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- Team from San Francisco Designed ExxonMobil Landscape To Look Like a College Campus [Houston Business Journal; previously on Swamplot]
- Mapping the Most Expensive Places To Rent Office Space in the Houston Area [Prime Property]
- David Weekley Homes Now Selling 4-Story Townhomes in the Heights, Woodland Heights [Prime Property]
- State Transportation Officials Trying To Get Metro To Give Up on Ever Converting Post Oak Bus Lanes To Light Rail, Despite 2003 Harris County Vote [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot]
- Transportation Officials in The Woodlands Want To Expand Trolley Service To Reduce Town Center Traffic [Houston Chronicle]
- Cupcake Cowgirls’ Downtown Galveston Location To Open By Labor Day [Galveston County Daily News ($)]
- Woman Dies After Fire in Royal Oaks Country Club Home [KHOU]
- Residents Complain of Bedbug Infestation at the Coral Hill Apartments on Beverly Hill near Richmond and Hillcroft [Click2Houston]
- A Photo History of the Fifth Ward Double-Barreled Shotgun House Brett Zamore Transformed, and Bert Long Lived In [The Great God Pan Is Dead; previously on Swamplot]
- Inside the Triangle-Shaped Home and Studio Artist Joseph Cohen Built for Himself at Oxford St. and the Heights Hike-and-Bike Trail [The Great God Pan Is Dead; previously on Swamplot]
- The Houston Sites You’ll See on Those Big Red Tour Buses [Houston Chronicle]
- Public Works Dept. Tagged 19th St. Parklet with Violation Notice for Having Furniture, Flowers in Right-of-Way, a Week After Its Inauguration by Mayor [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot]
Photo of 1515 Woodhead St.: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool
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The interior of a decked out 1978 Spring Branch Estates home uses changing floor finishes to cue its ups and downs as the floor plan twists around a spiral staircase beneath a 20-ft. dome. The flow creates living spaces on several levels — and some rather unusual, futuristic features . . .
Taking Turns
- 15 Valcourt Pl. [HAR]
SIGNS OF A PLANNED MIDRISE AT D’AMICO AND DUNLAVY 
There’s a sign up in front of the former dentist’s office and bridal shop structure at 3327 and 3331 D’Amico St., tucked into the northern edge of the Villas at River Oaks (formerly Rincon) apartments on Dunlavy St. just south of Allen Pkwy. Sugar Land homebuilder Christopher Sims bought the properties in April; a logo for his Sims Luxury Builders, along with one for the probable architect, the Mirador Group, appear on a sign that went up on the 20,192-sq.-ft. lot last week, advertising a new midrise building named Riva at the Park. A website for the new development greets mailing-list signups with breezy copy touting the development’s location and appliances, but no description or rendering of what’s planned. Photo: Swamplot inbox
CITY MAY SOON CAN RULES THAT FORCE HOUSTON FOOD TRUCKS TO SPACE OUT 
What makes Houston’s food truck scene so quirky, so scrappy, so outré? Well, it could be some of the wacky rules mobile food units are required to follow when they’re operating within city limits — to guard against terrorism, major explosions, and other all-too-common street-food hazards. Three such rules — the fire code regulations that mandate that trucks park no closer than 60 ft. away from one another and that propane-equipped vehicles stay out of Downtown and the Texas Medical Center, and the health code ruling that subjects owners of mobile food vendors to fines if they’re found parking within 100 ft. of any table or chair — could be going away soon, however. A task force charged with looking into the issue is recommending the city 86 those particular regulations but keep in place others, including the requirement to visit a commissary every day. A city council committee meeting this afternoon will be the first opportunity for public comment on the proposed changes; the city’s Laura Spanjian tells Culturemap’s Eric Sandler that she doesn’t expect to the Greater Houston Restaurant Association to object to the recommendations. [Culturemap; more info] Photo: UH
- Neighbors, Developers Both File Motions To Appeal Judge’s Ruling in Ashby Highrise Case [Prime Property; previously on Swamplot]
- Dalfen America Corp. Acquires 5-Acre Parcel, Adjacent Building in Sugar Land Business Park, Plans To Build Industrial Facility [Prime Property]
- Construction Underway on First of 5 Planned Buildings at Grandway West Office Development Opposite Former Site of Forbidden Gardens in Katy [Prime Property]
- McGuyer Homebuilders Breaks Ground on Gated 6-Home Development Near Campbell Rd. and Westview [Houston Business Journal]
- Fifth Houston-Area Sprouts Opens Today at 20708 Kuykendahl in Spring [Prime Property]
- Company Behind Down House, D&T Drive Inn Launching Kipper Club Test Kitchen for Pop-Up and Guest Chef Dinners at 4400 N. Yale Late Next Month [Food Chronicles]
- Jonathan’s the Rub To Move into Ground Floor of MetroNational’s Recently Opened ‘Treehouse’ Building at 963 Bunker Hill in November [Food Chronicles]
- Text Messages Show UH President Agreed To Drop Plan To Require Freshmen To Live on Campus After Exchange with ‘Angry’ State Senator [Houston Chronicle]
- Novel Friendswood, Inspired by Efforts To Clean Up Nearby Brio Superfund Site, Optioned for Film [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot]
Photo of Maximus Coffee at 3900 Harrisburg Blvd.: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool
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Surreal artwork and rustic structural components left exposed seem to meld into a single composition within the Fifth Ward home and studio of artist Bert Long Jr., who died in February 2013. Fifteen years ago, the attached double-shotgun row houses had been painstakingly renovated (and combined) as the year-long thesis project of Brett Zamore, then a Rice University graduate architecture student. Long, who grew up nearby and was returning to Houston at the time, bought the property near the end of its transformation but before an art studio was added — for $30,000 $70,000 — and lived there with his wife, artist Joan Batson. The mixed-use property is located in the Pinecrest Court neighborhood near Wheatley High School, east of Waco St. and south of I-10. It was listed for sale this morning, with an asking price of $200,000.
Home and Studio
- 5930 Woodway Place Ct. [HAR]
Without making a big alert-the-neighbors fuss about it, CenterPoint Energy appears to have begun expanding the electrical substation across the street from the new Alexan Heights apartment complex going up on Yale St. into an adjacent vacant lot, a reader reports. Crews began breaking up the 6,600-sq.-ft. lot’s concrete surface yesterday. CenterPoint has owned the lot at 612 Yale St. since 2004, according to county tax records, though the neighboring 6th and Yale Collision and Repair shop had often used it as parking space.
The lot appears at the top center of this recent aerial view of apartment construction and the substation:
Not Shocking
The signs are now up at the new building under construction at 1902 Westheimer Rd., across the street from the Winlow Westheimer shopping center. And they say: Raising Cane’s. And that means your center-of-Montrose drive-thru chicken finger spot will be opening very soon. Raising Cane’s is no stranger to Westheimer; the new restaurant will mark Raising Cane’s fourth location on the street (it’s got the 12201, 7531, and 5015 spots already). But this’ll be the first one inside the Loop.
More pics of Lower Westheimer’s fast-food future:
Montrose Drive-Thrus
THE EMPTY LOT ON WESTHEIMER WHERE THE EDMONT WILL LAND 
This long-vacant lot at the corner of Westheimer and Kueter, next to the Central Houston Animal Hospital and the recently shuttered EJ’s Bar on Ralph St., has been tagged as the future home of the Edmont, a new restaurant being planned by the people behind Paulie’s and Camerata and a former chef at the Vallone’s steakhouse. Paul Petronella, David Keck, and Grant Gordon have hired Abel Design Group to cook up a new restaurant from scratch at 1634 Westheimer — the same site eyed 6 years ago as a possible spot for a 75-room hotel. The restaurant, scheduled to open sometime near the end of 2015, is being named after a different hotel that never existed, though: a Manhattan spot patronized by Holden Caulfield in J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. [Food Chronicles; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Allyn West
- Future of Capitan Theater Still Unclear After Pasadena City Council Approves Sale of Complex to New Jersey Company for $4.6MÂ [Pasadena Citizen; previously on Swamplot]
- Houston Ranked Among Least Affordable Cities in the Country for First-Time Homebuyers by Wallet Hub [Prime Property]
- What It Will Cost You To Rent a House in 8 Popular Houston Neighborhoods [Hair Balls]
- Gray’s Public House Replacing The Good Life in Midtown [Eater Houston]
- Should Water Taxis in The Woodlands Receive Federal Funding Aimed at Reducing Gridlock? [Houston Chronicle]
- Why Texas Is the Ideal Place for Central Japan Railway To Debut Bullet Trains in the U.S. [The Texas Tribune]
- Metro Studying How To Spur Business Development Along Light Rail Lines [Houston Public Media]
- Some Neighbors in Cypresswood Lakes Annoyed by Reality TV Star’s Broken Food Truck, Parked on the Street for Weeks [Click2Houston]
- Finally Getting Around To Tour the Whole ‘True North’ Public Art Show Along the Heights Blvd. Esplanade [Glasstire]
- Owner of Burglarized 3-Story Woodlands Closet Confirms Some of the Loot Sent to the Houston Press Is Hers [Hair Balls]
- Plan To Require UH Freshmen To Live on Campus Stalled After Receiving ‘Mixed Feedback’ from Community, Thumbs Down from State Senator [Houston Chronicle]
Photo of the Port of Galveston: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool
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