- 2 Woodstone St. [HAR]
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Crews have broken open the front of the former Randalls grocery store in the Westchase Shopping Center at the corner of Wilcrest and Westheimer, and are busy inserting a new, smaller Whole Foods Market inside. The photo above shows the view from the One Westchase Center office building, immediately to the east. This isn’t Whole Foods’ first Randalls redo; a new Whole Foods at 1407 S. Voss, on the former site of another Randalls, is scheduled to open next Wednesday.
Westchase Front
Here’s the brick-and-splitface-block strip center that the owner of the building housing the Barnaby’s Café on West Gray at the eastern edge of North Montrose plans to construct in the next 6 months. It’ll be right next door to the Barnaby’s parking lot between Stanford and Taft, on a 15,000-sq.-ft. piece of land that long ago held 3 houses. The West Gray Plaza at 504 W. Gray St. would have 6,000 sq. ft. of retail or office space on the ground floor, plus a 1,600-sq.-ft. half story with a deck above.
The site plan shows a row of head-in parking in front of the building, which would be set to the back of the site:
- Astrodome To Open to the Public for Indoor Selfies, Monster Trucks, Dome Dogs on April 9 in Honor of Its 50th Birthday [HBJ; details]
- Tiger Woods’ North Houston Golf Course Bluejack National Will Feature Residential Development of 234 ‘Estate’ Lots, 5 ‘Homestead’ Lots, 23 ‘Sunday Homes,’ 96 ‘Cottage Homes,’ 28 Condos [HBJ]
- Asking Price for Steel Heights House Designed by Cameron Armstrong with Fake Grass Now Down to $1.225 Million [Culturemap; previously on Swamplot]
- Whole Foods Opening at 1407 South Voss in Former Flagship Randall’s Spot Wednesday [Prime Property; previously on Swamplot]
- Pier 1 Imports, Cadence Bank, Starbucks Headed to Hughes Landing [Houston Chronicle]
- Closed Since December Over Landlord Dispute, Simone on Sunset To Reopen in Rice Village Space in May [Culturemap]
- Houston Has the Fastest-Growing Multi-Millionaire Population in the Country, According to New World Wealth [Houston Chronicle]
- Frontage Roads Open Ahead of Grand Pkwy. at I-45 Interchange [Houston Public Media]
- White Oak Bayou Bridge One of the Busiest At-Risk Crossings in the Country, According to Report [Houston Chronicle]
- Galveston Will Be Spared from Large Landings of Sargassum This Year, According to Forecasts [Galveston County Daily News ($)]
- Galveston Researchers Using Seaweed To Build Dunes That Support Plant Life, Protect the Seawall [Houston Public Media]
- Origins of Houston Neighborhood Names [Mental Floss]
- How a Houston-Based Reconditioned Diesel Transit Bus That Sleeps 6 Is Helping a Little Known Field of Art Practice Spread Around the Country [OffCite]
Photo of demolition of John West Wellness Center, 2247 San Felipe St.: Swamplot inbox
Headlines
Video of this week’s jaw-dropping demolition of the combo Taco Bell and Pizza Hut at 1710 Kingwood Dr. is now featured on the Facebook page of the chewed-up Kingwood restaurant, in 15 separate bite-sized episodes.
Above: Digging those teeth in. Next: Gettin’ some of that yummy filling:
Kingwood Crunch
The craggy terrain backing Buffalo Bayou in River Oaks near the neighborhood’s decorative gates at Shepherd Dr. sprouted several Usonian-design inspired homes by the architecture firm of MacKie & Kamrath back in the fifties. One of the modernist properties that still remains on the Tiel Way loop landed on the market Monday — and it’s in near original shape, right down to the redwood siding and built-in furnishings. A 1957 structure noted in architectural circles for its angles, wedges, cantilevered terraces, and detail-layered ceilings, the bayou-view home on a ravine lot now bears a $2.5 million price tag.
River Oaks Wrightists
From a source who wishes to remain unidentified come these pix of the glass-box keystone suspended at the entrance to ExxonMobil’s new north Houston campus. The 385-acre facility, which opened to employees last spring, is now largely occupied but remains under construction. The Energy Center, with its hovering 10,000-ton “floating cube” raised 80 ft. above ground, will serve as the campus’s front gate, welcoming visitors as well as shortcut-eschewing employees to the 10,000-worker compound.
The building will include a meeting and training center, and is meant to “represent the ExxonMobil brand for the long term,” according to a company document. Earlier photos showed an extensive scaffolding structure holding up the centerpiece; it’s now been removed.
Flying Square Energy Donut
Lower Westheimer is, of course, one of those select “walkable” areas of Houston, but last weekend’s first corporate-sponsored Sunday Streets made it especially so — even in the absence of a traditional neighborhood festival. The Montrose road was blocked off to automobile traffic from Taft to Woodhead for 4 hours.
Video footage of the event from a DJI Inspire 1 piloted by Adam Brackman shows rare scenes of introduced free-range human bipedal and bi-pedal activity in not-so-native habitat — from a few new angles:
Straight Up from the Street
 Wild, Foraging Lower Westheimer... "Pin It")
- German Investment Firm Finalizes Purchase of 1000 Main Office Tower from Invesco for $440M [Realty News Report]
- San Antonio-Based Commerce Capital Partners Buys Cityside Crossing Apartments On Griggs Rd. Near South Loop [Realty News Report]
- City Council Approves $300M Memorial Park Master Plan Unanimously [Houston Chronicle]
- Houston Homeowners Seeing Less Payoff from Home Remodeling Projects, Says Realtor Group [HBJ]
- Do You Really Want to Live in a Historic District? [Houstonia]
- Charting About 150 Houston Neighborhoods by the Numbers [Houstonia]
- Museum Park Cafe Closing April 10; Will Be Replaced by New Barnaby’s Cafe April 13 [Culturemap]
- Construction on Foreign Correspondents Begins at 4721 N. Main Shopping Center; Expected To Open in Late Spring [Eater Houston]
- Sharpstown Civic Association President Not Happy About How Council Member Laster’s  ‘Crashed’ a Recent Meeting [Sharpstown Civic Association]
- Construction To Start on League City Cabela’s Any Day Now [Galveston County Daily News ($); previously on Swamplot]
- How the Astrodome Helped Birth an Entire Entertainment Industry [Houstonia]
- What a Texas-Themed Bar Looks Like in Tokyo [The Texican]
- Los Angeles Agrees To Spend $1.3B Over Next 3 Years To Fix Sidewalks in Landmark Americans With Disabilities Act Lawsuit Settlement [LA Times]
Photo of McGovern Centennial Gardens, Hermann Park: Bill Barfield via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
For Trudi’s Birria de Chivo and other now-shuttered mainstays of the east corner of Bissonnet and Beechnut in Robindell, just down the road from Bayland Park, it’s all over except the asbestos-clearing and smashing. Going up in place of the 1956 Robindell Shopping Center, according to Sharpstown Civic Association, will be a new Aldi grocery store.
The site plan below for the center at 6751 Bissonnet St. predates the Aldi announcement, but shows a possible arrangement of freefloating buildings to replace the about-to-be-demolished retail row now backing up to Albacore Dr.:
Robindell Shopping Center Redo
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOW IT WORKS IN HOUSTON, THE FREE ENTERPRISE CITY 
“. . . That is, and always has been, Houston. That unruly sprawl, those cookie-cutter suburbs, generic strip malls, traffic congestion, that all existed long before the Beltway was built. I grew up here, in a cookie-cutter suburb called ‘Sagemont’ located next to a 2 lane stretch of blacktop named ‘South Belt.’ My dad grew up in a cookie-cutter suburb 10 miles closer in, filled with generic strip malls, just outside what would become the 610 Loop. Today I live in another cookie-cutter suburb farther west, about half way between 610 and the Beltway. Still lots of congestion, sprawl, strip centers, etc. This is Houston, baby.
And just about everything in Houston exists because some powerful person (not necessarily a politician) owned tracts of land. All of those hip dense neighborhoods? They were empty fields that some speculator bought for next to nothing, then bribed . . . er, influenced someone in government to build something, often with tax dollars. That’s how things get done.” [Memebag, commenting on Driving Beltway 8, in Order To Read Houston in the Original] Illustration: Lulu
The only assembly on this Lexington Green property appears to be of seating. It musters throughout the grounds of the updated 1972 contemporary, which soldiers on in Memorial’s Bunker Hill Village. The spit-and-polished property’s relisting on Monday trimmed the asking price by $50K to $1.575 million. A previous listing spent a month on the market at $1.625 million. A pool, landscaping, and outdoor venues help populate the lot, which occupies nearly half an acre near the cul-de-sac end of a street off Memorial Drive where it makes a sharp turn north, a bit east of Gessner Rd.
Chairing Cross
An updated condo with courtyard in a complex dubbed River Oaks Square splits its airspace between a 2-story ceiling in the living room (top) and 2 stories elsewhere in the floor plan. Built in 1978, the Upper Kirby community has about 50 units and is located north of W. Alabama and 2 blocks east of Lamar High School’s playing fields. The porch entry fronts a landscaped mews that’s flanked by lowrise buildings containing neighboring units. Its listing last week asks $415K.
Basics Bumped Up
