COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHERE HOUSTON’S PARKING MATH DOESN’T QUITE ADD UP 
“Is it typical for a municipality to use GFA (Gross Floor Area) to calculate parking requirements for businesses? Would Net Floor Area be more accurate and eliminate this debate? Gross Floor Area calculations includes things like mechanical rooms, bathrooms, hallways, storage areas, and refrigeration while Net Floor Area excludes those areas and could be considered the actual space where a business actually accommodates customers and staff. In Houston a business owner must provide a parking space for its water heater, toilets, air handler, and inventory. A little dramatic yes, but I’m not oversimplifying.” [Steskal, commenting on Here’s Everywhere Off-Street Parking Requirements Will No Longer Apply If City Council Says So] Illustration: Lulu
Sign up for the Newsletter
A sign spotted up on the chain’s East End location (pictured at top) by a thrifty Redditor informs customers that the last 2 Sand Dollar stores will be closing at the end of this month, bringing an end to the retailer’s 37-year run. Both the 7018 Harrisburg Blvd. and 1903 Yale St. stores are now in clearance mode: All purchases over $20 (before tax) are half-off.
Down in Pasadena, the 2535 Spencer Hwy. store has already been emptied:
Everything Must Go
Make that 55 days that the prank poster installed by UH student Jevh Maravilla and a group of accomplices has been hanging in the Shadow Creek Ranch McDonald’s. And there’ll be plenty more time to see it: An unidentified McDonald’s representative tells Eater Houston that the store at 2815 Business Center Dr. has no plans to take it down, noting however that renovations are planned in the future.
Maravilla (right) took the photo of him and his friend Christian Toledo (left) at the Westside Event Center — just a mile away on the opposite side of 288. He then added graphic elements to mimic the other wall art in the store and ordered a print through Office Depot’s online service. Clad in a McDonald’s employee shirt he picked up for $7 at a nearby thrift store — along with a tie, clip-on walkie-talkie, and fake nametag dubbing him a “Regional Interior Coordinator” — Maravilla entered the store and hung the poster with the help of a few more friends.
He describes the undercover op beginning at the one-minute mark in this video:
See the McPrank Yourself
- Duke Realty Developing 5-Building Industrial Property on Former Chevron Tract in Katy [HBJ ($)]
- Howard Hughes Corp. Acquires 2 Vacant Office Buildings Adjacent to Hughes Landing [Bisnow]
- Renovation Planned for One and Three Riverway Office Buildings in the Galleria Area [Houston Chronicle]
- West Houston Home Listed for $1 Eventually Sells for $270,000 [Houston Chronicle]
- Mosaic-Filled Home Hits the Market in Timbergate [abc13]
- An Analysis into Why Houston’s Roads, Drivers Are Nation’s Most Deadly [Houston Chronicle ($)]
Photo of Caydon tower under construction between Main and Fannin streets in Midtown: Marc Longoria via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
What happens after the last burrito is wrapped:
- 1183 Chamboard Ln. [HAR]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE BRIO LATENCY EFFECT 
“I moved to Sageglen in 1981 during kindergarten and went to Weber all the way through 6th grade and onto Webster. We played in the ditches catching crawdads, waded through flood waters, and drank the water freely. So many friends lived in Southbend so plenty of time was spent there as well playing throughout the neighborhood on what we thought were playgrounds and neighborhood pools. During the notification process of the contamination, my mother (Chinese and unable to read English at the time) was never aware of any class action suit. I, being a child, only knew we weren’t allowed to drink from the water fountains and didn’t even know what a class action suit or toxic contamination was at the time. Thus, we never signed up for it, nor received any compensation whatsoever. . . After reading all the accounts of vague health issues, I am realizing more and more that my own health issues are pretty much parallel. This cannot be a coincidence. Does anyone know of any sort of data collection on former residents to track the health implications? Or is there a class action suit still available to join; or has anyone filed another considering a lot of these issues are not presenting until adulthood? My biggest concern is: Will these issues be passed down and affect my own child? I just don’t feel this catastrophe and crime against so many people’s health/lives that we are all still/now finding out about should be a ‘closed’ case. We were oblivious kids back then without any idea of how this would affect us in our lives and well-being as adults.” [Marie, commenting on My Toxic Houston Childhood] Photo of Clear Creek near Brio Superfund site: Allyn West
EYE DOC GRABBING SPACE NEXT TO DENTIST IN MID MAIN LOFTS’ METRO SIDE 
The office of Dr. Benjamin Golik, DDS is getting a new optometrist neighbor along Main St. as heralded by a recently filed building permit for the Mid Main Lofts‘ ground level. The eye doctor’s move-in will leave the apartments’ east side more full than not — though a few of its rail-adjacent retail spaces remain empty according to the map above of the building’s first floor. [Previously on Swamplot] Map: LoopNet
- Houston Building Permits Up 19% in July to $638.9M with Boost from The Tradition Woodway and The Discroll [Houston Chronicle ($)]
- Houston Home Prices Up 5.4% Year-Over-Year in July, Finds CoreLogic [Houston Chronicle]
- Median Houston Rent Also Up 3.6% Year-over-Year in August, According to ApartmentList.com [Bisnow]
- Howard Hughes Starts Construction on Second Apartment Complex at Hughes Landing [HBJ]
- City Breaks Ground on Lots for 19 Homes in New Program Geared Toward Low- and Moderate-Income Buyers [abc13]
- H Mart To Debut at Katy Asia Town on Sept. 21 [Eater Houston; previously on Swamplot]
- Asian Grocery Store Chain z.Tao To Open Sept. 14 in Katy [Houston Chronicle]
- Ford Fry Might Be Opening a Seafood Restaurant on Wash Ave [Eater Houston]
- Cherry Pie Hospitality Has Sold Off Its 3 Heights Restaurants [Culturemap]
- 38 Purple Street Signs Quoting Rap Lyrics Popped Up Around Houston over the Weekend [Houston Chronicle]
- Stressed ‘Zombie Trees’ Showing Up Across Houston [Houston Chronicle ($)]
Photo of the Clear Lake area: Marc Longoria via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
Not before the fall:
- 13206 Mission Valley Dr. [HAR]
POSTINO WINE BAR IS GETTING ALL TINGLY AGAIN ABOUT OPENING A NEW LOCATION IN AN OLD BUILDING 
Back in April, the Chronicle’s Greg Morago reported that the management behind Postino Wine Bar “got goosebumps†while checking out the portion of the old Pappas Restaurants complex off Yale St. that eventually became their debut Houston location in Heights Mercantile. Now, the sensation has come back to haunt them: “Walking into the old Montrose Mining Company – such a storied space that’s been a neighborhood gathering space since the 1970s – gave us goosebumps,†the chain’s owner tells him. And so: Renovations will begin soon to bring the longtime gay bar at 805 Pacific St. back into service as Houston’s second Postino. The venue’s former proprietor Charles Armstrong sold it to a group overseen by Fred Sharifi — the owner of the neighboring Baba Yega Cafe — in January, following the bar’s shutdown in 2016. [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Swamplox inbox
The city’s latest proposal to eliminate off-street parking requirements in Midtown and East Downtown got a vote of confidence from the management districts of both neighborhoods when staff members presented it to them last Monday. Shown above are the new areas (in blue and green) that’d supplement Downtown’s existing Central Business District (red) where developers are free to build without leaving room — like the rest of Houston must — for on-site parking spots. To the east, the designation extends out to the Union Pacific Railroad tracks and then down to I-45. And to the south, it follows the 527 spur, ending at 59. (If put in place, the whole contiguous zone would fall under a new term the city’s invented for it: Market Based Parking.)
There’s still a ways to go before the map becomes more than a pretty picture: A 30-day public comment period will culminate in a recap next month. Then city council gets its final say on things at a meeting proponents hope will take place before the end of the year.
Deregulatory Roadmap
A recent tax filing reveals Sweet Bribery is the moniker of the corner ice cream shop Braun Enterprises has been showing in its site plan for 250 W. 19th St. without daring to speak its name. It’s the last of the 5 new tenants that the developer’s been ushering into the former Chippendale Eastlake Antiques store since buying it in 2015. (One of which — an ice cream offshoot of Lee’s Fried Chicken & Donuts called Lee’s Creamery — appears no longer bound for the building.) Pictured above is the western flank it’d occupy, which backs up to Urban Float sensory deprivation spa’s entrance off Rutland St.
Next door to the creamery, clothing stores Mary & Moss and Proper are already doing business along 19th St.:
250 W. 19th St.
- Chevron’s Former 30-Acre Bellaire Campus Under Contract [Houston Chronicle]
- Fort Bend County Breaks Ground on $21M Transit Center [HBJ]
- Sawyer Yards Expansion To Include Brewery, Cidery, and Restaurants at 2 New Buildings [Houston Chronicle]
- Cypress-Area Costco Moves Forward for 17-Acre Plot [HBJ ($)]
- Downtown’s Bravery Chef Hall Getting a Sixth Food Tenant [HBJ; previously on Swamplot]
- NAI Partners: Number of Craft Breweries in Houston Has Quadrupled in 5 Years to 52 [Houston Chronicle]
- Texas Among One of the Top Markets for International Homebuyers, Finds Report [Culturemap]
- Texas Housers Report: Houston’s New Floodplain Regulations Adversely Affect Low-Income Communities [Houston Public Media]
Photo of Galveston Bay: Marc Longoria via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
