- 3733 Turnberry Cir. [HAR]
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The beauty-centric duplex building at 633 W. 20th St. is down to an asking price of $999,999 these days, after starting the summer on the market at an even $1 million. The converted 1930s bungalow, which currently houses the Wax and Relax Day Spa and Lucero’s Hair Salon, was initially listed back in 2015 for $1.3 million; the property sits next to the former house housing custom homebuilder First Crest Corporation, and across the street from the converted bungalow housing 20th St. Grooming & Doggie Daycare. Here’s what the building’s 3 bedrooms currently look like as spa spaces:
Heights Home Makeovers
The legal entity that has recently taken control of this block of Scott St. — located between Hadley and Bremond streets just off I-45 — appears to have been named in honor of the University of Houston’s early September football defeat of the Oklahoma Sooners. The previous owner of the land, a corporation called 3919 Scott Street (which, yes, is also the address of the up-for-eventual-demo original Frenchy’s restaurant down the road), transferred the property shown above over to an entity called UH33-OU23 near the end of last month, after putting in a request to the city to turn the 1.79 acres of mostly-vacant smaller lots into 1 big unrestricted parcel under the name University Gateway. The land is less than half a mile up Scott St. from the Elgin / Third Ward light-rail stop at the edge of UH’s central campus:
Sooners or Later in Third Ward
COUSINS AND PARKWAY MERGER BETTING ALL AND NOTHING ON HOUSTON’S OFFICE SPACE MARKET 
Last week’s merger between real estate investment trusts Cousins Properties and Parkway Properties still resulted in 2 companies, notes Ralph Bivins this morning: the freshly combined firms, keeping the Cousins name, have now moved all of their Houston office holdings (along with nothing else) into a separate trust. The sequestered Houston investments are inheriting the Parkway name (that’s New Parkway, to head off any confusion), as opposed to the originally announced HoustonCo. New Parkway’s properties add up to about 8.7 million sq. ft., including Greenway Plaza (which Cousins bought back in 2013) and 4 other properties in Upper Kirby, Uptown, Tanglewood, and Westchase. Here’s a chance to buy in, Bivins writes, “whether you believe the Houston office market has reached the bottom or not” — noting also that there’s “about 3 million sq. ft. of new buildings still under construction.” [Realty News Report; previously on Swamplot] Photo of 3555 Timmons Ln.: Unilev
Our thanks go to Mosaic Clinic Dermatology for being our Sponsor of the Day today. Swamplot appreciates the support!
The roughest part of heavy-sweating season may be officially over for most of us in Houston, but if you’re still exhibiting the signs — and smells — of excessive perspiration, you may want to know about MiraDry. MiraDry is a lasting, FDA-approved treatment for armpit sweat and odor that’s so effective it allows you to go without deodorant. The treatment, which takes about an hour, destroys sweat and odor glands in your underarms. Because your body doesn’t produce new sweat glands, the results are permanent.
MiraDry is just one of the treatments offered at Mosaic Clinic Dermatology, a general dermatology practice with 3 Houston locations: in the Heights at 2401 Yale St. Suite 1; in the Tanglewood area at 5757 Woodway Dr. Suite 185a; and in Midtown at 902 Fairview St. Suite 1 (pictured above).
Same-day and Saturday appointments are available for a range of dermatological conditions including rashes, miles, skin cancer, and acne. To find out more about MiraDry or other available treatments, check out the Mosaic Clinic Dermatology website — or call (281) 941-5556 for immediate assistance.
Need help getting Swamplot readers to notice what your business has to offer? Don’t sweat it — just sign up to become a Sponsor of the Day!
Sponsor of the Day
This patchy map of the Houston region, from the national tool released last week by Airbnb, shades the area’s zip codes by what percentage of monthly rent could purportedly be covered by a single night of Airbnb rental. The map is the DIY-hotel company’s submission to this spring’s federal call for more public data tools related to housing and economics. And the rental rates used for the comparison come from the so-called small area fair market rates set by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which this summer proposed breaking up the flat city-wide rates currently used for Section 8 housing voucher payouts into smaller pieces (with the intent that offering higher subsidy rates in higher income areas might reverse a trend of concentrating housing voucher recipients into already-high-poverty neighborhoods).
Topping the company’s list in Houston is 77018, the quasi-trapezoid covering much of the Garden Oaks and Oak Forest area; the tool says the federal market rental rate for the zone is $830 per month, but that earnings for renting out a private room in the area via Airbnb average around 22 percent of that amount, or $179 a night:
AirBnB R&D
- Houston Among Top Metros Poised To Increase Its Population More Than 50% by 2040 [HBJ]
- Entergy Texas Plans To Build $1B Power Plant in Montgomery County [HBJ]
- Crescent Real Estate Acquires 192-Unit RiverBend Apartments in League City [Realty News Report]
- Florida-Based Drive-Thru Grocery Store Chain Farm Stores Entering Houston Market Next Year with Katy Location [HBJ]
- German-Based Grocer Lidl Looking To Open Stores Somewhere in Texas [HBJ]
- Field & Tides Slated To Open in December in Former Zelko Bistro Space [Culturemap; previously on Swamplot]
- Food Trucks Cousins Maine Lobster and The Lucky Fig Opening Brick-and-Mortar Locations in North Houston [Culturemap]
- North Carolina Investment Firm Buys Majority Stake in Ruggles Green, Plans To Open 30 More Locations Across Texas in Next 4 Years [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot]
- HSPVA School Board at Odds Over Kinder Rebranding of Downtown Campus [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot]
- Houston Economy Contracting for 21st Month in a Row [Houston Public Media]
Photo of Lynn Park: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
Everything is poisonous, nothing is poisonous, it is all a matter of demolition dose.
- 38 Grogans Point Rd. [HAR]
The Memorial Conoco Car Care station at Memorial and Wycliffe drives is now fully back in the swing of things following the shootout and subsequent fire at the station over Memorial Day weekend, a reader notes. The station reopened its garage for repair and maintenance services within about a week of the May incident, during which police and a SWAT team faced off with a gunman who had begun to unload an AR-15 on passers by. The shooting spree resulted in 2 deaths (including the gunman), 6 injuries (including 2 officers and an armed guy mistaken for another gunman), and the gasoline fire that burned down the fuel pumps and canopy; the reader reports that the station is back to dispensing gasoline as of last week. That’s a new peaked canopy visible in the background over the sign shown above — here’s what the old one looked like:
Tanks Full on Wilchester
Bob Russell sends a fresh slew of downtown updates, this time checking up on the state of the George R. Brown Convention Center area’s ongoing redo. The structure’s main entrance on Avenida De Las Americas has been getting a major facelift — the supercolumns installed last summer have since turned white, and the glassy  facade has stepped outward and dropped a few stripes, in line with the plans released previously by semi-public city branding organization Houston First:
Super Bowl Conditioning
YOU MIGHT WANT TO CHECK WHETHER THAT LA MARQUE HOUSE YOU ARE BUYING IS SLATED FOR DEMOLITION 
A rep from Greenspoint Investors, which last September reportedly sold Whendy Carreon’s mother a house on the city of La Marque’s teardown list for about $25,000 in cash, tells Kaitlin McCulley that the company didn’t receive notification that the house was condemned until a month after the sale. Reps from the city, however, maintain that the company was notified before the transaction; city manager Carol Buttler says she’s heard of at least 2 other cases in which demo-doomed homes have been sold by other companies to buyers unaware of impending knock-down plans. The city has given Carreon’s family a year to try to get the structure, between SH 146 and Spencer Hwy., up to habitable standards; Joe Compian of Interfaith Gulf Coast, who’s been helping the family with that process, says would-be buyers in the area should check for any city holds on properties before paying in cash. [ABC13] Image of La Marque City Hall: Galveston County Clerk’s Office
- DC Partners Breaks Ground on High-End Custom-Home Community Brandy Villas Near The Woodlands [HBJ]
- Louis Shanks of Texas Inc. Closing Houston Showroom in February, Warehouse in March [HBJ]
- HISD Trustee: Bellaire HS Would Need ‘About 40 Million To Survive’ Until Potential Replacement Campus on Chevron Land Could Be Funded and Finished [HBJ; previously on Swamplot]
- Kinders Donating $7.5M to HSPVA’s New Downtown Building, Now Named Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts [Culturemap; previously on Swamplot]
- Midtown Pizza Joint Ponzo’s Italian American Closing Oct. 16 [Culturemap]
- Evergreen Commercial Realty’s Lilly Golden: Biggest Challenge for Tenant Rep is Finding Space [Bisnow Houston]
- Houston Astros Break Ground on Center Field Renovation at Minute Maid Park [Houston Public Media; previously on Swamplot]
- Houston’s New Residential Construction Code Favors Solar Energy [Houston Public Media]
Photo of Market Square Tower: elnina via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
The home should be the treasure chest of demolition.
- 705 Freeport St. [HAR]
