Like sharpened cuspids, a 4-pack of aligned and angled columns screens the entry of a 1960 modern home in Meyerland. Could a toothy grill off the circular driveway have been the intent of the long-term owner, a dentist? The home’s initial design is attributed to H. Oberdieck in architectural chatter about the property and its records. Listed earlier this month, the home’s asking price is $899,000.
JUST SAY ‘OUI’ TO DRIVE-THRU BANH MI AT THE FORMER LUCKY BURGER SPOT 
The photo at right, posted to the Instagram account of Oui Banh Mi, a new venture from the Vietnamese-cuisine crew behind Washington Ave restaurant Les Givral’s Kahve and Kirby Dr. sweet outlet Oui Desserts, would seem to confirm Swamplot’s report last week that the group is planning a new drive-thru Banh Mi establishment in the recently vacated building at 1601 Richmond Ave — the barrel-shaped structure long occupied by the recently shuttered Lucky Burger. On the other hand, it could be that they’re just borrowing keys from the landlord for a little look-see. [Previously on Swamplot] Photo: Oui Banh Mi
There’s still “some uncertainty” over the exact schedule, but all the pieces needed to allow Metro to open Houston’s second and third light-rail lines won’t be in place until late December, according to reports delivered to a committee of the transportation organization’s board of directors last Friday. Previously, an opening date sometime this fall had been projected for the Southeast and East End lines (though the far eastern end of the East End line won’t come on line until a newly planned overpass is built under over the Union Pacific East Belt freight rail line between the future Altic and Cesar Chavez stations). Delays in the delivery of trains aren’t the sole reason for the late openings, however.
A new lawsuit filed last week against the developers of the 2229 San Felipe office tower currently under construction between Shepherd and Kirby is a bit different from the one that a group of neighbors initiated against the same party back in February, a reader notes. The plaintiffs in the new lawsuit are the owners of a River Oaks home directly across the street from the construction site, and they appear to have studied the ruling issued in the Ashby Highrise lawsuit carefully. (Back in May, Judge Randy Wilson ordered the developers of that building to pay neighbors $1.2 million to compensate them for “lost market damages,” but denied their request to halt the building’s construction)
Unlike their neighbors who sued before them, the residents of 2237 Stanmore Dr. are not seeking to prevent or delay the construction of Hines’s neighborhood office tower. Instead, it appears they are only seeking compensation for both public and private “nuisances” created by the 17-story building, including pollution, noise, and ground vibration during its construction and the resulting loss of sunlight and rain on their property. The building’s vaunted peepage opportunities don’t please them either:
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
If you would take these, we’d gladly get rid of them for you.
Photo of I-10 at US-59: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool
There are vintage, historical, and perhaps sentimental aspects of this place in Merlin Place, just north of Spring Valley: The listing notes the home was “modeled after” the owner’s previous property in Piney Point. And bits of old Houston, older Galveston, and really old New Orleans worked themselves into the 1995 custom home, which still has some unfinished rooms. Thursday’s listing of the Mansard-roofed property, located between Voss and Bingle roads and south of Westview Dr., has an $840,000 asking price.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHAT COUNTS AS A SPRING IN HOUSTON 
“The definition of a ‘spring’ can vary a lot, and is used loosely here.
In Harris County, where the topography is relatively flat, most of our ‘ponds’ and ‘lakes’ are either borrow pits (excavated to raise the grade elsewhere) or dammed-up gullies/ravines along existing bayous. In this case, it is the latter — a gully of Buffalo Bayou that was dammed up, then developed into a neighborhood.
A ‘spring’ is generally a point where the top groundwater table meets the surface. In our area, when we receive a lot of rain, the groundwater table can actually reach the surface. So a spring can range from a trickle of water to a puddle standing on the surface. When I dug the post holes in my backyard for my cedar fence, I hit groundwater at 2 feet deep because of recent heavy rain. In dryer periods, the water table drops, and springs continue to occur along steep cuts in the topography (either along a bayou that has eroded downward, or a man-made excavation). This is not what you find in the Hill Country, where large gaping holes in limestone spew thousands of gallons per hour, sometimes creating rivers out of nothing.
So effectively, any hole in Houston greater than 2 feet deep at some point will become ‘spring-fed.’ During the bad drought of the past few years, most likely the groundwater table dropped and stopped feeding this former gully of the bayou, and the ‘lake’ was most likely topped off by (1) automatic sprinkler runoff and (2) the small amount of storm water runoff they received, as the lake also serves as the neighborhood drainage ditch.” [Superdave, commenting on There’s a Tour of Texas and More in a Developer’s Lakefront Sandalwood Spread] Illustration: Lulu
Did the tiny bench-and-planters installation now parked in front of a Heights mattress store strike a nerve for some Swamplot readers? Judging from the comments section for some of Swamplot’s coverage of the project, that certainly does appear to be the case. But it looks like the PR firm charged with promoting the city of Houston’s first officially permitted parklet is set on tapping that nerve as if it were a gold mine. The video above, just posted to YouTube by the Black Sheep Agency, shows purported actual Heights residents performing dramatic readings of Swamplot readers’ more entertaining comments about the parklet, which now blocks access to what was formerly a single angled, head-in parking space in front of the firm’s client, the New Living Bedroom store at 321 W. 19th St. (New Living paid for construction of the parklet and is responsible for maintaining it, according to an agreement with the city, which considers the effort a pilot program.)
WHERE TO FIND DRAWINGS OF HOOD HOUSES IN YOUR HOOD 
If a few of the Houston homes and buildings featured on Swamplot designed (or expanded) by architect Lucian T. Hood have piqued your interest, you may be interested in a set of drawings that the University of Houston has now digitized and posted online. More than 100 construction and design drawings from 13 Houston residential projects of the 1960s by the pencil-wielding Modern architect, who died in 2001, are now available to anyone with a browser — including the rendering of the house shown above, which digital collections librarian Valerie Prilop thinks was built (and later demolished) at 146 Sandy Cove, near Clear Lake. This collection, along with more than 1000 additional drawings spanning Hood’s work from the sixties to the nineties (much of it in River Oaks, Tanglewood, and Memorial), was donated to the university in 2007 by William Carl, who had purchased Hood’s firm. The university doesn’t have immediate plans to digitize the larger group of drawings, but doing so is “on our radar,” Prilop tells Swamplot. [University of Houston Libraries; previously on Swamplot] Image: Lucian Hood Architectural Drawings Collection
Photo of Saint Arnold Brewing Company at 2000 Lyons Ave.: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool
