaDo: Jan Buchholtz via Swamplot Flickr Pool

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12/27/16 5:00pm

A Quick Flyover of Houston’s New Used Car Vending Machine Midrise

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Carvana vending machine, 10939 Katy Fwy., Memorial, Houston, 77079

Along with starting up service at the new 8-story glass car dispensation machine on the former Big Tex Tree Nursery lot on I-10 this month, Carvana has released a bit of drone footage of the new facility (shown above). It doesn’t show the tower in action (though a video of a coin-triggered run-through of the original Nashville machine, which boasts only 5 stories of car-storage tower space, can be found here). The fly-by does show off some new grassy parking lot landscaping and the billboard that Carvana leased out to explain themselves, as well as a few of the residences on Lasso Ln. directly behind the machine. (That’s the east-bound Katy Fwy. on the left, with the flying ramps of Beltway 8 visible in the early morning haze.)

Photo of Carvana facility at 10939 Katy Fwy.: elnina via Swamplot Flickr Pool

Video: Carvana

I-10 Stackup
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12/27/16 4:15pm

Comment of the Day: Why Isn’t Long and Skinny Always Out of Style?

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COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHY ISN’T LONG AND SKINNY ALWAYS OUT OF STYLE? Train“Maybe it is just me, but I feel like the folks that are for the high speed rail are the same people that are against the Dakota pipeline. The HSR will undoubtedly have large environmental concerns for the state.” [Bocepheus, commenting on High Speed Rail Case Heads to Trial] Illustration: Lulu

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Art
12/27/16 3:30pm

Still Life of Downtown Chronicle Building Rubble, and Other Masterworks of Deconstruction

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Painting by Ken Mazzu

Artist Ken Mazzu’s been back at the easel and back on the Houston demolition beat lately, finishing up some new works to be featured in next month’s building-themed art show at the William Reaves / Sarah Foltz Fine Art Gallery at 2143 Westheimer Rd.. The show will feature some of Mazzu’s paintings of ’round-town teardowns, along with works of 2 other Houston-focused artists (late photographer Jim Culberson and living painter Richard Stout). The gallery will even host Houston archi-historian Dr. Stephen Fox for a talk about The Changing City on the 14th.

Mazzu’s had a lot of subjects to choose from since a set of his demo-themed canvases went on display back in 2013; he sends over some previews of new pieces, including the scene above commemorating the disassembly of the former Downtown headquarters of the Houston Chronicle. Other recent works feature newly-parking-lotified 509 Louisiana St., the dissolution of the octagonal Solvay mid-rise, a pile of post-blow-up downtown Foley’s debris, and more:

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New Works Retrospective
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Carlton Woods
12/27/16 12:00pm

A NSFW Musical Tour of Theresa Roemer’s Strip-Clubified 3-Story Closet Mansion, Starring Gucci and Gucci Mane

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Gucci Mane's 'Nonchalant' at 47 Grand Regency Cir., Carlton Woods

The main star of Atlanta rapper Gucci Mane’s newly-released music video for the song Nonchalant is arguably the townhome-sized closet in Lamar and Theresa Roemer’s Woodlands mansion, still up for grabs since its 2014 listing. It’s the swankiest rap stripper video filmed in The Woodlands all year!

The Roemers bought the home in 2013 and spent a couple million renovating it, including the addition of the 3-story closet-slash-wet-bar-slash-charity-party-venue. The closet was visited by a writer for Neiman Marcus’s blog in 2014, shortly after which a burglar stopped in — then attempted to blackmail Roemer into buying her own stuff back. Theresa Roemer listed the house herself at the end of 2014, after which it went on the market a few times (most recently for $7.95 million, down from an original asking price of $12.9 million). The place was supposed to be auctioned off last summer, but wasn’t; Platinum Luxury Auctions’s listing for the house does, however, imply that a new auction date might be set for this spring.

Much of the new video is set within the closet, as well as in the connecting full bath with garden tub (which gets some PG-13- to R-rated action):

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Nonchalant in Carlton Woods
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