Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
Here’s a bird’s eye view of what’s to come for these houses.
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- 680 Villa Dr. [HAR]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: DRAWING A LINE ON URBAN EXPANSION 
“Here is a thought: Cities are just too big. Look at Shanghai — great public transit system, but streets are choked with traffic. People on scooters ride almost shoulder to shoulder. People pay over $20k a year for a permit to be able to use the highways because you simply cannot move on the side streets in a passenger car. London has crazy vehicle congestion charges. Overnight garage contracts in NY, Boston, etc. cost as much as a decent sized house in the suburbs. Yet, every city in the US jumps up and down at the idea of growth. Maybe it is time for civic leaders to just tell people to stay away — no room on the roads. Or state legislatures could pass bans on moving to certain metro areas and require people to move to smaller towns/cities to help them revitalize. La Grange is a lovely place. Next time someone tries to move to Austin and choke up I-35 even more, Gov. Abbot could order them to move to La Grange instead.” [Old School, commenting on Comment of the Day: On the Other Side of the Tracks] Illustration: Lulu
JUDGE EMMETT HAS AT LEAST 6 THINGS TO SAY ABOUT THE ASTRODOME 
It’s time again this Groundhog Day afternoon for the County Judge’s annual State of the County address. Judge Emmett’s speech was slated to include 6 points about the State of the Astrodome (which, as Astros historian Mike Acosta notes, is now fence-free and getting some new landscaping, as pictured above). The points, as summarized by the Houston Chronicle: “1. The Dome is iconic and revered by ‘a large majority’ in the county. 2. The Dome belongs to Harris County and is fully paid for. Upkeep costs are minimal. 3. The Dome is structurally sound, but a major repurposing will cost hundreds of millions. 4. Anything done to alter the Dome must be approved by the Texas Historical Commission. 5. The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo and the Houston Texans have contractual rights at NRG Park, and the county must keep its end of that bargain with maintenance. 6. No private interest has come up with the money to save the Dome.” The latest plans being batted around for the Dome: bring the first floor up to ground level to create parking or storage space underneath, then start talking about a public-private-retail-indoor-park space. [Houston Chronicle, previously on Swamplot] Photo: Mike Acosta
HOUSING, RETAIL, RAMP TO 59 PLANNED FOR I-45 AT CULLEN BLVD. 
New housing geared toward University of Houston and Texas Southern University students is planned near the U of H Main Campus’s main entrance on Cullen Blvd., according to PRNewswire. Plans for the Gateway at Cullen development include 531 beds (in single, double, quadruple, and quintuple groupings), mostly in townhome-esque 2-story configurations, which will contrast with most of Fountain Residential’s previous campus-geared housing projects in the area. PRNewswire also reports that plans are in the works to replace the nearby Bestway Motor Inn with a new on-ramp to 59, and that the former Fingers Furniture warehouse will be turning into a retail center anchored by a grocery store. [PRNewswire, previously on Swamplot] Rendering: Fountain Residential
The demo job on the strip center on Blodgett St. between Crawford and La Branch has finally been completed, following a multi-year pause. Until late last fall, the strip contained Sub-Saharan African art gallery Gallery Jatad (since departed to an Almeda Rd. location), while J Food Mart previously held down the fort on the opposite end of the row — but much of the middle of the complex (left, in the above photo) was gutted in 2013. Demo permits for the rest of the structure were issued on Thursday, and the building was down by late yesterday afternoon, a reader writes.
The land under the strip was bought by Trans Unity Partners in January 2015, with an eye toward developing the spot as the Chelsea at Museum District, an 18-story condo highrise. Back then, Trans Unity was uncertain about moving forward with the plan in light of predicted market conditions.
Specs for the Chelsea at Museum District (not to be confused with the highrise formerly known as Chelsea Montrose) mention 95-ish units atop 6 stories of parking. HAIF user urbannizer even dug up a draft rendering of the project, set artfully amid a field of flowers, last October:
Now Off Display
- Australia-Based BHP Billiton Files Building Permits for 30-Story Class A Office Tower in Uptown District [HBJ]
- Woodlands Mansion Carlton Woods Estate Recently on the Market for $19M To Be Auctioned This Month at a Discount [Houston Chronicle]
- Stacked Retail on the Rise in Houston [HBJ]
- Smart Home Technology, Pet Rooms, Material Accent Walls Among the Latest Luxury Home Design Trends in Houston [HBJ]
- Beaver’s Planning Second Houston Restaurant Near the Galleria [Culturemap]
- New Tequila and Taco Joint Already Set To Take the Place of the Just-Shuttered Cook & Collins in Midtown [Culturemap]
- Mayor Turner Tells Texas DOT Not To Focus on Highway Expansion [CityLab]
- Kinder Institute Expanding Research Efforts To Include Development and Transportation, Urban Disparity [Houston Public Media]
- Uber Shuts Down in Galveston After New Regulations Pass [Galveston County Daily News ($)]
- Inside the Effort To Restore Montrose’s Historic African-American Cemetery [Montrose District]
- Slideshow: The Various Trash, Debris and Other Weird Junk Found in Houston-Galveston-Area Waterways [Houston Chronicle]
- Notable Over-the-Top Homes for Sale in Houston’s Suburbs [Houston Chronicle]
Photo of Braesvillage: Christof Spieler via Swamplot Flickr Pool
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Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
Rosslyn Gardens loses Gold Cup, and we’re not talking soccer here.
- 825 Bayland Ave. [HAR]
Preston St. was closed down Saturday afternoon between Travis and Milam, as hundreds of people showed up to Market Square to paint the reclaimed strips of wood that will compose Patrick Renner’s upcoming Trumpet Flower installation. The sculpture is designed to loom 60 feet above the space between One City Centre and its parking garage downtown (off Main St. Square and Fannin, between Lamar and McKinney).
Renner, of far-more-horizontal Funnel Tunnel fame, is slated to install the towering cone by the end of March, as part of the Art Blocks project planned to jazz up Main Street Square leading up to the 2017 Superbowl. The tip of the structure will stretch down from the top of the garage and flare out into a furnished canopy shelter at street level. A tiny model of the installation was on display at a side table during the painting free-for-all:
Sprouting Downtown
THE REST OF RICHMONT SQUARE PREPARES TO GET LEVELED 
Residents of the Richmont Square apartments learned today that they have until May 1 to get out of the way of the bulldozers, writes Erin Mulvaney of the Houston Chronicle. The apartments, which are owned by the Menil Foundation, will be brushed away to make room for upcoming phases of the Menil’s unfolding master plan, announced back in 2009. The back third of the 1960s complex facing Richmond Ave was demolished at the start of 2015Â to free up space for an extension of W. Main St.; the Menil’s new Drawing Institute is currently being penciled in to the north of the remaining apartments. Richmont Square’s leasing office began to offer only month-to-month contracts by early January, though a set date for the eventual teardown had not been made public at the time. [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo: John Ronald via Flickr
Delicate pink surveyor’s flags echo the magenta of the early cherry blossoms in Hermann Park’s Japanese Garden, where maintenance, new features, and a new gate are under construction. Sections of the 5.5-acre space are currently sectioned off by orange construction fencing, and many of the larger water features (including the one pictured in the top photo) are temporarily in rock garden mode.
The Hermann Park Conservancy’s website estimates wrapping up the first phase of the renovation project this summer. Currently, the koi that inhabit some of the garden’s ponds are set up in temporary housing along the eastern edge of the park:
Fish in a Barrel
COMMENT OF THE DAY: ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE TRACKS 
“The love affair with trains by a certain group of urbanists in the US is a ‘grass is greener on the other side’ mentality; they always point how wonderful public transport is in Europe. Well, if you actually lived in you Europe (and I have for many years), you realize that public transport is a horrible pain in the ass to live with every day. It’s inefficient if you have to go anywhere that is not on direct route, you have to make plans days in advance if you need to be across town at a particular time, you have to go to the market every F-ing day to buy food because you can’t carry more than a couple of bags at a time. You eventually give up after a while and end up confining your life to within a couple of blocks of your house. Don’t even get me started when the weather is bad. There’s one thing everyone in dense European cities dreams of: owning a car.” [commonsense, commenting on Which Came First: the Traffic or the Freeway Lanes?] Illustration: Lulu
A reportedly sober driver crashed into the strip center at the southeast corner of S. Shepherd Dr. and W. Alabama St. in the early hours of Sunday morning, according to KPRC. The unplanned beer run left the Jugs Draft storefront shattered open, and gave the Shepherd branch of Jenni’s Noodle House a new side entrance. Strip center neighbors Burn Smoke Shop, Mega DJ, and Mattress 1 are seemingly undamaged;Â all involved humans are reportedly undamaged as well.
Rare beers, however, were a major casualty of the event: The SUV crunched into Jugs’s bottle coolers, prompting the craft beer shop to liquidate what was salvaged of its chilled inventory in a $2 firesale yesterday. (Jugs is named for its 64-oz. growlers-to-go of draft beer, but also sells bottles and kegs.)
Party Foul
- Houston Apartment Market ‘Overbuilt,’ Says Apartment Data Services in 2016 Forecast [Houston Chronicle]
- Camden Property Trust Grades Houston Apartment Market a C with Declining Outlook for 2016 [HBJ]
- Economic Downturn to Spread Beyond Upstream Oil Industry This Year, Predicts Economist Bill Gilmer [Houston Chronicle]
- $1M-Plus Texas Homes Sales Increased from 4.5% to 36.4% in 2015, Finds Texas Association of Realtors [Culturemap]
- Harrigan Development Partners To Convert Arabian Horse Ranch into Clubhouse for Tomball Master-Planned Community [HBJ]
- Midtown’s Cook & Collins Has Closed While Upstairs Bar Spare Key Lives On [Houston Press]
- Last Vestige of Harlon’s Bar-B-Que Empire, Brooks Family BBQ, Has Shuttered [Houston Press]
Photo: telwink via Swamplot Flickr Pool
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