THE WHOLE POINT OF THAT 45-MINUTE CROISSANT LINE AT COMMON BOND — AND OTHER STAND-INS FOR PUBLIC SPACE IN HOUSTON 
Star baker and former b-baller Roy Shvartzapel explains the larger social purpose behind the fact that customers are having to wait in line for 45 minutes to buy croissants at his recently owned Common Bond bakery at Dunlavy and Westheimer: “I think there’s a value in that. Not for me, but particularly in a city like Houston that’s the ultra in non-pedestrian. We, on a scale from one to 10 in pedestrian life, are at a zero. We’re not even at a one. It’s the infrastructure. We cannot have, for example, a subway system. We’re just not designed that way.
What we can have are places that allow people — whether it be in a line or in a tight space in a restaurant — where you’re not sitting far away in your little bubble. We’re already in our little bubbles whether it’s in a car or in a cube. When you’re in a line with a group of strangers, you never know who you might meet or break into conversation with.” [Eating Our Words; previously on Swamplot] Photo of line at Common Bond, 1706 Westheimer Rd.: Amber Z.
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Tree-liking readers alarmed by yesterday’s oak-trunk sawfest and takedown along Yale St. between 6th and 7th streets, fronting the construction site for the new 352-unit Alexan Heights apartment complex (work in progress shown above), may be relieved to hear it’s all part of a city-approved chop-and-replace plan. Trammell Crow Residential was granted permission to remove 8 trees along Yale and replace them at the beginning of next year, a post on the apartment complex website notes. A total of 18 new live oaks, each of them more than 22-ft. tall, are planned for the complex’s Yale St. frontage, according to the note: “Furthermore, due to the recent burial of existing overhead utility lines and power poles along Yale Street, these trees will be able to grow naturally without encroaching upon any utility lines, as was the case with the existing trees.”
Here’s an aerial view of the site from June:
UNMASKING THE CRAFTY NSA, NFL PLAN TO TAKE AWAY OUR PRECIOUS ASTRODOME AND MONITOR YOUR PHONE CALLS 
Using techniques, he explains, from “The Consipiracy Theory Style Manual” (“I used as many facts as I could come up with, then I made up a few more”), Houston Chronicle penpal Dave Nagel notes the striking similarities between the reconstructed ring of drive-thru concrete pillars meant to be built as part of a memorial to the Astrodome in a proposal released last week by the Rodeo and the Houston Texans and the circular antenna array called the AN/FLR-9 built in several locations during the Cold War to support U.S. intelligence operations. And concludes: “[I]t’s obvious. The National Security Agency has plans to construct a listening post here in Houston. We know the Supreme Court says the police cannot grab cell phones without a warrant, but now the NSA will just grab all the signals emanating from Texas and will process them from the new intel center at Reliant/NRG. By the way, in military parlance, NRG is National Reconnaissance Group!
I believe the NSA is planning to collect intelligence on all known and suspected Republicans here in Texas, and turn it over to the Administration. Every proper conspiracy theorist will say YES! Or, does the NSA plan to eavesdrop on all those nefarious and dangerous children pouring across the border from Honduras and Guatamala? If you have ever worked in a school, you know how dangerous children are, especially ones without parental supervision! Children carry cell phones. Cell phones transmit and receive signals. Do you understand now?”
A chilling prospect! But what’s the upshot? Continues Nagel: “[I]f the NSA wants to run an intelligence gathering station at Reliant/NRG, then we won’t have to use local tax money to tear down the dome, we can let NSA do it with their classified budget!” [Houston Chronicle ($); previously on Swamplot] Photo of AN/FLR-9 radio direction finder at United States Army Security Agency Field Station Augsburg: Wikimedia Commons/Chaddy [license]
Does navigating to and through a gated community in which all streets have the same name ever get confusing? Amid the 125 or so homes comprising The Park at Clearview, glommed onto the south side of S. Main St. just south of West Bellfort, a handful face the development’s main interior roadway. One of them, on a corner lot looking east from its fanciful entryway, popped up on the market on Monday. Asking price: $230,000.
Off South Main
- Hotel Opening Next Year in Woodlands Waterway Square Will Be a Westin [Houston Business Journal]
- TxDOT Moving Ahead with Northeast Quadrant of Grand Parkway [Houston Public Media]
- $160M Bay Area Regional Medical Center Opening in Webster This Monday [Prime Property]
- Highpoint at Cypresswood Apartment Complex Now Open Near the Vintage Park Shopping Village [Prime Property]
- City Has Resold These 42 Tax-Delinquent, Dangerous Properties at Auction for $183,705 Since Launching ‘Strike-Off’ Program in April [Houston Politics]
- Hundreds of Birds Dropping from Skies Over IAH, Poisoned and Killed as Part of ‘Abatement Project’ [KHOU]
- High Levels of West Nile Virus Found in Woodlands Mosquitoes [Isiah Factor]
- Houston’s ‘One Bin for All’ Recycling Plan Would Put Materials Recovery Facilities in Primarily Black, Latino Neighborhoods [Grist; previously on Swamplot]
- Restaurant Owner Leading Effort To Repeal Tomball’s Liquor Ban within Old City Limits [Houston Public Media]
- Buc-ee’s Issues Trademark Infringement Lawsuit Against New Texas Convenience Store Frio Beaver Over Similar Logo [Houston Chronicle]
Photo of Greenway Plaza parking deck: Marc Longoria via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
- 6516 Azalea Park [HAR]
What’s next for the modestly proportioned  home in Bunker Hill Village that Frank Lloyd Wright designed in 1954 for insurance executive William Thaxton (top and middle photos) and the more recent, more commodious addition (above) of 1995 by Bob Inaba of Kirksey Architecture? The pedigreed and restored property, on a cul-de-sac off Strey Ln., which peels off Memorial Dr. east of Gessner, landed on the market Monday with a $3.195 million asking price. That’s a bit less than the $3.5 million sought in 2010 when owner Allen Gaw previously tried to move on — but a little more than the $2.9 million that earlier listing shrunk to after a year of no takers.
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Wright Righted?
CALL HOUSTON A METROPOLIS INSIDE THE LOOP, BUT IT’S A MEGALOPOLIS BEYOND 
“In the 1950s just about the entire world abandoned continuous block and street urbanism and switched over to spine-based urbanism. We moved from a metropolitan to a megalopolitan type of urbanism and to really get that you have to know the distinction between the two terms. On some level, we all know that when we go outside the Loop that we have moved into a different world, a different reality. The way we navigate outside the Loop is totally different from the way we navigate inside the Loop. Our relationship to nature is different, and our relationship to built form completely changes. We need to be more precise with language in order to appreciate these differences.” — Rice architecture prof Albert Pope, in the latest issue of Cite magazine. [OffCite] Diagram of traffic patterns in grid (left) and spine systems (right): Albert Pope
WHAT A FIRED IRONWORKER LEFT BEHIND AT KYLE FIELD 
The ironworker fired from his job at the Kyle Field construction site after hoisting a University of Alabama flag from a crane at the Texas A&M football stadium has been subjected to an even greater indignity: After a photo of the stunt (at left) went viral, a crew of dead-serious investigators has been scouring the worker’s largely jokey Facebook page for possible additional anti-Aggie activity. And overnight, it appears, they hit paydirt. In context, Bobby Livingston’s offhand comment on his Facebook page from February 28th, under a self-portrait in an Alabama sweatshirt, that “This stadium will never be ready for this. Season,I’m putting iron in backwards and wrong holing everything!!”appears to be a joke among friends. It’s tougher to judge the circumstances surrounding a later Livingston post, however, because it appears now to have been deleted: According to College Station reporter Patrina Adger, he wrote on April 6, “If you ever attend a Texas A&M football game, don’t sit at the Northeast End Zone. It was raining today and I made two very ‘questionable’ welds.” The engineering firm in charge of inspections at Kyle Field, which is being expanded to seat more than a 100,000 fans, has issued a statement in response, assuring that all welds and connections have been tested, verified, and reviewed. [KBTX] Photo: Bobby Livingston
From a high-flying source come these fascinating close-up aerial views of the massive ExxonMobil campus just north of the intersection of I-45 and the now-building-to-suit Grand Parkway in the northern reaches of the city of Houston. The campus is still under construction but also partly occupied. The pix were taken late last month; the first of an expected total of 17,000 workers began moving into almost-complete structures back in April.
The photo at top shows the Pickard Chilton-designed “Energy Center” meant to serve as the campus gateway, as well as house a reception area, training and conference facilities, and a restaurant. When construction is complete, the scaffolding will come down and visitors will be able walk underneath the suspended 4-story glass block hovering at center in the photo above.
The Cubicles Under the Cranes
- Apparel-Carrying Kroger Marketplace To Open in Cypress Aug. 1 at 9703 Barker Cypress [Prime Property; previously on Swamplot]
- Memorial Hermann Pearland Medical Center Campus Adding Second Medical Office Building [Prime Property]
- Aldi-Anchored Atascocita Shopping Plaza in Humble Sold to Private Investor [Prime Property]
- City Looking To Revamp Kermit Courville Stadium Area [Galveston County Daily News ($)]
- The Woodlands To Oversee Bus Service, Federal Transit Money After Population Growth Now Makes It a ‘Large Urbanized Area’ [Houston Chronicle]
- Proposal To Rezone Former Westside Christian Church Property at 4301 Bellaire Blvd. Upsets Neighbors in Bellaire [abc13]
- Woodlands Officials Planning To Spend $40M Over Next 5 Years To Upgrade Sewer System [The Woodlands]
- Residents in Katy-Area Mason Lakes Subdivision on Edge After Rash of AC Unit Thefts [Houston Chronicle]
- The Fine Print on Going Topless at Texas Beaches [San Antonio Express-News]
Photo of Millennium Kirby Apartment Complex under construction at Kirby and South Main: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
Before delving into the communities residents have built for themselves at the St. Cloud apartment complex on Hillcroft in Gulfton, Thai Xuan Village on Broadway near Hobby Airport, and Greenspoint (each marked in orange on the map), UH architecture prof Susan Rogers tries to present the big picture of Houston’s multifamily situation — accompanied by the above heat map showing (according to HCAD land-use data) where the apartments are: “315,357 is the number of multifamily apartments housed in buildings comprised of 10 or more units. Forty percent of this housing, or just over 140,000 units, were constructed between 1960 and 1979. Today, this housing is home to more than 20 percent of Houston’s two million residents. The units are dispersed in roughly 600 separate complexes, with an average of 250 units, and typically constructed at densities of 30-40 units per acre. Not surprisingly, the new projects are located predominantly outside the Loop and many are in a downward spiral of disinvestment.”
Map: Rose Lee
The New ‘Projects’?
Jump or Dive? Try both. A Hill Country-like retreat in Memorial’s Sandlewood neighborhood is perched on a spring-fed lake — and comes with a pool, among other chill-worthy amenities. The asking price was set at $4.2 million in the property’s early June listing. Built in 1997 for its current owners, Midway Companies’ Brad and Claudia Freels, the fan-filled home appears to have waltzed across Texas to find some of the older touchstones incorporated into its finishes.
Breeze Ease
