11/28/16 1:45pm

Did you miss Swamplot’s year-end awards program? Well, it’s back! The 2016 Swamplot Awards for Houston Real Estate — aka the Swampies — start right now.

For those of you tuning in for the first time, the Swampies honor the designs, developments, neighborhoods, peculiarities, and personalities that make Houston so… Houston-y. But they’ll need your help to do it.

Starting tomorrow, we’ll be introducing this year’s 8 official categories one at a time. For each, we’ll need you to nominate 2016’s most ballot-worthy candidates, which you’ll be able to do in 2 different ways: by leaving a comment on the post announcing each category, or by emailing us (just be sure to put the name of the category in the subject line). We want to hear what you think deserves recognition this year — and why. The better you can explain why, the better the chance your nominees will show up next week on the official ballots.

As always, Houston is your city — and the Swampies are your awards. You make the nominations, you stuff the ballot box with your votes. We hope you’ll join in the fun!

The 2016 Swampies
11/28/16 1:00pm

8102 Colgate St., Glenbrook Valley, Houston

8102 Colgate St., Glenbrook Valley, Houston

Today’s Swamplot sponsor: The 1959 vintage home at 8102 Colgate St. in Glenbrook Valley. Thank you for sponsoring this site!

If you’ve been waiting for just the right Glenbrook Valley Mod to make its presence known, you’ll want to take a good look at the 3-bedroom, 2-and-a-half-bath home at 8102 Colgate, which just went up for sale over the weekend. It sits on a 13,573-sq.-ft. lot on the corner of Colgate and Lakewind St., tucked deep into the neighborhood south of Sims Bayou. Glenbrook Valley, in case you didn’t know, is Houston’s only historic district prized for its Midcentury Modern homes.

A double entry door flanked under an overhang by cross-ribbed glass panels at the center of the front facade of this home leads to a terrazzo-tile entry hall. And your first view inside is unexpected (well, it would have been if we didn’t spill the beans here): A central atrium court, seen through 3 floor-to-ceiling windows. (It’s the outdoor space shown in the photo at top.)

Many rooms in the house provide views into the atrium space — including the vaulted, 28-foot-long den (pictured above), which has an office alcove off it. The attached 2-car garage has storage rooms and additional workshop space. There’s also carport, with room for 2 more cars.

You can get a pretty good sense of the home’s layout if you study the photos on the property website. Or arrange for a tour! The home is offered for sale by Robert Searcy of Robert Searcy Properties.

Got a snazzy listing that deserves to be featured as a Sponsor of the Day? Let us know about it.

Sponsor of the Day
11/28/16 12:15pm

The Garage Car Detail & Hookah Lounge, 1818 W. Dallas St., Fourth Ward, Houston, 77019

The latest new identity for the 1930s-ish auto service station across W. Dallas St. from the Gregory Lincoln Education Center: The Garage Car Detail & Hookah Lounge. The property at W. Dallas and Taft St., which was occupied by dry cleaning chain Pilgrim Cleaner’s prior to the turn of the decade, has hosted a succession of car cleaning services since then, including the latest group to set up in the space. The property sold last summer to an entity called Rockfort Builders, and is now offering on-site hookah for waiting customers in the artistically tire-spangled alleyway shown above.

Here’s a look inside at the hookah collection and some other car-parts-turned-decor:

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Where There’s Smoke on Dallas St.
11/28/16 10:45am

Jeff Reichman's Map of 2016 BARC service calls

Where do Houston’s furrier residents tend to congregate? Jeff Reichman’s latest city data tinkering provides some clues — the clickable heatmap above highlights the areas where the city’s BARC program got the most calls this year for services like stray pickups and code enforcements related to domestic animals. BARC is currently in the middle of a 3-month push for a 90-percent no-kill rate of its collected and surrendered menagerie, after a successful 1-month push for that rate last November; the average euthanization rate for the program reportedly flipped from about 80 percent euthanized to about 80 percent released alive between 2005 and 2015.

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Hot Dog Neighborhoods
11/28/16 8:30am

nrg-park

Photo of NRG Park: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool

Headlines
11/23/16 9:30am

Astros Deer

The giant bows are sprouting from the Highland Village rooftops; the decorated fiberglass deer are in position on a smattering of Rice Village street corners; the Christmas music has already been floating through the still-in-the-70’s evening air from tinny speakers across the city this last week — but there’s still one more fall break left, before we break into the major winter holidays. Swamplot’s got some tasks to tackle and some thanks to give, so we’ll be off through the end of the week. Here’s wishing you and yours a lovely few days, hopefully together — we’ll see you back Monday morning, ready for that home stretch toward the end of the year.

Photo of seasonal deer statue in Rice Village: Swamplot inbox 

Happy Thanksgiving
11/23/16 8:30am

bovine-and-barley

Photo: Ruben S. via Swamplot Flickr Pool

Headlines
11/22/16 5:15pm

Rendering of Heights Mercantile Building 4

Expanding organic Rice Village fast-casual chain Local Foods will fill in one of the tenant holes in the biggest structure of under-construction Heights Mercantile, judging from the permits issued earlier this month for a buildout at 714 Yale St. The joint is supposed to share the double-decker structure with a fitness studio, per current marketing materials, though that tenant hasn’t been formally announced yet either. The leasing listing for the various subsections of the retail development is still active on LoopNet, indicating a handful of retail spaces potentially still up for grabs in the 2 buildings across 7th St.:

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More Mercantile Merchants
11/22/16 1:45pm

301 Main St., Downtown, Houston, 77002

301 Main St., Downtown, Houston, 77002The outdoor garden and patio space at 301 Main St. is being tended this week as Salt N Pepper group’s taco restaurant and bar Dizzy Kaktus finishes setting up near the Preston light-rail stop. City historical records say the Victorian structure was built in 1889, after which the Sweeney & Coombs jewelry company jumped across the street from the building currently footed by The Pastry War; the ground floor space of the structure went up for lease after Nit Noi closed last year, and signage noting the restaurant’s liquor license application was posted in October.

The reader who snapped the shots above and below says a worker on the site mentioned an opening next week, and that while the interior layout was still a bit jumbled, the outside appeared to be shaping up:

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Historic District Taco Bar
11/22/16 12:00pm

Jamestown Estate Homes Personnel

Jamestown Estate Homes LogoToday on Swamplot our sponsor is Jamestown Estate Homes. Thanks for the support!

Jamestown Estate Homes has a very important message for Swamplot readers: Happy Thanksgiving! The photo above is an outtake from the company’s Christmas card photo shoot, showing the Jamestown Estate Homes team. From top left: Victoria Hawes, Lindsey Bechtold, Katy Hawes, Greg Hawes, and Mike Prejeant.

Jamestown Estate Homes is a luxury custom homebuilder that’s been serving Houston since 2010. Founder Greg Hawes’s first building in Bunker Hill Village was the treehouse he built in his backyard as a child in 1957. After graduating from UT, he worked at US Home (then the largest homebuilder in the nation), where he was soon offered a corporate position. Instead, he left to found Partners in Building, where he served as president for 18 years. When he sold his interest in Partners, it was ranked as one of Houston’s 10 largest homebuilders by the Houston Business Journal.

In 2010 Greg started Jamestown Estate Homes to get into what he calls “true custom homebuilding” — focusing on every detail and getting back to working one-on-one with buyers. His love for homebuilding is shared by his 3 daughters,and Jamestown has allowed him to fulfill his dream of working with his kids. (Elizabeth, the oldest, worked for Jamestown until her husband was transferred to the Hague. The “commute is just too far,” she explained when she resigned.)

Named valedictorian at Klein High School in 1999, Katy Hawes earned a degree in molecular biology from UT and an MBA with a concentration in accounting from Rice. This makes her a great fit for the role of controller at Jamestown. Katy’s construction budgets take into account every element, no matter how tiny — and have often come within $10 of actual construction expenditures.

After a brief stint in Los Angeles pursuing film (she worked as Britney Spears’s body-double in 2 music videos), youngest daughter Victoria Hawes graduated first in her class from UH with a degree in corporate communications before getting a master’s in communication from Purdue. She joined Jamestown Estate Homes as a superintendent and was named Houston’s Best Custom Home Superintendent for 2013 by the Greater Houston Builders Association (GHBA) and Project Manager of the Year in 2014 by the Texas Association of Home Builders. A skiing accident in 2014 helped her transition from construction to sales, marketing, and design.

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).

For more information, contact Victoria Hawes — (832) 296-1663 or victoria.hawes@jamestownestatehomes.com — or check out the company’s website. To find more information about the team, click here.

Got a holiday message for Swamplot readers? Check out our Sponsor of the Day program.

Sponsor of the Day
11/22/16 10:45am

Former City of Houston Code Enforcement Building, 3300 Main St., Midtown, Houston, 77002

As the walls crumble and the last days unfold for the city’s old code enforcement office in Midtown, a hidden stained-glass window has been uncovered — as seen here in a shot taken by a reader yesterday evening from across the light-rail tracks. Once the structure is fully deconstructed, the way will be open for that planned mixed-use-skyscraper from PM Realty to rise toward the heavens. In front of the window is the long-since-de-greened greenscreen trellis installed to dress up the main Main entrance of the concrete structure, back in the late aughts: 

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Preparing To Rise in Midtown
11/22/16 8:30am

bridge

Photo Marc Longoria via Swamplot Flickr Pool

Headlines