IZAKAYA-WA OPENING REAL SOON IN MEMORIAL 
Eater Houston’s Darla Guillen reports that that Japanese izakaya-style restaurant and bar that a Swamplot reader in August reported would be opening in the Memorial Bend Shopping Park will be opening this Wednesday. And Guillen suspects that the location just inside the Beltway at 12665 Memorial Dr. could very well prove to be very well chosen: “It seems that the restaurant’s proximity to some Japanese corporations will likely encourage a strong Japanese following.” [Eater Houston; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Houston Sushi
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In the market for a historical home inside the Loop but just can’t find one that fits your budget? Why, here’s the 6-bedroom mansion that former Houston Post publisher and Governor William P. Hobby had built in 1929 — it’s only $2,385,000! And it looks nothing like an airport! In Braeswood, just a few blocks from the Med Center, the stately Tudor at 2115 Glen Haven has been available since the middle of August.
Wanna get closer?
- 22 Crinkleroot Ct. [HAR]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: EAST DOWNTOWN, BROUGHT TO YOU BY MONTROSE 
“I totally agree with what’s going on in EADO. Face it. It’s way too close to everywhere people want to be not to turn around. And I don’t see any bubble bursting as it’s not inflated at all. Things are still super cheap.
Our strategy for EADO, 3rd ward, and med center area can be summarized in 3 words: “BUY BUY BUY†(and sell in Montrose, at stupid high prices, to get the cash to do so).” [Cody, commenting on Townhouses Going Up in East Downtown] Illustration: Lulu
THE HIGH-TECH BURGER JOINT IN THE WOODLANDS 
Wanting to try Fielding’s Wood Grill, now open in the strip center on Research Forest Dr. where Shenandoah meets The Woodlands, the Houston Press’s Molly Dunn discovers an amenity inside that could prove tricky for the finger-licking clientele: “There’s . . . an iPad bar . . . to surf the web, chat with friends or play some games. It’s as though they took a portion of the Apple Store and placed it smack dab in the middle of the restaurant.” [Eating Our Words; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Swamplot inbox
We hardly knew ye: The Sonic Drive-In at 7001 Harrisburg and 70th has quietly closed and covered its windows with solemn gray-painted plywood. The place had been situated among other chains and franchises and bus terminals near the recently installed big yellow bumper at the end of the forthcoming East End Line, catty-corner from the Magnolia Transit Center and a few blocks north of the Gus Wortham Golf Course (and perhaps the potential future Botanic Garden).
There are almost 6,000 miles of street in Houston, according to the Memorial Examiner, and now about a half a mile of one in Midtown can call itself remarkable. The Greenroads Foundation, which confers on streets a kind of LEED-like designation, gave its first formal props to a project in Texas to Bagby St. between Tuam and St. Joseph Pkwy., for the $9 million in improvements built along the 0.62-mile span the past few months.
Included in those improvements are bike racks, street furniture, wayfinding signs, wider sidewalks, and narrower, less harrowing crosswalks. (You can see in the photo above that these improvements don’t include burying utilities.) But the designation isn’t meant just to make the lives of pedestrians more aesthetically pleasing: LED lights were installed; rain gardens were put in to help with drainage; “fly ash” concrete, which reduces carbon emissions, was used where possible; and Bagby itself, with its potholes, patches, and cracks, was repaved atop what the Midtown Redevelopment Authority calls “newly stabilized materials” that are supposed to require less maintenance over the long haul.
Here are a few more looks at the transformation:
 and Improved... "Pin It")
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
This Art Deco must stop.
- Developer Gerald Hines Sees Better Roads and Rail as Crucial for Houston Growth [Houston Chronicle ($)]
- Steadfast Income REIT Buys Apartment Complex The Heights at 2121 for $37M [Houston Chronicle ($)]
- Killen’s Barbecue Now Looking To Open in Early December in Pearland [Food Chronicles]
- I-45 Galveston County’s Deadliest Road, Based on TxDOT Data [Galveston County Daily News ($)]
- Texans’ Tackle JJ Watt Wants Security Gate Around His Pearland Master-Planned Community [abc13]
- Artist Boat Receives $3.5M Grant To Preserve Galveston Wetlands [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot]
- Deadline To Share Texas Drought Photos Extended to End of October [MyFoxHouston]
Photo inside the JP Morgan Chase Tower: Bill Barfield via Swamplot Flickr Pool
The ample parking area out front is a tipoff that this updated 1938 Heights Blvd. cottage on the southbound side of the street could double as a business hub. It’s not the only sign, however:
Are Houston’s peculiarities something you’re passionate about? Do you enjoy delving into this city’s neighborhoods, its architecture, its strip-mall secrets? Would you like a blogging gig that puts you in prime position to sift through, spill, and ’splain the latest local real estate happenings? Good news for you, then: Swamplot is looking for a reporter-writer.
We’re looking to hire someone who can research, report, and write quickly and well; who’s attentive to detail, careful with facts, and has a good sense of humor; who can work independently and communicate well; and who can spit out accurate and entertaining posts faster than Swamplot’s big and highly engaged audience can spit back. We’re seeking someone who understands this site and how it works, and who will bring ideas and energy to make it better.
Here’s how to apply for this full-time position:
COMMENT OF THE DAY: ALL THAT FRACKING TRAFFIC 
“The gear needed to frac wells on a single well-pad is unbelievably heavy. A single pump might weigh 75,000 lbs, and you use 12 or more on a single pad, not to mention a hydration unit, a blender, a manifold, a data van — and these are the things that just stay on the well site. You also have sand carried in vehicles so big that they are often called ‘sand hulks’. They come and go from a single well site constantly. And depending on how you get water to the site, that may mean even more trucks.
This army of vehicles leaves from a single yard and tends to go over some of the same roads over and over again on its way to different well-pads where the wells to be fracked are.
The point is, fracking tends to place a lot of stress on a small number of roads that are in continuous use in a given area. I work in in the frac business and am totally pro-fracking, and I think it is totally reasonable for localities (whether counties or states) to require a reasonable road maintenance surcharge from companies that operate frac spreads in an area. (Of course, it should be based on actual use.) After all, these are the same roads our employees drive on to get to work or to run errands and that their kids ride school buses on.” [Robert Boyd, commenting on Headlines: A New San Jacinto Monument Museum; Road-Buckling Fracking Trucks] Illustration: Lulu
It appears that Gensler has submitted for review by the city planning commission this rendering of a 1,600-space, 16-story parking garage. Maps included in the agenda for the October 3 commission meeting show that the garage would stand Downtown at 1311 Louisiana, now a surface lot, and share the block bound by Louisiana, Polk, Milam, and Clay with the 12-story garage for the WEDGE International Tower.
Here’s more development in East Downtown: These townhouses are under construction on the corner of Live Oak and Lamar, just 2 blocks from the Columbia Tap bike trail that leads to BBVA Compass Stadium. Eventually, according to a site plan on the InTown Homes website, 22 of these 3- and 4-bedroom townhouses will stand on the block bound by Lamar, Live Oak, St. Charles, and McKinney. They’re starting at $364,900.
VOTE FOR NEW DOME, SAYS MAYOR PARKER 
As the demolition — or, as Judge Ed Emmett might call it, the improvement — of some of the exterior features of the Astrodome begins, Mayor Parker has declared her support of the seeming this-or-nothing $217 million bond measure that would pay for a slimming down and cleaning up of the aging icon to make it ready for convention and exhibition space. Says the incumbent about the so-called New Dome: “This plan will bring jobs, a positive economic impact and a renewed sense of pride in the Dome for all Houstonians.” [Preservation Houston; previously on Swamplot] Rendering: Harris County Sports and Convention Corporation
