It’ll take time to work the knots out.
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- Dallas-Basedta PlainsCapital Bank Planning Houston Headquarters in Kirby Grove [HBJ]
- Rise Communities To Break Ground on Brazoria County Master-Planned Community Meridiana on April 10 [HBJ]
- Asset Plus Cos. Holding Off on Building New Multifamily Projects in Houston for Now  [HBJ]
- With Influx of New Residential Towers, Is Downtown Finally On Its Way Up? [Houstonia]
- The Pros and Cons of Living in a Historic District [Houstonia]
- Taqueria Arandas Opening Its 28th Restaurant Today at 8111 S. Gessner [Food Chronicles]
- Caffé Bene Coming to Downtown’s GreenStreet Later This Summer [Culturemap]
- Midtown Maps Out Vision To Promote Arts, Culture Over Next Decade [Houston Chronicle]
- 55 Landfills Are Leaking in Texas, Including 5 in Houston, Says Texas Commission on Environmental Quality [Houston Public Media]
Photo of Marriott Marquis Convention Center Hotel: Marc Longoria via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
- 1138 Stonecrest Dr. [HAR]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOW THOSE NEW FIFTH WARD DRIVEWAYS CAME TO REACH ALL THE WAY INTO THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET 
“Here’s how you get to this point.
(i) Neighborhood gets built with gravel streets, ditch drainage.
(ii) City goes in and widens most of the streets in the neighborhood in the 1960s. 40′ asphalt, curb and gutter. Baron St. misses out on the neighborhood-wide repave because it has a railroad track in the middle.
(iii) Railroad track gets abandoned, trackbed gets paved over, no one ever improves Baron.
(iv) Townhome developer comes in and wants to put in a driveway. Houston Infrastructure Design Manual says any culvert in City right-of-way has to be 24″ minimum. Developer’s engineer knows if he touches that old 60s curb inlet he’ll have to replace it to current spec, better to match the flowline and save eight or ten large. Culverts go in and look huge because 24″ on top of the existing flowline is above the crown of the road.
(v) Swamplot readers are confused because the 60s-era curb and gutter doesn’t match the existing right-of-way.” [Purple CIty, commenting on Here’s One Way To Get Extra Long Driveways for Your Fifth Ward Townhome] Photo: Swamplot inbox
COMMENT OF THE DAY RUNNER-UP: RETAIL CHAIN SLEEP SYNERGY 
“I wonder if Mattress Firm/Pro geographically correlate with CVS/Walgreens stores, i.e. the drug sellers who provide customers with the means (Ambien, Lunesta) to enjoy a full and long-lasting experience on their newly purchased mattresses.” [Larry, commenting on How and Where Mattress Firm Is Conquering Houston, One Sleepy Strip Center Storefront at a Time] Illustration: Lulu
As a cautionary demonstration of the hazards of the kind of wacky old-roadway-meets-new-driveway construction found in front of a set of under-construction townhomes at the corner of Bayou and Baron streets in the Fifth Ward, the accident pictured here doesn’t quite hold up to extended scrutiny. Sure, it might be tough for a vehicle to stay on the asphalt when a stretch of roadway suddenly disappears and new concrete driveways stretch across it (as illustrated in the second photo above). But here the damaged Escalade appears to have crashed into a stationary hazard on the opposite side of the street.
Dude, Where’s My Road?
The Avenue Grill could close sometime soon, but not if somebody doesn’t hurry up and buy the place. Or maybe buy the place and keep it running for the cops, firefighters, judges, judges, lawyers, and other frequenters of the neighboring municipal court and police complex that regularly eat breakfast and lunch there? To hasten either outcome, a small sign went up a week or 2 ago at the corner of Houston Ave. and Center St., a block north of Washington Ave., indicating that the 1940 building and a total of 19,600 sq. ft. of land is available for sale. That spurred attention from a Swamplot reader who — like most people — hadn’t been aware that the property had been on the market since last August.
The $1.5 million asking price includes 4 lots — one where the building sits at 1017 Houston Ave., 2 adjacent parking lots, and an additional surface parking lot across Center St., just where the Houston Ave. underpass begins. That lot is visible just beyond the building in this view from the corner of Washington Ave:
Over Not So Easy
- Houston Added 96,700 Jobs in the 12-Month Period Ending February 28, Despite Oil Decline [Realty News Report]
- Downtown Redevelopment Authority Seeking Developer for Mixed-Used Project on Site of Old Sakowitz Building at Main and Dallas [HBJ; previously on Swamplot]
- SEDCO Capital of Saudi Arabia’s New Shariah-Compliant Program To Acquire Portfolio of Senior Housing in U.S. Kicks Off with Woodlands Purchase [Realty News Report]
- Austin Private Equity Firm Casoro Capital Plans To Raise $8M To Acquire Class B and C Apartments in Houston, Austin, Dallas, San Antonio [HBJ]
- ‘Unwelcome Event’ Kills Swift Energy’s Plans To Move To Five Chasewood Near Vintage Park; HQ Relocating To Five Greenspoint Instead [HBJ]
- Gracepoint Homes Going Up in 188-Acre Stillwater Neighborhood in Conroe Near I-45 and FM 1488 [Prime Property]
- Some Predictions for the Houston Real Estate Market [Houstonia]
- H&M Planning To Open 20K-SF Location at Pearland Town Center This Fall [HBJ]
- Longstanding Midtown Nightclub Building at 2401 San Jacinto Once Home To Rich’s, Currently Home to Limelight, Trades Hands [Prime Property]
- Peli Peli Now Open in Former Gigi’s Asian Bistro Space in the Galleria [Food Chronicles]
- Aladdin Mediterranean Cuisine in Montrose Closed Until Wednesday After Weekend Fire [Culturemap]
- Mayor Parker and City Council To Vote on Memorial Park Master Plan Today [Houston Chronicle]
- Competitors Sparring Over Lease of Galveston Bay’s 23K-Acre Oyster Reef [Galveston County Daily News ($)]
- HPD: East Crosstimbers Little Caesars Targeted in Strip Center Drive-In Smash-and-Grab [Houston Chronicle]
- Houston Traffic Worsening as Average Trips Took 25% Longer in 2014, Up from 21% in 2013, According to TomTom Report [Houston Chronicle]
- OverFlow Church ‘Strip for Jesus’ Billboards Are Back Up in Pearland [Houston Chronicle]
Photo of Greenway Plaza: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
Doubled windows dominate the front of an updated 1946 Idylwood home. Each pair indicates a front-to-back section of the floor plan within. The south-facing property sits on a sloping lot in the neighborhood’s southeast corner; the street, which begins at Wayside Dr. just north of Walmart, eventually bends past the grassy banks of Brays Bayou. Over the weekend, the home popped up on the market as a listing seeking $265K. The same agent handled the property’s previous sale in 2008, when the current owner paid $185K before sprucing it up.
Two by Two
DRIVING BELTWAY 8, IN ORDER TO READ HOUSTON IN THE ORIGINAL 
“To get a full sense of the place,” writes Cort McMurray, every Houstonian should travel Beltway 8’s full 83-mile circuit. Until you can find the time, though, his tour narrative may have to suffice: “Keep going. You’re not even halfway around. There are more factories, and more office buildings, more new construction, more traffic. There’s a steak house, built to look like Sam Houston’s Huntsville home, evidence that if you give a Houstonian a little time and a little encouragement and the right financing, a Houstonian will create something ridiculous, and the horse track, where nothing ever appears to be happening. Near Bush Intercontinental, you’ll endure Roadwork Purgatory: orange cones and narrowed lanes and blinking signs, and no evidence of any work being done. It’s been that way for 19 years.
East of the airport, the Beltway crosses vast swaths of tract homes and the strip centers and megachurches that inevitably follow them, funneling you toward the Jesse Jones Bridge, standing like the skeleton of some humongous sauropod, head forever bent to the Ship Channel, nosing about for some seaweed.” [OffCite] Photo of Steamboat House Steakhouse: Tomball Sesquicentennial Promenaders
- 5006 Waterbeck St. [HAR]
How did these townhomes under construction on the northeast corner of Bayou and Baron streets in the Fifth Ward come by their extra-long, tongue-like driveways? It’s not exactly clear, but the reader who sent these pix of the project and its rather prominent culvert-leaping flatwork thinks the answer might have something to do with a willingness to build well past the property line — or at least a lack of familiarity with where the property line actually is. The orange complex across the street, in the background of the photo above, is the Kennedy Place Apartments. Here’s a view of the townhomes from that side, looking east:
Just Add Street
“Now we know why we seem to have hit peak mattress along Westheimer,” declares Christopher Andrews, after producing and walking through a series of maps intended to shed light on where in the Houston area and why Mattress Firm has opened 92 separate showrooms, and is working on another 19 for the lower-priced “competitor” the same company operates, Mattress Pro. The highlights from his analysis are the 2 maps excerpted here, showing (at top) the correlation between areas with lots of apartments (dark green) and the stores (red for Mattress Firm, blue for the usually outside-the-Loop Mattress Pro); and (above) a Learning from Las Vegas-style diagram of Houston’s very own Mattress Corridor.
Houston may be the sleepy chain store’s hometown, but it’s not the only beneficiary of all that new retail padding; in the 14 weeks ending February 3rd alone, Mattress Firm opened or acquired 118 new U.S. stores.
- Mattress Manifest Destiny in Houston: Mattress Firm and Mattress Pro [Not of It]
- Previously on Swamplot: Now It’s 2 Mattress Stores Moving in Right Next To Each Other at the Corner of Westheimer and Montrose; What’s Arriving Now at the Sleepy Corner of Westheimer and Montrose; Sorry, No Mattress Store Can Sneak into Highland Village Without Somebody Noticing
Maps: Christopher Andrews
Behind the Mattress Store Boom
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
A pretty big case of the munchies:
