- 334 Waterford Way [HAR]
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When the eighties called this Grogan’s Mill home on a cul-de-sac in The Woodlands, the peaky property answered — by updating. There’s fresh paint (inside and out), new tile and countertops, and a new-vibe front door in wood and glass. But evidence of the era from which it sprang remains in the slant-board accents, half-vaulted ceilings, and loft-level cutouts. After all the tweaks targeting today’s buyers, the home was listed last week — for $430,000. Access to and through the home’s woodsy neighborhood is via a street with a Figure 8 right-of-way that’s located off N. Millbend Dr., west of Grogan’s Mill Rd.
The Woodlands
Here’s the sign that a reader says went up earlier this week along the south side of the Heights hike-and-bike trail just south of the Freeland Historic District, at the ends of Frasier St. and E. 5th 1/2 St. Does the promise of “future development” mean that another developer is taking a turn trying to develop the 1.4-acre parcel of land where a proposed 80-plus-unit condo project known variously as Emes Place or Viewpoint at the Heights stirred up a fair amount of neighborhood opposition when it was last in the news a couple of years ago?
Surge!
- Marriott Residence Inn Planned for Hwy. 249 and Medical Complex Dr. in Tomball Should Open in March 2016 [Community Impact Newspaper]
- Construction To Start on Revised Design of $74.3M Sugar Land Performance Venue on December 9 [Houston Business Journal; previously on Swamplot]
- Sugar Land Mansion of Former Houston Astro Carlos Lee Offered at $1.9M, Sells for $1.56MÂ [Culturemap]
- Cycling and Yoga Studio Coming to West Ave, Joining Other Recent Additions Ann Sacks and Poliform [Houston Business Journal]
- Satellite Timelapse Shows Rapid Growth of Montgomery County from 1984 to 2012Â [The Woodlands]
- Rents in High-End Office Space in Houston Up 12.5% to $45 Per Square Foot This Year, According to CBREÂ [Prime Property]
- 80% of New Foreign-Born Houston-Area Residents Move to Suburbs, Not Urban Areas, Finds Brookings Report [Houston Business Journal]
- One of 2 Likely Routes for Planned High-Speed Rail Line to Dallas Would Put Track Along Washington Ave [The Highwayman]
- Most Routes Proposed for New High-Voltage Electric Transmission Line Slice Through Katy Prairie Conservancy Lands [Houston Chronicle]
- Conservancy Hopes To Make Willow Waterhole Greenspace as Big a Destination as Memorial and Hermann Parks [Houston Chronicle]
Photo of Houston Ship Channel: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
Houston’s (and America’s) first Walmart grocery store named and designed to cater to Latinos shut its doors at the end of last week. Supermercado de Walmart opened 5 years ago in Spring Branch in a converted 39,000-square-foot Neighborhood Market-style store at 7960 Long Point Rd., amid a fanfare of mariachi music and a smorgasbord of free food and drink samples. Those days are long gone: A reader sends in a pic (at right) of the far more offhand sign taped to the glass door.Â
Spring Branch Supermarket Shutdown
Expansive vistas pan north, west, and south through barely-there walls of floor-to-ceiling windows in this swish penthouse atop the Mosaic at Hermann Park, one of the twin-ish 30-story condo towers across from the park’s eastern edge. Do the panoramas and high-end custom finishes from a 2012 update to the 2008 space merit the listing’s asking price of $2.05 million? It last sold in 2009 for $930K, but back then the FDIC and a group of investors had control of the property following sequential foreclosures on the condo tower and its neighboring rental twin (once named The Montage).
Vision Quest
COULD COYOTES BE KILLING THE KITTIES OF TIMBERGROVE AND LAZYBROOK? 
Over the past six years Jennifer Estopinal has recorded the violent demises of about two dozen house cats in Timbergrove and Lazybrook. Their manners of death have typically been grisly — some were beheaded, others bisected, in some cases paws were removed — and on some occasion the cadavers have appeared to have been left on display. It’s all been enough to raise suspicions that a sicko serial kitty killer was at work. There is now a hefty bounty on the alleged predator’s head: four different donors have cobbled together a kitty of almost $25,000 in reward money. But might the killings simply be nature taking its course? Last month a coyote was sighted brazenly attempting to enter the lobby of the Bayou Bend Towers at Memorial and Westcott. More recently, Estopinal and husband Mark saw another of the canine carnivores while out patrolling Timbergrove in search of the culprit. At the corner of Ella and Grovewood (not far from forested W. 11th St. Park), the Estopinals saw and pursued a coyote, watching as it attempted to raid a pet-food bowl on a front porch, then chase a cat, Â then scale a 6-foot privacy fence “with ease.” Mystery solved? Possibly, if only partially, Estopinal believes. “I’d like to believe a coyote is what’s been killing so many cats lately,” she posted in a neighborhood group message board. “I think its possible a few could have been but not all, as there are too many things that have been done that would’ve been impossible for a coyote.” [Houston News; CultureMap] Photo: Mark Estopinal
GOLFERS APPEAR TO HAVE WON GUS WORTHAM 
It might not have sounded quite so explicit to all onlookers, but the Chronicle‘s Mike Morris declares yesterday’s city council vote a death knell for plans to build a botanical garden on the site of the Gus Wortham Golf Course. The vote was taken in support of city efforts to come to an agreement with the Houston Golf Association for a plan to renovate the 106-year-old course at Lawndale and Wayside in the East End, which the nonprofit would then operate. But, writes Morris: “If the city cannot reach terms with HGA, the mayor said, she will seek proposals from private golf operators rather than hand the site to the botanic garden backers, as previously planned.” The HGA will need to meet designated fundraising targets — likely $5 million of a possible total $15 million renovation cost — for its plan to proceed. Mayor Parker and councilmembers appeared eager to steer the group pushing for a city botanical garden 6 miles southeast, to the Glenbrook Park golf course outside the Loop along Sims Bayou, just east of the Gulf Fwy. [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo: PGA
- Developers Think There’s Demand for Condos Downtown [Houston Chronicle]
- Historic 1929 Dickinson School on Hwy. 3 in Final Stages of Demolition [Galveston County Daily News ($)]
- Taking Advantage of Relaxed Downtown Food Truck Regulations, Operators of Houston Food Park Plan To Open Second Location, Near Toyota Center [Houston Chronicle]
- Gourmet Vinegar, Oil, and Spice Seller Vom Fass Now Open in Rice Village [Culturemap]
- Shipley Do-Nuts To Open Its 300th Store This Saturday in Katy Mills; Planning for 400th by 2020 [Houston Chronicle]
- TQLA on Washington Ave ‘Closed Until Further Notice’Â [Culturemap]
- Greater East End, Montrose, and Midtown To See Road, Sidewalk Improvements Amid Population Boom [Prime Property]
- Prop. 1 Passage Will Get TxDOT $1.2B to $1.7B of the $5B It Wants To Spend on Highways [Houston Chronicle]
- Lyft Says It Will Halt Operations in Houston on November 20 Rather Than Comply with New Regulations [Houston Business Journal]
- The Neighbors and Fishermen Involved in the Fight To Remove the San Jacinto River Waste Pits [Houston Press]
- For Sale on eBay: A Detailed Diorama of the Graffiti-Filled Ladies Room at Lola’s Depot in Montrose [Rocks Off]
Photo of East End warehouse: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
With a fresh $500,000 donation landing in its coffers late this summer and some city approvals in hand, the University of St. Thomas’s  long-planned Center for Science and Health Professions quadrangle could break ground next year. The school says it now has about half of the project’s $47 million budget and hopes on raising the rest by June of next year. UST has stated that it would then break ground in short order with an eye toward opening up some of the complex by 2017.
Bye-Bye Soccer Fields, Hello Chemistry Labs
Facing a courtyard and across from a waterside swimming pool, a 2006 Tuscan townhome anchors its corner of Clear Lake’s Armandwilde development. A pond roped off from Mud Lake, the final form of Armand Bayou as it flows into Clear Lake, laps at the property’s shore, which is located off Space Center Blvd. north of E. NASA Pkwy. The old Jim West Mansion, once a repository for moon rocks but now an anchor haberdashery for Hakeem Olajuwon, is nearby. This stucco-and-tile clad unit, one of the larger for the development, was listed last week at $299,000. That’s nearly $200K less than its $495,000 ask back in the heady days of 2008, but that offering expired after 4 months on the market.
Over a Pool, on a Pond, on 2 Lakes
- 4639 Devon St. [HAR]
