Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
Today’s selection of ripe residences, plucked from their places and served here for your dining pleasure:
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- 546 Brandon Rd. [HAR]
Orange fencing is condoning off the corner of the Westchase Shopping Center where a new Regions Bank is planned in place of the El Palenque that shuttered there in May. A demolition permit issued for the restaurant building exactly a week ago means its days are numbered. But for now it’s still standing, fronted by landscaping and the new Port-o-Potty pair visible in the photo at top from Walnut Bend Ln., just shy of Westheimer.
Also on its last legs: the bank’s nearest existing branch on S. Kirkwood near the Westheimer H-E-B. A company spokesperson told the HBJ‘s Olivia Pulsinelli in June that the planned new branch will take over business in the area.
Photos: Jose Galvan (fencing); Troy M. (El Palenque)
Branching Out
COMMENT OF THE DAY: BRIARMEADOW’S DOGGY DAYCARE DOGPILE 
“Anyone else notice this area of town is getting rather saturated in doggy day cares? There’s one at Richmond on the other side of Fountainview, one on the north side of 59 just before Fountainview, one on Westheimer just west of Briarhurst . . . and those are just the ones that come immediately to mind.” [cricketty, commenting on Former Richmond Ave Furniture Royalty Will Now Provide Lodging for Animals] Map showing existing dog daycares in red, proposed in blue: Swamplox inbox
Petco, Michaels, Bed Bath and Beyond, and a big Dick’s Sporting Goods store are among the retailers now lining up for spots in Newquest Properties‘ new Grand-Parkway-adjacent shopping center dubbed The Grand at Aliana. They’ll be buffered from the highway by a roughly 2,400-car-parking lot and a front-line of fast food restaurants. The whole Grand plan hits the Houston Planning Commission’s desk later this afternoon at City Hall Annex, 20 miles away from where the development would be built off W. Airport Blvd.
The map at top shows it vying for attention up there amid the blue jigsaw grid of proposed and recently-built neighborhoods that keep appearing around the highway. In orange is the shopping center’s namesake, the 2,8000-house-and-counting Aliana community that wraps it to the east.
Viewed from the east in the conceptual shot below, you can see some of those houses in the foreground:
Grandstanding
A Swamplot reader sends a few drive-by snapshots of construction on the Goddard School’s campus expansion, now going up along both sides of W. 23rd St west of Durham. The photo at top shows the 2-story steel framing now rising on the north side of the street, while the one above shows the portion of the preschool that’s going up opposite it, just east of Wright-Bembry Park.
Blue fencing now separates the green space from the south construction site:
Steel Preschool Skeletons
A vast pet boarding facility is now taking over the Winport Furniture building at 6393 Richmond — which stretches back south nearly the entire block along Unity Dr., pictured above. After sitting on the place for 6 months, the pet resort operator that bought it filed a building permit yesterday indicating it’s about to rejigger the former 19,497-sq.-ft. showroom with the help of Slattery Tackett Architects.
Before shifting its focus to office furniture in 2016, the building dealt in home items and called itself The Chair King:
Gone to the Dogs
- Mapping Where Apartment Projects Are Going Up in Houston [Houston Chronicle]
- Valcap Group Acquires 1,331 Multifamily Units in the Westchase District [Realty News Report]
- Sheridan Production Leaving Greenway Plaza for 1360 Post Oak [HBJ ($)]
- Wayfair Claims Final Space in Duke Realty’s Gateway Northwest Industrial Park in Northwest Houston [Houston Chronicle]
- G.T. Leach Constructors Files Lien Against Arel Capital in River Oaks Condo Project Suit [HBJ ($)]
- The ‘Macho Vibe’ of Randall Davis’ Downtown Highrise The Marlowe [Houston Chronicle ($)]
- Superica and La Lucha To Debut Next to Each Other Next Month in Former Hunky Dory and Bernadine’s Heights Spaces [Eater Houston]
- ReBuild Houston Will Go Before Voters Again on November Ballot with Tweaked Language [Houston Chronicle]
- American Society of Civil Engineers: Texas Needs a Statewide Flood Plan [Houston Public Media]
- A Year After Harvey, Coastal Ecosystems Are Thriving [The Texas Tribune]
- Health of Galveston Bay ‘Adequate for Now,’ Finds Latest Report Card [Houstonia]
- Charities Collected $742.6M in ‘Harvey Restricted’ Funds Last Year [HBJ]
Photo of new home construction at 11434 Memorial Dr.: Marc Longoria via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
We must cull every day; these homes just didn’t make the cut.
- 230 Blalock Rd. [HAR]
RECENTER REBUILDING GETS GOING ON MAIN ST. 
Midtown sobriety nonprofit ReCenter — formerly the Men’s Center — is now getting started building a new building in place of its old campus at 3805 and 3809 Main St. BRAVE Architecture’s design for the new housing, education, and detox facility — shown above fronting the Red Line — hasn’t taken shape yet, but a big hole recently has, according to a passerby, foreshadowing the coming construction. Since demolishing the 2 structures previously on site, the center’s been operating out of the former gas station convenience store just east on the block, at the corner of Fannin and Alabama. (Some additional office space is also tucked inside a converted home at 3816 Fannin.) [Previously on Swamplot] Rendering: BRAVE Architects
ASTROTURF INDUSTRY SHOWS STEADY GROWTH AS HOUSTON HOMEOWNERS GIVE UP ON THEIR LAWNS 
Business is booming in the synthetic grass sector here where the product got its start. One Houston installation firm’s rep tells the Chronicle’s Dianne Cowen he’s scaled up his staff by a factor of 5 since 2013. Nationwide, demand for the green stuff has tripled since 2011 and in order to keep up, production is expected to grow 20 percent over the next 3 years. Multiple strains are now being cultivated: zoysia, Bermuda and even St. Augustine — designed with short and long fibers that when clumped look like the real thing. To townhome owners, it’s an attractive furnishing for their tiny backyards — reports Cowen. Same goes for pet owners whose lawns are suffering from too much trampling. Though for them, there’s some watering involved: a monthly hose-off with a $20 bottle of sanitizer. [Houston Chronicle] Photo of synthetic grass installation: London looks [license]
Everything is operational now at the Transart Foundation for Art and Anthropology‘s hulking white headquarters north of the Menil — which took the place of a house earlier this year. The organization’s mission is to study the role of art in everyday life by supporting “experimental work at the intersection of art and anthropology.” It’s one door down from the intersection of W. Alabama and Yupon St., next to the Neon Gallery bungalow partly visible in the photo above.
Inside, a first floor gallery is divided by a central stairway that climbs up to a roof deck and garden:
Transart Foundation
A CURTAIN CALL FOR THE HIDDEN WESTERN UNION BUILDING BEFORE BANK OF AMERICA CENTER DIGESTS IT? 
With workers now punching holes in the facade where the Bank of America Center wraps the dead Western Union building it swallowed in 1983, city planner David Welch asks the question: “Will we be able to see the hidden building during construction?” It should be hard to miss; according to one Swamplot reader: “It is completely intact, tar and gravel roof included.” Size-wise, it takes up nearly a quarter of the B of A building’s ground floor, its northeast corner wrapped by the skyscraper’s own at Lousiana and Capitol streets — where the new openings are taking shape now. But its emergence may be brief: Once the planned new restaurant and cafe get situated inside it, the structure’s time-capsule mystique will be gone. And after new interior entrances open its innards to the tower’s own central lobby corridor, the telegram building will be completely metabolized. [David Welch; previously on Swamplot] Photo: David Welch
- One in 5 Apartments Damaged During Harvey Are Still Not Restored, According to ApartmentData.com [HBJ ($)]
- Houston Home of TLC’s ‘Little Couple’ Under Contract To Sell After Multiple Price Cuts [HBJ; previously on Swamplot]
- There’s ‘Incredible’ Interest in Coca-Cola Southwest Beverages’ West University Place Property [HBJ ($)]
- $50M H-E-B-Anchored Mixed-Use Development Planned for Kingwood [Realty News Report]
- Harris County Commissioners Formally Approve 237-Item Project List for Flood Control Bond [Houston Public Media; previously on Swamplot]
- Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo in ‘Early Stages’ of Planning Plan for Former AstroWorld Land [HBJ]
Photo of Carruth Pedestrian Bridge: Marc Longoria via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
