Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
Let’s start the week off with a few quick smash-ups, shall we?
Sign up for the Newsletter
Down in Galveston, seafood-slash-southern-focused Harborside Mercantile is opening up for a preview this evening, after clearing some liquor licensing hurdles that set back the planned December startup. The restaurant, located at 2021 Strand St., is a collaboration between Richard Craig (whose 3-wheeled Hubcap Grill will be getting a 4th location inside IAH) and Joshua Martinez (owner of The Modular foodtruck and the former Chicken Ranch).
The Strand, buoyantly styled as the “Wall Street of the South” in the 19th century, was battered by fires, the Civil War, and numerous destructive hurricanes before sinking out of prominence and settling into life as a warehouse district; historical restorations in the 1960s paved the way for the district’s eventual resurgence as a tourist destination.
- Houston’s burger king and ex-Chicken Ranch owner team up to create Galveston restaurant [CultureMap]
- The Strand [Texas State Historical Association]
- Previously on Swamplot: Local Restaurants You’ve Heard of Make It to the IAH Runway; New ‘Chicken Ranch’ Opening on North Main near Sunset Heights Will Serve Actual Fried Chicken; Openings and Closings: New Hubcap Grill, Funeral Bars, Downtown Phoenicia Delay; Tacos a-Go-Going to the Heights; Hubcap Grill Expanding to Shady Acres;
Photos: Harborside Mercantile
On the Island
- 405 Avondale St. [HAR]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: CYCLING THROUGH TRAFFIC JAMS ON THE ROAD TO THE AMERICAN DREAM 
“The real crux of the issue here is that Americans are constantly sold on the idea that cars represent ultimate freedom and prosperity. That image breaks down when crowds of commuters start forming giant, slow-moving, panic-inducing trains of automobiles. The cognitive dissonance causes automobilists to latch on to the only solution they can imagine: ‘wider roads will restore that feeling of freedom.’ Of course, it never really works out that way.” [Derek, commenting on Which Came First: the Traffic or the Freeway Lanes?] Illustration: Lulu
NO MORE BOURBON AT BOURBON ON BAGBY ON BAGBY ST. 
Midtown sports and whiskey bar Bourbon on Bagby is now closed at 2708 Bagby St., across from Ron’s Downtown Auto Service and the City Place Midtown apartment complex. The wooden building at the corner with Dennis St. previously housed OTC Bar; a former partner told HBJ back in 2014 that the latest incarnation of the space would be marketed heavily to “oil and gas guys.” A post to Bourbon on Bagby’s Facebook page last week confirmed that the bar is “closed as fuck.” [previously on Swamplot] Photo: Bourbon on Bagby
Can you guess today’s Sponsor of the Day? It’s Tom Rusteberg CGI. Thanks for supporting Swamplot, Tom!
How do you get that level of realism that turns renderings into images that show what a building will truly be like — before it gets built? Try looking at the work of Tom Rusteberg CGI. The indoor and outdoor photos above, for example, aren’t photos at all: They’re visualizations Tom created, to help a client bring a design to life.
For the last 10 years, numerous clients in and around the Houston area have taken advantage of Tom’s visualization services. His work is technical, but it’s also intuitive. His renderings come out of thin air, but they’re guided through long-lasting relationships with clients who rely on him to provide a visual advantage in the marketplace for their products.
For more information, please visit Tom’s perpetually outdated website.
Let us draw you a pretty picture — to show you what being Swamplot’s Sponsor of the Day can do for your business. Contact us here to find out more.
Sponsor of the Day
Industrial meets arboreal in this glassy contemporary home, hidden away on nearly 16 acres of wooded property in Dickinson, TX. Steel-framed window walls offer views of the forest outside throughout the 2-bedroom home, from the entryway to the master bedroom and bath (above). Polished concrete masonry and partition walls divvy up the mostly-open 3,700-sq.-ft. floor plan. The $1.6-million home and its woody buffer zone are set about half a mile east of the Gulf Freeway:
Stone’s Throw from I-45
WHICH CAME FIRST: THE TRAFFIC OR THE FREEWAY LANES? 
“Population growth doesn’t happen independently of transportation infrastructure—it’s profoundly shaped by it,” writes Daniel Hertz over at City Observatory this week. Hertz’s commentary comes in response to pushback following an article in which the blog weighed the outcome of the Katy Freeway’s 2008 expansion (calling out 30- and 55-percent increases in morning and afternoon commute times between 2011 and 2014). Pro-expansion readers purportedly commented that while travel times along the corridor did actually get worse, those same slowdowns would have been even stickier had the expansion not taken place when it did. But that’s backwards, argues Hertz, or at least a simplification: “In fact, research dating back at least to the 1950s has found over and over that highway construction in the urban periphery is associated with more housing construction there—and the depopulation o[f] urban neighborhoods. . . . Part of the way that highways fill themselves up with cars is by creating demand for housing near them.” [City Observatory, previously on Swamplot] Photo of I-10 West: Andres Lombana [license]
- Sublease Space Supply Up 63% in Houston’s Class A Office Market [Realty News Report]
- Value of Residential Construction Starts Dropped 18% in December in Houston, According to Dodge Data & Analytics [Houston Chronicle]
- Greystar, Medistar Developing Luxury Apartment Complex in the Med Center [HBJ]
- Newmark Grubb Knight Frank Leases 38,582 SF in 2 BLVD Place at 1700 Post Oak [Realty News Report]
- A Record Number of Tourists Stayed in Hotels, Booked Conventions in Houston in 2015 [Houston Chronicle]
- Weather, Utilities Keep Delaying East End’s Hughes Street Overpass Project [Houston Public Media]
- How Houston Boosted Mass Transit Ridership By Improving Service Without Spending a Dime [Vox]
- Ride-Hailing Companies Can Officially Operate in Galveston Starting in March [Galveston County Daily News ($)]
- Heights Clock Tower, Navigation Esplanade, Cross Creek Ranch Win Urban Land Institute Awards [Houston Chronicle]
Photo of East Downtown: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
Only parts of the structures on Aberdeen Way and in the Happy Hide (a) Way are leaving us, but the rest will quickly and entirely go down.
- 539 Merrill St. [HAR]
AUSTIN POWERS-STYLE CONDO GOES INTERNATIONALLY VIRAL DURING SEQUEL SALES ATTEMPT Meanwhile, in Chicago: A 3-bedroom 1970s condo fully decked out with brilliantly patterned wallpaper, period light fixtures, and the requisite shaggy rugs was pulled off the market today, after the listing for the originally-furnished condo went viral. The psychedelic penthouse was previously listed for several months starting in late 2012 but was pulled in early 2013 due to a lack of interest; the new listing hit the market on Monday and has since been pulled following an overwhelming response — Canadian and British outlets have reported on the condo, and even the funktacular Zillow listing has been viewed more than 170,000 times. [NBC Chicago, Huffington Post Canada, Telegraph, Zillow]
Teardown work started yesterday morning on the parking garage behind the Corporate Plaza II and III buildings (shortly after Blanco’s got hosed down less than a mile away). North and east of the garage (that’s center and left in the above photo), the last crumbs of Miyako, Madras Pavilion, and Red Onion were swept away earlier this month.
A reader with eyes glued to the unfolding carnage sent the above overview shot, which shows the Corporate Plaza I midrise hiding unsuccessfully behind the disappearing parking garage as it awaits its own upcoming erasure. The next-door headquarters of the Houston chapter of the American Red Cross are visible on the right side of the photo, as a West University water tower gives the building bunny ears.
Another reader sends these shot of an excavator gingerly yanking at the bottom of one of the interior support beams of the 7-story structure early yesterday afternoon:
And Then There Was 1
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOW TO CONSOLIDATE PRESERVATION EFFORTS FOR 2 OF HOUSTON’S LARGEST AILING HISTORICAL STRUCTURES 
“Move the Battleship Texas in pieces to be dry-docked inside the ‘Dome and create the World’s Biggest Ship in a Bottle. This is Texas, damnit!” [J, commenting on The Future Is Now in Houston; Yet Another New Heights Project from Treadsack; previously on Swamplot] Illustration: Lulu
A NOW OPEN sign is the newest addition to the metal-skinned Rice Village strip center at 2365 Rice Blvd., where Little Liberty’s neon blue label has been glowing atop a muted prison-stripe awning for several months. A reader notes that the banner takes the place of the NOW HIRING sign previously on display in the storefront, which held a branch of Ruggles Cafe & Bakery until its closure “for renovations” last March.
Free to Stop In
