- 78 Batesbrooke Ct. [HAR]
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What better encapsulation of the recent trajectory of Midtown could you find than today’s news that Whole Foods Market plans to build a new 40,000-sq.-ft. store on the former site of the city’s Social Security Office (pictured above) at 3100 Smith St. in Midtown?
Well, a few details to the story of the ramshackle block surrounded by Smith, Brazos, Elgin, and Rosalie give it even more color as a Houston gentrification parable: Noting, for example, that the former government office, across the street from a couple of bars, had been shuttered by the feds a couple years ago. Or that plans for a Morgan Group apartment complex on the same site were submitted to the city and then abandoned sometime last year. (It would have been called the Pearl on Smith.) Also: When it opens at the end of 2017, Whole Foods Market’s new Midtown location may turn out not to be a Whole Foods Market. The company says it’s developing an unnamed “sister chain” of smaller stores targeting younger buyers, but did not indicate whether the Midtown Houston store would be part of it.
- Whole Foods to open in Midtown [Houston Chronicle]
Photo: O’Connor & Associates
The Midtown Story in a Nutshell
Remember that incident last July when real estate investor and renowned neighbor-dismemberer Robert Durst — the Rice Village’s best-known resident — decided to spread his own bodily fluids in the CVS at 6011 Kirby Dr.? Thanks to the enterprising and patient reporting team at KPRC, surveillance video of the episode is now available for all to see. Together with the shocking scene included at the end of the HBO documentary The Jinx — in which Durst, retreating to the bathroom from an interview while wearing a still-live mic, appears to confess to multiple murders — the footage paints a portrait of a man prone to urination surprises. Durst pleaded no contest to charges of criminal mischief for the CVS episode, after he allegedly exposed himself to a cashier and then peed on a display of candy.
The newly released footage isn’t the clearest (and mercifully, any potentially offending images are blurred out) but it does reveal a few things, including where Durst stood when he began urinating — in case that matters to future customers of that CVS Pharmacy.
Where It All Went Down
Also on today’s menu: a row of takedowns on Center St., a building that was once on Nantucket, and so much more:
- Transwestern Sells 4 Houston Multifamily Properties Totaling 704 Units [Realty News Report]
- Hines’s 17-Story River Oaks Office Tower San Felipe Place On Track for ‘Substantial Completion’ in Mid-June, 30% Leased So Far [HBJ; previously on Swamplot]
- Planned Community Developers Acquires 5-Acre Site on Brooks Lake in Sugar Land for New Office Building, Hotel [HBJ]
- Houston Homebuilders Got More Permits in First Quarter of 2015 Than Same Time Last Year, Finds U.S. Commerce Department Data [HBJ]
- The Top 25 Houston Housing Market Areas with the Biggest Price Increases from 2010 to 2014 [Houston Chronicle]
- Kimberly and Beau Harding of the Kimberly Harding Group Open ReMax Franchise in League City [HBJ]
- Bernie’s Backyard Food Truck Park and Entertainment Venue To Open This Summer on I-45 in Tomball [Community Impact Newspaper]
- Gourmet Grocery Concept Planned for 2701 Broadway in Galveston [Galveston County Daily News ($)]
- A Jacked-Up Woodlands Heights Bungalow Renovation at 500 Teetshorn [Houston Chronicle]
- Houston Places Third on Financial Times’ List of the ‘American Cities of the Future,’ Behind San Francisco and New York [Houston Chronicle]
- National Trust for Historic Preservation’s ‘This Place Matters’ Social Media Campaign Returns [Next City]
- Missed Connection on U.S. 59 Near Texas 242 [Houston Chronicle]
- High-Speed-Rail Opposition Group Says It’s Coordinating Lobbying Efforts with Southwest Airlines, but Southwest Claims It Isn’t [CityLab]
Photo of I-45: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
- 37726 Edgewater Dr. [HAR]
The U.S. Postal Service plans to end all retail operations at its flagship Downtown Houston post office next Friday, May 15th. And that’ll be it for the Barbara Jordan Post Office in the 5-story 1962 building with concrete fins at 401 Franklin St. All P.O. box and caller services at that location have already ended; they stopped on May 1st. And the post office boxes themselves have been gently extricated as well, leaving this scene inside:
Get Your Stamps There While You Still Can
The colorful team behind the beer-and-hot-dog hangout Moon Tower Inn has plans to open a much larger and meatier restaurant a couple blocks northeast of its spot on Canal St. in the East End. A new “Proper Texas BBQ and Watering Hole” will go into a warehouse-turned-auto-repair-shop at 3125 Navigation Blvd., a few blocks down the street from Ninfa’s and El Tiempo, sometime in 2016, according to a post on the Moon Tower Inn’s Facebook page. Its name: B.R. Young’s Lost Indian.
Here’s a view of it:
B.R. Young’s Lost Indian
HOUSTON METHODIST’S NEW SUBURBAN-STYLE TMC HELIPAD 
From reader Stephen J Alexander comes this pic of the new helistop that’s landed at the corner of Bertner Ave. and S. Braeswood, just over the southern (Brays Bayou) border from the Texas Medical Campus, as viewed during construction last month. It’s directly across the street from M.D. Anderson’s 25-story Mid Campus Building 1, but the helicopter landing pad is a project of Houston Methodist Hospital, according to permit info posted onsite; it sits on a portion of Methodist’s West Pavilion remote lot. Photo: Stephen J Alexander
EXPLORING TEXAS’S INTRASTATE ART HIGHWAY SYSTEM 
“In recent months, I’ve watched work from artists in just about every region of Texas make its way to other regions in Texas. It happens constantly. Celia Eberle (Ennis) to Beaumont; Camp Bosworth (Marfa) to Albany; Margarita Cabrera (El Paso) to Dallas; Ludwig Schwarz (Dallas) to Houston; Gregory Ruppe (Dallas) to San Antonio; Hills Snyder (San Antonio) to Lubbock, Danielle Georgiou (Dallas) to Marfa, Rick Lowe (Houston) to Dallas. You get the picture. The state, despite its size, enjoys a remarkably active farm-to-market road system for current working artists. This is unique in the U.S. In Texas, a town needs only one of the following to make art pop up there: 1) a university, 2) a few sharp galleries, 3) an accredited museum, 4) an artist residency, 5) a rich, well-traveled, collecting family who start a non-profit or private exhibition space. Texas is bent on importing art from outside of the state, yes, but that intractable ‘Texan’ identity (whatever it means to each region) also drives ongoing interest in homegrown talent. And given the state’s 27 million people, there’s some talent to swish around.” — Christina Rees, after shouting “Jesus Christ! Texas is so freaking big!†on a road trip to Marfa. [Glasstire] Photo: Christina Rees
- Midway Says One Grove Street in Upper Kirby Is 60% Leased [Realty News Report]
- Texas Home Sales Up 4% in First Quarter of 2015 Over Same Quarter Last Year, Inventory at All-Time Low, Says Texas Association of Realtors [Realty News Report]
- Judge Ed Emmett’s Visit to Germany’s Tropical Islands Showed Him Astrodome Plan is ‘Clearly Doable’ [Houston Public Media]
- Bernie’s Burger Bus Will Open Its Second Location, in La Centerra in Katy [Culturemap]
- Maryam Afshari Moves Shepherd Dr. Boutique Baanou To Her Tanglewood Home [Houstonia]
- Gateway Design Planning New Museum Park Coworking Space and Home at 2004 Binz St. [HBJ]
- The Past and Future of I-45 [Houston Chronicle]
- Southwest Airlines Claims It’s Not Involved with Group Fighting Proposed High-Speed Rail Between Houston and Dallas [Texas Tribune]
- An Ode to Hermann Park [Texas Monthly]
- Texas Bill To Boost Water Desalination Projects in the State Moves to Senate Committee [HBJ]
- Nearly 150,000 Fort Bend County Homeowners Sent the Wrong Property Tax Bill [Click2Houston]
Photo of Discovery Green: Marc Longoria via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
King Dollar, Pizza Hut, Sherwin-Williams, Sun Loan, Mini’s Cleaners, Ruchi’s Taqueria, Schlotzky’s, Tiendo Rio Lempa, Denny’s, Hairtex & Nails, Nancy’s Cake Designs, Nationwide Insurance, Edible Arrangements, Todo Jewelry, Video Square, V Star (pictured here), and all of the businesses in the Woodridge Plaza shopping center at 6969 Gulf Fwy. — they’re all going away. The Houston Community College System wants to expand its Southeast College East Side Campus onto the 5.7-acre property to its south, on the north side of I-45 near Gulfgate. A reader who isn’t involved in the legal tussle, but who’s looked through the records on the county clerk’s website, describes the back-and-forth as laid out in the documents: “It looks like the special commissioners valued the shopping center at $12,500,000. Both the landowner, Compass Investors Group LLC, and HCCS objected and are seeking a trial for a higher, and a lower valuation, respectively. Texas Capital Bank is owed about $3.5 million on a mortgage on the property and also intervened. The landowner lawsuit is in Cause number 1043516 in County Court 4. HCCS also filed condemnation actions against all the tenants (cause 1057330 in County Court 4).”
Images: Moseley Commercial
The Taking of Woodridge Plaza
HOW YOU CAN HELP HOUSTON’S FIRST FULL-TIME HUMAN TRAFFICKING COFFEE SHOP COME TO LIFE 
Been looking for a good coffee shop somewhere around the Heights where folks can get together and discuss Houston’s role as a major hub for human trafficking? Where caffeine-hunters can experience moments of genuine outrage — then find themselves drawn toward information sessions, group discussions, planning meetings, and double espressos — knowing that all profits from their chatting and coffee-drinking habits will go toward charitable stuff like providing classes and counseling for survivors of human trafficking? If so, then you’ll be happy to learn about A 2nd Cup, which opened as a part-time “incubator” project a couple of years ago. Now the nonprofit, led by former junior-high science teacher Erica Raggett, has begun work on a buildout for a permanent, full-time home — in the Vineyard Church of Houston’s Storehouse storefront at 1111 E. 11th St., just east of Studewood St. (pictured above, right next door to longtime late-night cop favorite Andy’s Café). A 2nd Cup’s backers are trying to raise an additional $100,000 toward the effort on Indiegogo now. [Indiegogo] Photo mockup: A 2nd Cup
