Making a row on W. Main and other stirrings on Houston streets:
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- Retail Space To Increase by 34 Percent in Houston with Addition of 2.61M SF This Year, including 28 New Grocery Stores, Claims Survey [Houston Chronicle]
- New Corner Bakery Opening at Echo Ln. Shopping Center This Month, 2 More in Woodlands and Katy This Year, and 16 More Over Next 5 Years [Houston Business Journal]
- Midway Cos. To Break Ground This Month on Houston CityCentre Five [Houston Business Journal]
- Why Some Buildings Around Houston Have Been Turning on the Red Lights [Prime Property]
- The Engineering Challenges of Expanding Houston’s Light Rail System [Civil Engineering]
- Tales from the Galleria’s Abandoned Hotel 31, Slated for Demolition [Houstonia]
- Two Allen Center Exhibition Explores Houston’s Growth with a TxDOT Model of Freeway Rebuilding, Photos of I-10 Then and Now, More [Houston Chronicle ($)]
Photo of Wortham Park: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
There’s a gussied up front door and porch on the far side of this tilt-topped 1960 home in Mangum Manor, but it’s the unobtrusive side door off the double driveway that appears to be the main entry, dropping arrivals neatly between the living room and kitchen (top). The tidy midcentury property, sporting a new roof and a recent paint job, jumped into the MLS fray earlier today with a $229,990 asking price.
Absolutely Refloored
Despite an assemblage of botanical print wallpapers reflecting (sometimes literally) another interior design era, a 1975 townhome in gated Indian Trails, west of Chimney Rock Rd., also has a few features ahead of their time: like extra high ceilings, floor-to-ceiling windows, and double vanities in the bathrooms. A bit camera shy, the corner property has a $1.17 million price tag and keeps its elevation as under wraps as the perimeter windows in the listing photos. Here’s a possible hint why:
Garden Variety, or Deeply Closeted?
. . . Well, at least as long as Brays Bayou is able to handle whatever rains come. Late last month, an excavator (pictured above) yanked out the last piece of a 3-year-old 6-ft.-by-6-ft. concrete panel used as a “restrictor” and meant to make sure rainwater that fell in West U stayed in West U for a good long time. The restrictor (shown in place blocking the right side of the drainage channel pictured at left) had been put in place by the Harris County Flood Control District after West U, working with the city of Southside Place and Metro, completed $8 million worth of drainage improvements in 2010 on the colorfully named Poor Farm Ditch, which drains along the east side of Edloe St. through much of West University and further south to Brays Bayou. Those improvements had been meant to solve West U’s frequent flooding problems. But without some place for the water to go, that solution for West U might have caused flooding elsewhere downstream. So the district placed the restrictor on Poor Farm Ditch on the south side of the Edloe St. bridge across Holcombe St. — until the city could somehow come up with 13.5 acre-ft. of flood detention to hold the runoff.
With flood improvements completed but the restrictor still causing water to back up on Poor Farm Ditch, West U flooded again in January 2012 after a hard rain.
The Rich Floodwaters of Poor Farm Ditch
- 1812 Bissonnet St. [HAR]
Does this new 4-story apartment complex that Dallas apartment developer Duke, Inc. is planning along the west side of Hwy. 6 just south of I-10 look a little urban to you, what with its sprinkling of metal siding, balcony action, and all those decoy pedestrians hanging around in front? Take away the high-speed car traffic racing by and the actual configurations of things and its setting might seem so too. Immediately north and slightly west of the site, fronting the Katy Fwy., are the Energy Crossing I and just-built Energy Crossing II office buildings. Cross Hwy. 6 on foot — not an actual suggestion; we’re just imagining here — and you can wander through the quaint little restaurant village along Grisby Rd., anchored by the original Lupe Tortilla. Heck, even Sam’s Club and the Waffle House are just a leisurely stroll north, across I-10!
More for the Energy Corridor
- Hillwood Communities Planning 2,100-Home Development ‘Pomona’ in Manvel Along 288 [Prime Property]
- Town in City Brewing To Break Ground in the Heights in About Two Weeks [Beer, TX; previously on Swamplot]
- Buffalo Hardware Co. To Close After 66 Years at the Corner of Westheimer and Kirby [Houston Business Journal]
- The Woodlands Area Qualifies as ‘Another Energy Corridor,’ Thanks to New ExxonMobil Campus [abc13]
- HISD Hosting Public Meetings To Share Design Concepts, Site Plans for First 17 New Schools Under 2012 Bond Program [HISD News Blog]
- Residents Likely Have No Recourse in Closure of Metro’s Pinemont Park & Ride [The Leader]
- What’s Up With All the Gargoyles Along Dunlavy? [Houstonia]
- Exploring Houston with Instagram-Style Pix from Houston Google Street View Scenes [Not Of It]
Photo of Jaume Plensa’s “Tolerance” sculpture along Allen Pkwy.: elnina via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
Owners of properties in portions of 18 blocks spreading roughly between Spring, Winter, Hemphill, and Johnson streets in the First Ward have 2 more weeks to decide if they want their properties to form a new historic district — and then, if the experiences of other would-be historic districts is any guide, a fair amount of time to squabble over the outcome after that. An application for what’s being called the High First Ward Historic District was submitted to the city in early December. Owners of property in the neighborhood have until February 24 either to return their ballots to the city or use them for papier-mâché. To be approved, the district would need 67 percent of owners in the district to vote yes; ballots that aren’t returned will be counted as votes against. If that percentage isn’t reached within the outlines shown in the map of the proposed district above, the city could carve out a smaller district for historic-district protection where the votes support it.
- Historic Districts coverage [Swamplot]
Map: Planning & Development Dept.
Voting Has Begun
It only took 3 days for a 13th floor condo unit with 2 slate terraces in Inwood Manor to go under contract — after being listed last week with a $995,000 asking price. Those who missed out have a few smaller options to consider elsewhere in the 16-floor beehive building of 110 units (top). A cast concrete tower designed by architect Harwood Taylor, the property has loomed over River Oaks and its hinterlands since 1962. A neighboring 13th floor 1-bedroom unit, furnished, is up for grabs as a lease starting April 1. And a couple smaller units on lower floors are still lingering, including one fitted as an office (above) by Houston interior design legend Herbert Wells, who died in 2010.
Unit Pricing
The Ella Creek Apartments at the corner of Ella and 22nd St. (and just a block of away from a jog in that creek called White Oak Bayou) have been completely vacated, a reader tells Swamplot: “On a recent drive by I noticed there were no cars in the parking lots and the complex looked even worse than usual. It is a very large tract, and I’m wondering what the future land use will be.”
Guesses, anyone?
Shady Acres
- 2535 Glen Haven Blvd. [HAR]
WHERE THE POOP IS, IN AND AROUND LAKE HOUSTON 
“While some Houston bayous, such as Buffalo and White Oak, have bacteria levels seven times higher than Lake Houston’s watershed, the waters flowing from the San Jacinto River are more vital, said Steve Hupp, Bayou Preservation Association spokesman. . . . Houston’s drinking water is pumped from an area of the lake not contaminated with bacteria.
Only the northwest corner of the lake is impaired, records show. This segment runs from where the river intersects Spring Creek, winds through Humble and past the Kingwood golf course, and ends at the West Lake Houston Parkway bridge.
The bacteria level found in the lake segment exceeds the state standard of 126 E. coli per 100 milliliters of water by 100 percent. Levels on both the river’s west or east forks are lower — exceeding the standard by 25 percent to 56 percent, depending on the segment. Yet a small tributary, Crystal Creek, which feeds into the west fork, has the highest count. It exceeds the state standard by 168 percent.
The communities along the San Jacinto watershed are experiencing a boom in development, especially around the river’s west fork in Montgomery County. Exxon Mobil already has a new 385-acre corporate campus that will be home to 10,000 workers under construction there, while the Boy Scouts recently sold their nearby 2,175-acre camp to a master-planned community developer for a reported $60 million.” [Houston Chronicle ($)] Photo of Lake Houston: Sara Robertson (license)
Two of the 6 wood-framed Victorian refugees renewable-energy exec Michael Skelly and his wife Anne Whitlock had moved last month to lots adjacent to the red-brick former fire house at 319 Sampson St. they’re renovating as their home are still not spoken for, according to Lisa Gray’s account: “One of the houses will become Whitlock and Skelly’s guest house. They’ve been trying to entice friends to buy and rehab the others, to join what Anne calls ‘our crazy adventure.’ Generally, the couple’s friends aren’t interested in moving themselves — though some like the idea for one of their kids, or as an investment in an area sure to gentrify. Real-estate broker Tom Bacon, a friend of Skelly’s, referred his son Drew, a 25-year-old artist who recently moved back from Brooklyn. In the little house across from the firehouse, he’ll be only a short walk from his studio on Preston. So far, Whitlock and Skelly have enticed one friend from their own generation: Diana EspitÃa, who serves on the Houston Parks Board with Michael. EspitÃa, who now lives in Southgate, plans to connect two of the houses, forming a home large enough for her, her teenage daughter, her brother and her parents, who are in their 60s. Her parents, says EspitÃa, love the new neighborhood; it reminds them of their old home in Bogotá.”
- Houston energy mogul’s crazy idea for a compound of turn-of-the-century homes [Houston Chronicle ($)]
- Previously on Swamplot: This Weekend, the Rowhouses of Lubbock Grove Are Moving to Lubbock Grove
Photo:Â Janusz Design
Any More Takers?
