03/22/16 12:45pm

Ruggles Green Alabma, 2305 W. Alabama St., Upper Kirby, Houston, 77098

Here’s a peek at the new space of Ruggles Green, back open this week at 2305 W. Alabama St. next door to the restaurant’s original shopping center spot by Persona Medical Spa. Ruggles announced the move out of the westernmost suite of 2311 W. Alabama at the end of 2014, and the doors closed on New Year’s Day. The restaurant has now reopened in the street-facing ground floor retail space at the northeastern corner of the 5-story Gables Upper Kirby apartment midrise, which opened across W. Alabama from the less-dense Gables Waterford Square complex last year.

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Sprouting Next Door
03/22/16 12:00pm

2420 Reba Dr., Avalon Place, Houston 2420 Reba Dr., Avalon Place, Houston

The home at 2420 Reba St. in Avalon Place is today’s Sponsor of the Day. Swamplot appreciates the support!

Only a few blocks from West Ave (to the southwest), Shepherd Dr. (to the east), and River Oaks Elementary (to the north), you’ll find this arch-filled 2007 home. It has 4 bedrooms, 4 and 1/2 baths, and plenty of extra rooms for family.

The second photo above shows the living spaces toward the back of the home, past the main staircase: To the left of the Living Room (through the archway) is the island kitchen; a bay window in the attached breakfast room looks onto the landscaped back yard. Just out of frame in the photo (and connected to the kitchen) is the well-located combo wet bar, wine room, and butler’s pantry.

Want to see more? There’s plenty more to take in, including the expansive master suite upstairs. Browse the 2420 Reba property website for a complete photo tour.

Got some of your own rooms to show off? Become a Swamplot Sponsor of the Day and a lot of Houston real estate fans will see it.

Sponsor of the Day
03/22/16 10:45am

Side-by-side Mattress Firms, Westheimer Rd. at Montrose Blvd., Montrose, Houston, 77006

Former Mattress Firm CEO Steve Stagner (now swapped to executive chairman status) told investors yesterday that the increasingly ubiquitous bedding retailer is now planning to identify “duplicative” stores and shut them down, even potentially paying fees to break some leases early. The tactical reversal comes after last year’s rebranding of Mattress Firm’s Mattress Pro subsidiary as additional Mattress Firms, leaving even more Mattress Firm storefronts in even closer proximity than before (including the side-by-side-but-independent storefronts at the corner of Westheimer Rd. and Montrose Blvd., pictured above). Mattress Firm also recently purchased its largest national competitor, Sleepy’s; Bloomberg reports that the purchase brought Houston-based Mattress Firm’s total holdings to about 3,500 retail stores and 80 distribution centers across 48 states.

How many stores will close, and when? Mattress Firm will release the numbers (and the expected closure costs) after it wraps up a portfolio review; the plan is to start shutting underperforming doors within the fiscal year. Mattress Firm currently lists 147 Mattress Firm-branded storefronts between The Woodlands and Lake Jackson.
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Mattress Plan Recall
03/22/16 8:30am

downtown-houston-skyline

Photo: Marc Longoria via Swamplot Flickr Pool

Headlines
03/21/16 5:15pm

construction at Cane Rosso Montrose, 4306 Yoakum Blvd., Montrose, Houston, 77006
Oven at Cane Rosso Montrose, 4306 Yoakum Blvd., Montrose, Houston, 77006Work is underway for the Cane Rosso headed for 4306 Yoakum Blvd., in the low-lying side-attachment to the Hansen Partners’ 6-story office building at the corner with Richmond Ave. The office complex was wrapped up in 2014 following the 2012 clear-out of the apartments previously occupying the same site.

The opening of the Montrose Cane Rosso location will likely lag a few months behind that of the Dallas pizza chain’s first Houston location at 1835 N. Shepherd Dr., where a glittery gold-tiled oven is already decorating the former Houston Alternator space at 19th St. as it prepares to open later this spring. (The custom oven at the Montrose spot, shown above, will also only get gold accents, rather than the full Midas treatment.) But some blocky renderings of what the Yoakum space could look like, if all goes as planned, are already out for consumption — here’s an aerial view of the exterior from the corner of Yoakum and Richmond, with the office building making a ghostly appearance in transparent gray to the right of the frame:

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Kitchen Prep on Yoakum
03/21/16 2:45pm

COMMENT OF THE DAY: THOSE I-45 EXPRESS LANE PLANS ARE CUTE NOW BUT JUST WAIT UNTIL THEY GROW UP pierce-street-45-downtown“Fine with these updates, provided the Pierce [Elevated] still gets torn down. Express lanes might seem like a good idea, but they’ll most likely be hindered by limited ingress/egress and often shunpiked. I’d imagine they’ll also be pretty expensive owing to the proposed modifications to the design. It’s a good design if you’re trying to center transportation around private auto use, but at some point, that can’t be the primary design consideration anymore.” [TMR, commenting on What Happens When You Decide To Redo That Downtown Freeway Plan in Your Spare Time] Photo of Pierce Elevated: Russell Hancock

03/21/16 12:30pm

Jamal Cyrus Art Blocks mural as 901 Main St., Downtown, Houston, 77002

The next piece of Art Blocks art was smoothed into place at the corner of Main St. and Walker this weekend, above the lightrail-facing side of inflation-aware Just a Dollar 19¢ & Budget Food Store. The mural, Jamal Cyrus’s Lightnin’ Field, is one of 4 that will be rotated onto the side of the 1929 building at 901 Main throughout the year leading up to next spring’s Super Bowl. The other projects to pretty up the Main Street Square area include the 60-foot-tall wooden Trumpet Flower that will grow between One City Centre and its parking garage, and the Color Jam street paint-up underway at the corner of Main and McKinney.

The signs for Just a Dollar 19¢ appear to have been artistically blanked as part of the installation; the convenience store, which opened on the corner in the early 1990’s in the former Krupp & Tuffly Shoes building, is shown above from the northbound Main St. Square light-rail station, between the restored facade of the Holy Cross Chapel & Catholic Resource Center (on the right) and the 46-story BG Group Place tower at 811 Main (on the left, across Walker St.). Here’s a twilight shot of the nearly completed mural, with a cherry picker still loitering in the bottom corner:

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Up on Main St.
03/21/16 10:15am

MEDITATIONS ON HOUSTON’S ICEHOUSES FROM THE GUY WHO STARTED PHOTOGRAPHING THEM LAST YEAR Bubba's Texas Burger Shack, 5230 Westpark Dr., Gulfton, Houston, 77056What patterns have emerged to recent architecture grad David Richmond, roughly 7 months and 40 Shiners in on a year-long project to document Houston’s icehouses? Garage doors, and an embrace of Houston’s outside environment: Richmond writes that the icehouses’ “permanent openness inverts the last 50 years of Houston living — hot days are hot, ugly streets are visible, bad smells can linger, and humidity can ruin your day. The garage door becomes a way of existing in your location for what it is that day at that moment. The city is no longer an image through a window but a physical space.” Richmond plans to turn the project into a book; you can follow along on Twitter here. [Houston Chronicle, OffCite] Photo of Bubba’s Texas Burger Shack, between the Westpark Tollway overpass and US 59: Bubba’s Texas Burger Shack

03/21/16 8:30am

mid-main

Photo of Mid Main: Marc Longoria via Swamplot Flickr Pool

Headlines
03/18/16 4:30pm

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DECIDE TO REDO THAT DOWNTOWN FREEWAY PLAN IN YOUR SPARE TIME Purple City Freeway Plan Map captureTory Gattis reports in an update to his weekly column that TxDOT is looking over the alternative Downtown freeway plan put forth by Houston-based blog Purple City last week — to see if it can pull any ideas from it. The report, created by a semi-anonymous Houston-based engineer, includes detailed schematics, along with contextualized critiques of TxDOT’s most recently publicized version of plans to rework the interchanges of I-10, I-45, and 59 around Downtown. The Purple City plan appears to have a lot to offer: It would keep the Pierce Elevated as managed express lanes, while exploring options to make its street level pedestrian- and development-friendly. The alternative plan would require less right-of-way acquisition than TxDOT’s and eliminate left-hand exits. There are also bits about developing a new bus rapid transit line between Bellaire and UH, adding a a parallel bikeway network, and expanding the Downtown street grid. The 13-page report is available here; there’s also a scaled schematic of the entire plan. [Houston Strategies; Purple City; previously on Swamplot] Aerial schematic of (rotated) Downtown freeway alternative proposal: Purple City

03/18/16 3:45pm

COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHAT ’THERE’S NOWHERE TO PARK’ REALLY MEANS Stuck in Parking Lot on 290“People would rather circle for hours for a spot that is 3 ft. from the door they wish to enter than to: A) pay to park B) walk. So please keep in mind, when someone says ‘there’s nowhere to park in the village’ what they mean is: There’s nowhere within 3 ft. of my destination to park. Of course, everyone knows where they can park, but the last thing they want to do is walk from their car to their destination.” [toasty, commenting on Shake Shack Will Take Over La Madeleine’s Rice Village Space] Illustration: Lulu

03/18/16 1:45pm

Garden Oaks Deed Restrictions Signs, Garden Oaks, Houston, 77018

What’s the story behind the tiny question marks that recently appeared at the end of the low-dangling “DEED RESTRICTIONS ENFORCED” signs on at least a couple Garden Oaks welcome-to-the-neighborhood markers? More than just your usual neighborhood grumbling and graffiti-ing, it appears.

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