PHEW! FISH AND THE KNIFE IS BACK TO ITS USUAL ‘OPENING SOON’ STATUS 
After announcing just last week that it had given up all hope that the 3-and-a-half-year-long construction project on the corner of Westheimer and Stoney Brook Dr. would ever open its doors as a restaurant, the crack team behind the b4-u-eat newsletter declared yesterday that its loss of sushi faith was unwarranted: “Fish & The Knife mystery solved,” the latest email report reads. “The facebook page was removed because it was created by an employee who is no longer there. There were a lot of workers there today and the beautiful fish tank contains live fish now. The owner says they expect to open in 3 weeks.” [b4-u-eat; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Swamplot inbox
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in this week’s Houston Press, writer Dianna Wray wades into the murky waters surrounding the Harris County Flood Control District’s plan to move and rebuild the banks of Buffalo Bayou where it winds between Memorial Park and the River Oaks Country Club. The method of “natural channel design” the district plans to use in the $6 million project is meant to keep the bayou in place, using downed trees instead of concrete. But weren’t bayous born to wiggle? “If the Army Corps of Engineers approves the Memorial Park Demonstration Project permit application,” Wray writes, “construction workers could move in by the end of this year, using heavy equipment and saws to reshape the bayou according to a pattern that should, if the method is successful, lock the waterway into a form it will hold for generations to come. If the effort fails, the entire project could be blown down the river by one heavy flood, leaving nothing but naked, unprotected soil where the last of an ancient forest once stood.”
- Fighting for Control: Can Buffalo Bayou Survive the Latest Plan to Save It? [Houston Press]
- Conservationists have an eye turned to Buffalo Bayou project [Houston Chronicle ($)]
- Memorial Park Demonstration Project [HCFCD]
Plan of Memorial Park Demonstration Project: Harris County Flood Control District
The Banks of River Oaks
Piece by piece, building by building, we are ripping ourselves a new city.
- Newly Named ‘Bistro Menil’ Set To Open Around Labor Day [Food Chronicles]
- Aldi To Open 15th Greater Houston Location in Humble on Jan. 23 [Prime Property]
- City Loosens Booze Sales Restrictions in Hopes of Drawing Supermarkets to ‘Food Deserts’ [Houston Chronicle]
- Woodlands’ Creekside Village Green Development To Offer Retail, Office Space with a Pedestrian-Friendly Feel [Houston Chronicle ($)]
- Clear Lake Residents Protesting 700 Luxury Dwellings Planned for Wetlands [MyFoxHouston]
- State, Federal Government Will Prepare 2 Environmental Studies To Lay Groundwork for Dallas-Houston High-Speed Rail [Houston Business Journal]
- Constellation Field, New Performing Arts Center Meant To Turn Sugar Land into an Entertainment Destination [KHOU]
- CityCentre’s Hotel Sorella, Uptown Park’s Hotel Granduca Named Among Best Hotels Worldwide by Conde Nast Traveler [Culturemap]
- Houston ‘Street Fashion’ Photographer Finds Actual Subjects Outdoors, Not in Cars [Fashion Diaries]
Photo of Brays Bayou: David Elizondo via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
Having succeeded in somewhat reducing the planned amount of tree carnage at the southern end of their neighborhood bounding a portion of the Willow Waterhole Stormwater Detention Basin, residents of Post Oak Manor now have another curious byproduct of those flood-reduction efforts to contend with. Contractors working on the Harris County Flood Control District project are now lining a section of the new detention basin with actual barbed-wire fencing. “This is public paid-for lands,” complains neighborhood resident Valerie Runge. “I can’t help but feel this is retaliation for the trouble we caused trying to keep a few of the trees.”
Cows, Too
COMMENT OF THE DAY: ISN’T NEARBY RETAIL ENOUGH? 
“I don’t understand the ground floor retail ‘litmus test’ that is applied to every new building proposed for downtown/midtown. That is, it is not a ‘good’ building if it does not have a retail component. I understand the desirability of having nearby retail and a more ‘walkable’ downtown, but why do we have to have retail in the same building as the apartments as long as the retail is nearby? Here, there is retail right across the street, and the Main street corridor is only a few blocks away! Doesn’t it make sense sometimes to build a single-use building that is more conducive to its purpose as long as the other elements of a ‘walkable’ city (like retail, offices, services) are within walking distance?” [SH, commenting on The Best Views Yet of Hines’s Market Square Apartment Tower and Its Downtown Headlight] Illustration: Lulu
- 938 W. Cortlandt St. [HAR]
Spring Branch Creek runs past the ravine lot of this updated 1978 Pine Creek Village home in Hilshire Village. The property tested the market waters with a listing in October 2013, but withdrew it within a month. When relisted earlier this week, the tidy contemporary on a cul-de-sac kept its previous asking price: $745,000. The home’s varied roofline translates into various ceiling heights and treatments. In the living room, for example, exposed beams in the half-vault (top) lead the eye to the wood-burning fieldstone fireplace and views out several sliding glass doors overlooking the back deck. And somewhere beyond the treetops lies the water, though it’s a vista curiously absent from the listing.
Where’s the Water?
WHERE’S THAT OAK FOREST RETAIL RENAISSANCE? 
It’s not at all surprising to the Houston Press‘s Abby Koenig that her neighborhood, Oak Forest, walked away with the Least Recognizable Neighborhood title in this year’s Swamplot Awards. But she wonders when the area’s retail and commerce will catch up to its residential transformation: “There’s still nothing here! I am exaggerating; over the past four years a few new places have popped up: Cottonwood, Shepherd Park and Pink’s Pizza have opened up over on Shepherd, hidden away on Wakefield is Petrol and Wakefield CrowBar, in the shopping center on Ella we’ve still got our Kroger with some chain additions like a European Wax Center (thanks?) and an Edible Arrangements (thanks again?) and there is the much-praised Plonk bar and restaurant. But other than a select few, there’s not a whole lot to do in Oak Forest. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want the neighborhood to turn into another Washington Ave, but the hottest news item on the Oak Forest Facebook page over the past three months has been over the rumor that Berryhill is coming; that’s how bored we are: ‘not bad Mexican’ is the most exciting thing we’ve got going on.” [Art Attack; previously on Swamplot] Photo of Shops at Oak Forest: Transwestern Retail
What’s that giant red crane looming downtown on the block surrounded by Main, Texas, Fannin, and Capitol? Assembling another crane. Which, in turn, will do all sorts of nasty business to the 21-story Texas Tower, which happens to be in the way of the shiny new 609 Main St. office tower that Hines plans to build on that block. The Texas Tower’s original Art Deco details were removed in the 1940s; back then it was known as the Sterling Building. It went up in 1931.
Knock-em-Down ’Scrapers
It’s the final buzzer for the Delmar Fieldhouse — and these other fine structures:
- Galleria’s Philippe-less Philippe Will Close This Weekend, Reopen as Table in March [Food Chronicles]
- Midtown Restaurant Cook & Collins Opening Jan. 20 in Former El Patio Space [Food Chronicles; previously on Swamplot]
- Railcars for Upcoming Rail Lines Now 6 Months Behind Schedule; Metro Withholding Payment to CAF USA Until Delivery [Houston Chronicle ($)]
- If 2013 Was ‘The Year of the Bike’ for Houston, Why Can’t 2014 Be ‘The Year of the Sidewalk’? [Houston Chronicle ($)]
- TxDOT Shutting Down Southbound I-45 Lanes Near Downtown This Weekend for Hogan St. Bridge Repairs [KUHF]
- Closing Rollover Pass Would Cause ‘Significant Harm’ To Water Quality and Fishing in East Bay, Finds Report [Galveston County Daily News ($)]
- Luxury Houston Real Estate Firm Martha Turner Properties Acquired by Sotheby’s [Culturemap]
- Owners of CityCentre’s Sweet Opening New Bakery Next to 59 Overpass at Commerce and Chartres in East Downtown [Eater Houston]
Photo of Sugar Land parking lot: Bill Barfield via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHAT KATYVILLE COULD HAVE BEEN 
“From Yale St. and I-10 all the way through the First Ward to I-45, there are so many large commercial tracts that are on the market or coming on the market that you could build a whole new city. The Mahatma Rice plant is huge. The tract from Detering to Grocer’s Supply is huge. There are tons of other lots ready for redevelopment all along the Washington Corridor east of Yale St. We all know that traffic will get much worse as thousands more residents come into the area to live, shop, work and play. But the idea that traffic is just going to happen no matter what is silly. Smart development and infrastructure improvements can make a huge difference. When retail, residential and office are placed in the same development, you always reduce car trips. I used to work just outside the loop in a typical spec office building with no retail nearby. Worst traffic in the garage was at noon as everyone was scurrying out of the building to go get lunch. I now work downtown in a building that is in Houston Center. Hardly any traffic going out of the building, despite being many times bigger, during lunch as there are ample places to eat in the food court. The problem with redevelopment along Washington Ave is that everyone is just doing their own thing without any regard for trying to make the area conducive to work/shop/live/play without being reliant on cars. And the City still suffers from low self esteem and is happy to give out tax gifts without requiring any sort of return benefit. The result is that there is no connection between the retail development (largely single story title wall strip malls), residential (mostly disconnected pencil boxes) and office (an odd tower at Waugh and not much other new development). Had a single developer had control over all the available property, we could see a transformative development like a giant City Centre meets West Ave meets Post Oak Midtown. Instead, we get an odd mish mash of retail, office, and residential with little infrastructure improvements to mitigate the impacts (not even a right turn lane on Yale St. SB at I-10, which would make a huge difference). So much could be done, but so little will get done to maximize the benefits of incoming density and minimize the burdens.” [Old School, commenting on Comment of the Day: Admiral Linen and the Way of Katyville] Illustration: Lulu
The shiny new building on the northwest corner of Old Spanish Trail and Cambridge St. south of the Texas Medical Center that the Baylor College of Medicine built but then let sit as an empty shell for nearly 4 years will soon be filled with hospital beds, the institution announced today. And the complex will eventually become the new home of the successor to the Texas Medical Center’s St. Luke’s Hospital. Catholic Health Initiatives, which has its headquarters in Denver, bought the entire St. Luke’s Episcopal Health System last May for $2 billion; a new nonprofit joint venture between CHI St. Luke’s Health and Baylor will operate the new 250-bed hospital, which will be inserted into the structure’s vacant floors by next spring and bear the unwieldy name of Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center McNair Campus.
The same joint venture will also run the existing 850-bed St. Luke’s hospital on Bertner Ave., now conveniently known as the Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center TMC. But that Texas Medical Center institution appears to be going south: A yet-to-be-created master plan and timeline will guide the eventual replacement of that facility — it’ll move south of Brays Bayou to the McNair Campus, which is outside the official boundaries of the Texas Medical Center:
Back to Health
- 11515 Del Monte Dr. [HAR]
