Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
The lease is up and but a memory in a couple forests and beyond.
Sign up for the Newsletter
- 2727 Kirby Dr., 19L [HAR]
A set of 4 new FEMA disaster recovery centers opened yesterday, sprinkled around the north and west sides of Houston hit hardest by the Tax Day flooding. The locations include a Greenspoint office building right across Greens Bayou from some of the apartment complexes evacuated during the flooding (including Arbor Court). The other centers opened Monday in Meyerland, Cypress, and Spring, and additional temporary help centers might get set up elsewhere around town.
As of yesterday night, FEMA had already received nearly 12,000 applications for post-flood assistance. Harris County reported last week that more than twice as many homes were damaged by the April floods as reported during last year’s Memorial Day flooding. Farmers Insurance agent Peter Zografos told the Houston Press last week that many of the same houses have filed claims a second time: “Some of these homeowners may have to be insured directly with the National Flood Insurance Program due to repetitive claims, [and] basically will be charged more for too many flood claims.â€
- Disaster Recovery Centers Open in Harris County [Houston Office of Emergency Management]
- Another Flooding Pain-in-the-Rump: More Expensive Insurance [Houston Press]
- Previously on Swamplot: Videos: What S. Braeswood Looks Like Fully Submerged, and Other Aquatified Aerial Houston Scenes; Where Houston Flooded and Where It Didn’t on Memorial Day
Map of FEMA disaster recovery centers: City of Houston
Still Under Water
If you missed yesterday’s meeting in Hockley, you have until Wednesday to send Harris County your thoughts on the map above, from the official county study of road network expansion proposed between I-10 and 290 west of the Grand Pkwy. The thick red dashes mark a proposed loop road circling around almost the entirety of the Katy Prairie Conservancy‘s land preserve (shown as the darkest green blocks, amid slightly-grayer-green agricultural/undeveloped land and a few kelly-green public parks). Purple dashes show the proposed routes of new or expanded thoroughfares, some of which cut through the preserve and cross through the Cypress Creek floodway (shown as a blue underlay making a rough U through the conservancy’s land).
Further west (marked in blue dashes) is the not-yet-planned-but-still-showing-up-in-planning-maps route of Houston’s proposed outer-outer-outer loop, SH 36A (formerly nicknamed the Prairie Parkway). The map above also includes overlays of Harris County’s future development predictions, with dark taupe showing existing development and slightly lighter taupe showing expected expansion.
For comparison, here’s the Katy Prairie Conservancy’s map of west Houston; currently developed areas are marked in gray, the organization’s protected areas are marked in green, and the dashed green band shows how far the prairie ecosystem used to extend:
Up the Watershed
Today’s sponsor is the home at 2228 Colquitt St. in Colquitt Court. Thanks for supporting Swamplot!
Houston architect Scott Ballard designed several homes on the block of Colquitt St. between Greenbriar and Morningside Dr., but he created this 3-bedroom, 3-bath on that street for himself and his family in 2000. The coastal live oaks on the 12,155-sq.-ft. lot have grown even bigger since then. The main living spaces are on the second floor (see photo above), but they connect to the back yard through a deck and light stairway leading straight to the pool. A master suite, also overlooking the back yard and pool, is on the third floor.
The upper floors are made from 1×6 tongue-and-groove pine; the home features floor-to-ceiling windows, limestone countertops, and several balconies. A story about the home’s construction, written by Ballard, was featured in the May 2003 issue of Fine Homebuilding magazine.
You can see more views, and information about the home, on the property website. It’s listed for sale by New Leaf Real Estate, which offers unique savings programs for both sellers and buyers.
Designed something Swamplot readers should be seeing? Show it to them just like this — by becoming a Swamplot Sponsor of the Day.
Sponsor of the Day
A reader sends a few shots of a developing piece along Fannin St. composed of traffic signal poles and discarded Museum of Fine Arts visitor stickers. The section above can be viewed from the intersection of Fannin with Montrose Blvd. (just south of the Mecom Fountain near the name change to Hermann Park Dr.) To the southwest lies Hermann Park’s Grand Gateway corridor (the string of light-rail-divided esplanades that started getting jazzed up as part of Hermann Park Conservancy’s 100th birthday present to the space); the landscaped strip runs directly north-south from the fountain roundabout to the Sam Houston statue.
Poles in the vicinity have been accumulating stickers since at least 2013. Here are a few more artsy angles on the scene:
Stuck in the Museum District
- New Houston REIT To Own Greenway Plaza, 4 Other Office Properties Post-Cousins/Parkway Merger [Realty News Report]
- Ikea Distribution Center Planned Near Baytown Just the Tip of the Iceberg for New Retail Warehouses [Realty News Report]
- Gracepoint Homes Opens First Model Home in Woodsy Luxury Community Stillwater in Conroe [HBJ]
- City Wants To Do Its Own Study on a Downtown Terminal for Proposed Dallas-to-Houston High-Speed Rail [Houston Public Media]
- Super Bowl Light Show Proposed for Astrodome That Would Project Images Through Roof and Onto Walls [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot]
- Former Houston Mayor Annise Parker Lands New Gig as Member of Rice University Faculty [HBJ]
- Taking a Closer Look at Houston’s Official Flag [Houston Chronicle]
Photo of Waterwall 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.
Grind them up to a fine dust and season to your liking.
- 1824 Heights Blvd. [HAR]
A reader sends the latest from the corner of 19th St. and N. Shepherd Dr., where the facade of the former Mr. Pro Lube and Tune-Up Plus building is now fully swapped out with fresh Take 5 Oil Change logos and exterior branding. The shop is across the street from almost-ready-to-open Dallas pizza import Cane Rosso, and catty-corner to Fat Cat Creamery and its strip-center companions.
Below is a snapshot of what the corner looked like back in 2013 before the trade-out began — and before the space on the corner north across 19th st. changed over from Art & Showcase Flooring to Heights Retreat Salon & Spa:
Strip Center Tune-Up
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHEN NOT ZONING BECAME BOLD NEW HOUSTON TERRITORY 
“. . . Nobody can deny that Houston does things differently, but it does these things in part by not doing something that every other major city does — by bucking the trend despite repeated opportunities to go along with that trend. Houston is so notable in this regard that the Wikipedia page on ‘Zoning in the United States’ has 2 sections of text about the history of zoning: ‘Origins & History’, and ‘Houston’. . . . Houston is the one and only control case that exists by which the impacts of zoning can be tested. To my mind, this qualifies as innovation. Zoning may have been innovative when it was first tried in NYC in 1916, I’ll also grant that — but it’s precisely 100 years later, and — now — Houston’s position is innovative.” [TheNiche, commenting on Houston’s Counterintuitive Optimism; San Jacinto Mall Redo] Illustration: Lulu
On the corner of McHenry and Carothers streets in Golfcrest, a reader notes both ongoing construction and its increasingly complex backdrop: “They’ve put up walls around [the site], probably for security, but they’ve been dressing up these walls . . . I’m pretty sure that pink door trim is made of vinyl.” County records show that the property (west of Telephone Rd. and south of the South Loop) was sold in February of last year; permits have since been issued related to a remodel and add-on to the 1941 home.
Photo: Tuco Ramirez
Now in Technicolor
Today’s Swamplot sponsor is Realty News Report, a Houston-based publication focused on commercial and residential estate markets in Texas. Thanks for supporting Swamplot, RNR!
Realty News Report’s founding editor is Ralph Bivins, an award-winning journalist who covered real estate for the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News for decades. He’s also a past president of the National Association of Real Estate Editors.
Here’s a list of Realty News Report’s most popular recent stories. Did you miss any of them?
- A Ritz Carlton Perhaps? The New 30-story Tower at the Galleria
- Midway Plans to Build More Office Buildings at CityCentre
- Oil’s Impact on Houston’s Hotel Business
- Greenway Plaza and Other Major Houston Buildings Get New Owner in $2 Billion REIT Deal
- Houston is a Prime Spot for First-Time Homebuyers
You’ll find more coverage of the Texas real estate scene on the Realty News Report website. For a free trial subscription to Realty News Report’s weekly newsletter, send an email to RealtyNewsReport@gmail.com.
Here’s a great way to show readers your business appreciates this site too: Sponsor Swamplot for a day.
Sponsor of the Day
Some renderings and potential site plans for a retail redo of 3 warehouses at the southwest corner of W. 18th St. and N. Shepherd Dr. make an appearance in the current leasing listing for the property. Preliminary plans for the development, to be called Lowell St. Market after a former name of N. Shepherd Dr., show a greened-and-glassed-up version of the Savvi Commercial Furniture warehouse (above on the left), with a matching redo of the Airmakers Cooling & Heating building (visible on the far right).
The flier bears the logo of Radom Capital, which is a partner in the Heights Mercantile development on 7th St. Radom is also behind the pink-and-white redo of the former Heights Plaza shopping center on E. 20th, which Steel City Popsicles told Eater they’d be ready to move into some time this month. Plans for the Lowell center are still a ways off, however; the leasing flier gives summer 2017 as an estimated construction start date, but also mentions that sale or leasing of the whole property as-is isn’t off the table.
The 3 structures currently on the site add up to 20,380 sq.ft. of space; the redevelopment would scoot some of that space around and pare it that down to 10,000 sq.ft., making room for a parking lot in the back. Here’s what the footprint could look like following that trim-down:
Lowell St. Market
- Behind the Purchase of More Than 300 Acres in Southwest Houston for University of Texas’s Planned Houston Campus [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot]
- Digesting the West Side’s Oversupply of Office Space Could Take 3-5 Years [Realty News Report]
- Proposed Modern $100M Bridge Between Pelican Island and Galveston an ‘Economic Game Changer’ for Area [Houston Chronicle]
- NewCoast Properties Set To Open Luxury Beachfront Community Seagrass Beach on Bolivar Peninsula Next Month [HBJ]
- City To Close Soon on Abandoned Oakbrook Apartments Then Knock Them Down [The Leader; previously on Swamplot]
- Midtown’s Sparrow Bar + Cookshop is ‘Currently Closed,’ Whatever That Means [Culturemap]
- Altitude Trampoline Park To Open 34K-SF Space at Crossing at Katy Ranch This Summer [HBJ]
- West Wharton More Vulnerable to Flooding Than East Wharton, Say Residents [Houston Chronicle]
- Why Houston Weather Predictions Were So Far Off Last Week [Space City Weather]
- How To Track the Water Levels at Barker and Addicks Reservoirs [Covering Katy; previously on Swamplot]
- Illegal Dumping Causing Worse Flooding in Houston [KHOU]
- 7-Acre Urban Farm Hope Farms Being Built in Sunnyside To Help Address Community’s Food Desert Problem [Houston Public Media]
- Texas Supreme Court Blocks Houston from Using Tougher Clean-Air Laws [AP]
- 11 Signs Houston Will Succeed [Opportunity Urbanist]
Photo of the Fifth Ward: o texano via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
