- 1212 Fairview St. Unit 1 [HAR]
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The sign up at 3401 N. Main St. across from the Hollywood Cemetery leaves little doubt as to who the owner of Casa Grande blames for the Mexican restaurant and dance club’s shuttering. The 18-year-old establishment, which took over the by-then-long-abandoned site of the former Stuarts Drive-in, shut down last month, after several years of slow business. A sign at the entrance (pictured) now reads BANK CLOSED.
No More Dancing
Give the lawsuit filed by 7 residents of the costumed Gotham and Renoir Lofts buildings along the Shepherd Curve just south of West Dallas St. some credit. News of the legal action has spurred the defendant to do something it previously hadn’t: release to the public an actual rendering of the 8-story senior living facility it’s about to construct between the 2 Randall Davis condos, once it finishes clearing away the remains of the RR Donnelley printing company building at 1015 S. Shepherd Dr. And here it is, showing almost exactly how Bridgewood Property’s Village of River Oaks will look a few years from now — when you view it from Google Street View, that is.
Google Street View Rendering
- Scenic Houston Working To Raise $7.5M To Upgrade ‘Tired’ 2-Mile Strip of Broadway Between Hobby Airport and I-45 with Greenery, Benches, LED Lights [Houston Chronicle]
- The City Has Been Working with Private Firm Bureau Veritas To Deal with Surge of Requests for Building Permits [Houston Chronicle]
- Remembering the Astrodome As It Marks the 50th Anniversary of Its Opening Next Month [Smithsonian Magazine]
- Public Art Has Become an Integral Part of Master-Planned Communities’ Landscaping [HBJ]
- Texas Has the Second-Highest Property Taxes in the Nation, Behind New York, According RealtyTrac [Realty News Report]
- Christian’s Tailgate Opening New Location in Pillot Building Downtown That Last Housed a Burger King [Food Chronicles]
- Monitoring the Varying Speed Limit Signage Along Montrose and Studewood [Purple City]
- Proposed Bill Would Help Residents of Unincorporated Castlewood, Which Lacks Reliable Clean Water [Texas Tribune]
- Meter Reader Discovers Water Moccasin in Greatwood Water Meter Box [Click2Houston]
- Where AstroWorld’s Roller Coasters Are Now [Art Attack]
- The 10 Best Pet Cemeteries and Crematoriums in Houston [Art Attack]
Photo of Walker St. at San Jacinto, Downtown: El Kento via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
If the 4 city lots this 1954 mod rancher property in the heart of Brookshire occupies aren’t enough space, adjacent properties are available, the $249K listing says. Located 2 blocks south of U.S. 90 (about 10 minutes west of Katy), the single-owner property appears to have stayed true to its times:
Land, Ho
If you’ve been waiting to see what changes are coming to Dallas St. after the street-tree-chopping event earlier this month, here’s your scoop: the Downtown Redevelopment Authority is redoing the streetscape from Milam St. to Discovery Green with hopes of identifying Dallas St. as an actual shopping district. The plan was hatched back when one of the buildings facing Dallas was Downtown’s lone remaining department store, but it’s still going forward with the Macy’s out of the picture (actually, its former site is just behind and to the left of the view in the rendering above).
Instead, the repaving and re-treeing plan is intended to allow a bit more pedestrian activity and street parking for the remaining retail — including the entire northern flank of GreenStreet, the Houston Pavilions redo — and encouraging more to move in.
The changes will shrink the number of car lanes on the one-way street from 4 to 3, but add a parking lane to its north side.
Tree Chopping for Street Shopping
A couple of Swamplot readers are reporting action on the scene of the Midtown Superblock, the uninterrupted-by-cross-streets acreage stretching between Main and Travis St. south of McGowen and north of Anita, where a Camden Property apartment complex (at the northern end) and a park with underground parking (at the southern end) are planned. In the view at top taken from somewhere high above the backside of Downtown, you can spot demo crews at the end of the grassy field making strip center history this morning out of the former home of Escobar and Thien An Sandwiches at 2905 Travis St.
Meanwhile, the first signposts of some fresh chain-link fencing appeared along Main St. closer to McGowen., as seen in the second photo, taken a couple of days ago.
- Previously on Swamplot: The Park-and-Apartments Plan for Midtown’s Superblock
Photos: Swamplot inbox (overhead view); Robert Boyd (fence)
Strip Center Teardown
- New 500K-SF Industrial Park off Hwy. 288 Dubbed ‘Lower Kirby District’ Will Break Ground This Summer [HBJ]
- Value of Houston Office Buildings Could Plummet by as Much as 15% This Year, According to PricewaterhouseCoopers Report [Prime Property]
- Houston Apartment Rental Rate Growth Hit Record High of 8.1% Last Year, According to CBRE Research and Apartment Data Services [HBJ]
- New Townhome-Style Apartments Unveiled at Energy Corridor Community Arrabella [HBJ]
- A Behind-the-Scenes Peek at Main Street Theater’s $3.5M Renovation [Houston Public Media; previously on Swamplot]
- Developer Jerome Karam Faces Costly Environmental Cleanup at Long-Vacant Falstaff Brewery Site [Galveston County Daily News ($); previously on Swamplot]
- Armed with Warrant, Police Raid 3 Condos at 2520 Robinhood at Kirby for Evidence of Robert Durst Murders [Houston Chronicle; warrant here]
- Visiting Robert Durst’s Rice Village Haunts, Including Croissant Brioche, Starbucks, and the CVS Where He Urinated on a Candy Display [Houston Chronicle]
Photo of 610 at Bellaire: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
- 3980 Inverness Dr. [HAR]
Looking a bit like a bricked-up, tricked out Americanized Florentine chapel, a solidly built property facing N. Main St. east of I-45 could swing either way. The property would work as a home or office, the listing suggests. (The second level could be a separate unit.) In a relisting this week after a 9-month break from the market, the undecided property knocked more than $100K off its previous ask, bringing the price tag to $249K. Back in May 2014, the sellers wanted $355K. But even that price was a second whittle for the property. It had first hit the market in June 2012 at $485K, but several adjustments had brought the price down to $385K before the listing expired 6 months later. In other words, the property is available now for just over half of the previous offering’s peak price.
On the Line
COMMENT OF THE DAY: JUST A SUGGESTION FOR NAU 
“There is a solution to this situation and it’s a little ironic.
The sisters of incarnate word want to stay downtown, but they say there’s no room.
John Nau and his group own the block right next door to the campus. They just announced that they were canceling their fund raising efforts and giving all of the money donated back to the donors for a Houston history museum.
It seems to me if John Nau wants to save some of Houston history, he could donate the block adjacent to the school so that that the historically important Nicholas Clayton building could be saved. That way his efforts to preserve history could still be accomplished, the nuns could stay downtown and the Nicholas Clayton building could be saved. Now that’s a lot easier than trying to figure out what to do with the dome!” [Bob R, commenting on Tearing Down Downtown’s Historic Incarnate Word Academy Building; A ‘Central Park’ for the Energy Corridor] Photo of Incarnate Word Academy, 600 Crawford St.: elnina
Is the park-in-back strip center now a certifiable thing in Houston? Here’s the latest rendering of the small shopping center designed by Ziegler Cooper Architects for the corner of W. Alabama St. and Mandell St. in Montrose, across the street from the Menil Collection parking lot. Like the smaller center at the corner of Westheimer and Dunlavy now home to the Common Bond bakery and the slightly larger one developed by Braun Enterprises at 20th St. and Rutland in the Heights, Alabama Row scoots up just about as close to the main drag as the city’s development rules will let it. And it looks like the building’s south face, fronting West Alabama, is meant to be seen as its front:
Alabama Row
Is it Rice’s manifest destiny to extend its land holdings all the way from the Texas Medical Center to West U? The university already owns a bit of frontage on Kirby Dr., on West U’s eastern border, between University Dr. and Amherst St., but the holdings between that far outpost of the Village Arcade and the main campus are a little spotty. Two recent purchases — and accompanying demolitions — appear poised to make the swath more continuous, however.
This week occasioned the demolition of the house at 5606 Chaucer Dr., 2 blocks west of Rice Stadium, directly over the back fence from Little Woodrow’s on Morningside Dr. The home appeared in this morning’s demo report — along with a neighbor at 5608 Chaucer St. (at center left and left in the top photo). County tax records show that an entity connected to Rice purchased both houses late last year. (The second house is listed as 5612 Chaucer St. on the tax rolls).
Tales of Chaucer
