COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHY THE WATER IN YOUR NATURALLY FILTERED BAYOU-SIDE SWIMMING HOLE IS GOING TO BE BROWN 
“I’ll bite. Here’s a very simple engineering analysis.
Problems with stream-fed swimming pools in Houston are going to be three-fold:
1) Silt (in engineer-speak, Total-Suspended-Solids or TSS). TSS is treated with sedimentation basins. That can be a large pool (that people don’t swim in) adjacent to the real pool. In water/wastewater treatment plants, a coagulant like alum is usually added to sedimentation basins to make TSS precipitate out quicker. If you’re going to do this with no chemicals, you’ve got to be willing to accept either VERY long treatment times, or only partially successful results. The tiny diameter of the clay particles that make up the TSS in our bayous just flat out won’t come out of suspension without a coagulant, so the water WILL be brown. It’s not necessarily a deal breaker — the water in Galveston’s brown too.
2) Bacteria (in engineer-speak, total coliform count). See here. Usually these are E. Coli, algae, and some protests. ALL streams/lakes/oceans in the entire world have this, even the cleanest and clearest. Realistically, to get an insurance policy to operate, the water’s going to have to be disinfected to some degree. That means chlorination (chemicals), ozonation (chemicals), or UV disinfection. More on UV in a minute.
3) Dissolved oxygen content. You don’t want the water to turn anaerobic. If there’s enough carbon-containing compounds dissolved in the water, the bacteria naturally in the water will eat it rapidly, causing the bacteria to use up all the oxygen that’s already dissolved in the water. This leads to any/all fish in the water suddenly dying off, as well as noxious smells and other really terrible stuff. You can make sure the dissolved oxygen doesn’t drop by filtering out carbon containing compounds (takes chemicals), or using aerators. A dual-way to solve the #2 and #3 issues is by passing the water over a very shallow (less than 6-in. deep) bed of rocks at a fast speed. Think rapids. This lets the water simultaneously re-oxygenate and also absorb huge amounts of UV. This might be the sort of silver bullet that makes this possible in Houston.
So: This is going to be expensive, but it’s probably do-able. However, the water is still going to be brown. Sorry.” [Ornlu, commenting on Bayou Swimming Hole Promoters Jump To Kickstarter To Jumpstart Project] Illustration: Houston Needs a Swimming Hole
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Brad Moore and Ryan Rouse have joined forces with the newly-enhanced Treadsack restaurant group to take over the former Boom Boom Room space at 2518 Yale from building owner Jackie Harris. Johnny’s Gold Brick will be the name of the new bar.
Treadsack principal Chris Cusack, (pictured second from left) whose group includes Down House in the Heights and Brooke Smith ice house D&T Drive Inn, says that he hopes Johnny’s Gold Brick will be the sort of place where you can get “decently-made cocktails, but also a shot and a beer, and be totally accessible and easy to be in.”
Leslie Ross (pictured second from right), who earlier this year competed for title of America’s Most Imaginative Bartender in Las Vegas, left Triniti Restaurant’s Sanctuari Bar to join forces with Treadsack earlier this month and will be heading up bar operations.
Gold Bricking It
A demolition permit has been filed for 2 Longbow Ln., a Buffalo Bayou-side 1956 Mid Century Modern home designed by Astrodome architects Wilson, Morris, Crain, & Anderson for renowned internist Dr. Mavis Kelsey, founder of the Kelsey-Seybold Clinic.
Kelsey died at 101 in November of 2013. The home and 4 acre lot in Circle Bluff — a warren of streets with Robin Hood-themed names just outside the West Loop, east of Chimney Rock Rd., south of Memorial Dr. — went on the market in late May, and after a little under 2 months, sold for $6.9 million. The buyer is listed as David M. Weekley, chairman of David Weekley Homes.
Snapping The Longbow
Racking up new high scores today, with a multi-million-dollar munch and more:
- Strong Demand to Add 3 Stories, 7 Units to Midrise Condo Riva at the Park [Prime Property; previously on Swamplot]
- Plans Advancing for Natural Gas Plant Near North Lake Houston Pkwy. and Lockwood Rd. [Houston Business Journal]
- Sugar Land Regional Airport To Receive $2.8M in Funding for Proposed Airport Improvements [Houston Business Journal]
- Krispy Kreme Returning to Houston, Possibly Next to Bear Creek’s Centre at Yorktown Crossing Early Next Year [Eater Houston]
- Astrodome’s $63,800 Cleaning Delayed About a Week [Click2Houston; previously on Swamplot]
- Galveston County Museum Moving Its 15K Artifacts To New Home at Galveston County Courthouse [Galveston County Daily News ($)]
- A Play-By-Play Leading Up to the Houston Arts Alliance’s Flubbed GRB Sculpture Commission and Director Resignation [Glasstire]
- Trial Begins Over Fate Of Proposed Waller County Landfill [Houston Public Media; previously on Swamplot]
- State, Locals So Far Have Replanted 40K Acres of Prairie With Native Grasses To Create a Bobwhite Quail-Friendly Habitat [Houston Chronicle ($)]
- Meetings Planned To Gather Public Input for Storm Surge Suppression Study [Houston Public Media]
Photo of Discovery Green: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
- 9411 Cranleigh Ct. [HAR]
FINE DINING, 24-HOUR ROOM SERVICE AND BUTLERS TOTING WINE COMING TO MOSAIC ON ALMEDA RD. 
A reader sends in this photo of Davis St. at Hermann Park, a fine-dining establishment officially opening Wednesday on the ground floor of the Mosaic on Hermann Park at 5925 Almeda Rd. According to our reader this stretch of Almeda —across the street from the park’s golf course and south of Binz St. — is something of a restaurant desert. “I am eagerly awaiting more variety than Fuddruckers & Luby’s” the reader says. Mosaic residents can avail themselves of 24-7 in-room dining, as well as  “private wine storage with handpicked wines from around the world by our in-house sommelier featuring 24-hour access through our bonded butler service.” Non-Mosaic-dwelling Houstonians will have to avail themselves of the restaurant’s fare in the dining room and during normal business hours. [Davis Street at Hermann Park] Swamplot inbox
COMMENT OF THE DAY: FLOATING THE STUCK-ON STONE BELOW THE STUCCO 
“Can just one builder find a way to transition a column [see photo detail at right] to the ground instead of the ridiculous ‘high-water’ pants look? It looks stupid and yet you see it everywhere. I assume for stucco construction it’s done to prevent water seeping/rot.” [Limestone, commenting on Wainscot World: Channeling the Paneling Within an Almost New Older Home in Mandell Place Seeking $1.35M] Photo: HAR
TILDA GOES FULL MENIL 
From the looks of this W magazine fashion shoot with photographer Tim Walker, glacial space oddity Tilda Swinton managed to gaze upon and or fondle every objet d’art John and Dominique de Menil brought to Houston, be those treasures stashed away in their River Oaks home or on display in the Montrose museum. At the latter, while wafting through the South Seas galleries in a full-length Del Pozo coat, Swinton was in the mood to coo, ah and ooh. “They presumed art to be good for human dignity,†Swinton says of the de Menils to William Middleton, W correspondent and author of an upcoming biography on the arts patrons. “There is a practical magic that shows itself in the exquisite simplicity of each installation; there is nothing to get in the way of a direct relationship between the viewer and a work of art.†(With unfortunate results, in one high-profile recent case.) Swinton also donned “a painted metal corset by the London designer Johanna O’Hagan, a pair of black boots by Versace, and little else” in order to recreate Retour de la Belle Jardinière, Max Ernst’s 1967 reincarnation of his own La Belle Jardinière, a 1923 Surrealist near-nude that was later condemned as “degenerate art” by the Nazis and presumably destroyed. (The first Jardinière was itself Ernst’s reworking of a Raphael Madonna-and-Child painting by the same name.) The de Menils purchased Retour, thus affording Swinton and Walker the chance to shoot a retour of a retour of a retour of la Belle Jardinière. “This is the special magic of these collaborations,†Swinton tells Middleton, still clad in her skimpy Jardinière regalia. “There is not just a vague referencing of de Menil but also an immersion into her world. We’re crossing into a no-man’s-land between history and imagination, in an attempt to evoke her spirit, and the spirit of the world she inhabited.†[W ] Photo: Tim Walker / W magazine.
HAS THE INNER LOOP BEEN RUINED BY OLIGARCHS? 
“A brutal strain of neoliberalism” and Houston’s disdain for its own history taken to “gothic extremes” have allowed developers to transform Inner Loop Houston from a “bastion for the creative class” to an “exclusive playland for the rich” in a few short years, writes Anis Shivani of Alternet. (The essay was later rebroadcast from the bully-er pulpit of Salon.com.) The nexus of Shivani’s lament is Steel St., the oak-lined Upper Kirby avenue that was once home to the Kirby Court Apartments and is now the site of an upcoming Hanover Company apartment building. Shivani, a poet, critic and fiction writer, sees the transformation of Steel St. (where he lives in a townhouse an apartment) as a microcosm for the changes going on across the Inner Loop, where “unoccupied zombie high-rises which are pure investment vehicles for global investors” are displacing the “artists, writers and eccentrics from around the country [who] descended in droves in the 2000s to take advantage of Houston’s livability.” Today’s Houston is “as unaffordable as Los Angeles or New York,” Shivani says. Among the more prominent events in this transmogrification: Last year’s demise of lively public-private space” Taco Milagro, where the “food was very healthy and people from all over the city danced the night away and congregated on the large patio.” Also, changes to the scenery of Memorial Park, where the “drought had supposedly killed” “oaks that were planted in the 1920s by the city fathers.” Shivani writes: “[In] the blink of an eye, without public discussion, the trees were demolished.” [Alternet; Salon; previously on Swamplot.] Photo: Jessie Wilson
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday city offices were open.
It’s not the end of an era. It’s just the end of their era.
- Here Comes ‘Park Place at Buffalo Bayou,’ Pinto Realty Partners’ 18-Story Office Building Near Memorial and Waugh [Houston Chronicle ($)]
- Heritage Society Launches $1.7M Bottom-to-Top Renovation of the 167-Year-Old Kellum-Noble House [Houston Chronicle ($)]
- H-E-B Building 100K-SF Store in Fulshear at FM 1463 and Cinco Ranch Blvd. [Covering Katy]
- Treadsack Group Rumored To Be Leasing the Former Boom Boom Room Space for Unknown Project [Eating Our Words; previously on Swamplot]
- BB’s Cafe Moving Montrose Location to 24 Hours, Opening New Katy Spot Next Year [Culturemap]
- Spring Branch’s Monarch Institute Named a Finalist in the Houston Land Institute’s 2015 Development of Distinction Awards [Memorial Examiner]
- More Fraud Allegations Lodged Against Helping a Hero, Charity That Builds Custom Homes for Wounded Veterans [Houston Press]
- Midtown Gardeners Displaced By Developer Relocate to 6,250-SF Parcel at 2503 Chenevert [Houston Chronicle ($); previously on Swamplot]
- $120K Bronze Martin Luther King Jr. Statue in MacGregor Park Vandalized [Houston Chronicle]
- Alleged Drunk Driver Plunges 20 Feet into Market Square Tower Construction Site off Louisiana and Preston Streets [Houston Chronicle]
- Majestic Old-Growth Trees Have Become Invaluable Commodities in Luxury Real Estate [Wall Street Journal]
Photo of Kirby Drive and Southwest Freeway Service Road: elnina via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
So many dedicated vacation days in a row now at the end of November, each with their own to-do lists: Thanksgiving, of course, but then Black Friday, followed by Returns and Regrets Saturday, and the always entertaining Family Intrigue Sunday. We’ll see you back here at Swamplot on Cyber Monday, ready to go with another full week of real estate fun.
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Photo of Turkey Gully: HAR
Taking a Break
More a reconstruction than a renovation, extensive work on a 1938 Mandell Place property is believed to have kept only the original slab, exterior walls and roofline. The rest has been reimagined by Fisher Homes, which looks to have reduced the number of interior walls but boosted the white trim package big time. Like a line of creamy frosting, wainscoting panels finish much of the home, which is located west of Mulberry St. and north of W. Alabama St. For the rebuilt results, the seller is now asking $1.35 million. The previously updated property last sold in 2011 for $485K. Do the modifications add up to the “90 percent new” touted in the listing, which went up earlier this month?
All Trimmed Out
BAYOU SWIMMING HOLE PROMOTERS JUMP TO KICKSTARTER TO JUMPSTART PROJECT 
Just how feasible would it be to build a 3-acre self-cleaning swimming hole somewhere near the center of Houston, so you could take your own bathing-suits-and-skyscrapers pics like the one shown here — without resorting to Photoshop? If enough people donate to the Kickstarter for the Houston Needs a Swimming Hole campaign, you may get to find out. Promoters Monte Large, Evan O’Neil, and Jeff Kaplan are hoping to raise $30,000 from contributors for a feasibility study for their proposal — including a preliminary site selection component. The study would be conducted by Sherwood Design Engineers, whose Houston branch is a tenant in office space connected to Kaplan’s New Living store on Kirby Dr. The swimming hole, meant to serve as a centerpiece of Houston’s growing our-bayous-are-our-parks system, would be patterned on the natural swimming pool model common in Europe, where adjacent plant-filled “regeneration zones” filter the water, and no chemicals are needed. [Kickstarter; more info] Photo: Houston Needs a Swimming Hole
