- 400 Cordell St. [HAR]
Sign up for the Newsletter
The former art and event space dubbed the Indian Summer Lodge — tucked in between the MKT Trail and Blue Line Bike Lab on the corner of White Oak Dr. and Columbia St. — is now being shopped around to potential new owners. Pictured at top from the north is the 16,170-sq.-ft. trapezoidal property, home to a Quonset hut (shown above) and adjacent lodge building.
A year after the land was briefly rumored to be taking on the Tacos A Go Go that eventually moved in 4 blocks east of it, proprietor Jeff Law sold it in 2010. Since then, most portions of a third treehouse building that also sat on site and included a rooftop balcony have been torn down.
Here’s what $1,649,000 gets you now:
Indian Summer Lodge
Add F45 Training to the list of businesses taking over warehouses next to where I-45 will run over a few of its own once its rerouted through East Downtown. That’s the gym’s black box in the photo at top, neighbored by the Ferris wheel that new-ish bar Truck Yard recently installed in its own next-door lot. North of an adjacent portion of the building that F45 hasn’t touched, exterior work added new horizontal siding a couple shades darker than the previous off-white onto the structure, as well as the doorway — pictured above — atop which the national fitness chain has been flexing its COMING SOON signage for the past few months.
A permit filed yesterday for the building at 1110 Hutchins indicates rehab work is about to head inside to deal with a 2,650-sq.-ft. portion of its space. It’s 10,000 sq.-ft. total and backs up nearly halfway down the block on Lamar St. where it stands off from the south side of the Kim Hung Supermarket, long-whispered to be about to be demolished for something much taller.
- Previously on Swamplot: The Buildup To Tear Things Down for the New I-45 Has Begun; The East Downtown Block West of Truck Yard Has a New Owner
Photos: F45 Training
Bodybuilding Buildings
NEW BIRD-SHAPED BOATS PUT FORMER WOODLANDS CRUISER PASSENGERS IN THE DRIVER’S SEAT 
A flock of 10 swan-shaped boats has now picked up where The Woodlands’ 6 Waterway Cruisers left off when they were destroyed by Harvey last year — reports the Villager’s Marialuisa Rincon — rendering the township’s shipping channels unnavigable by public transit. (One Cruiser survived, but town officials decommissioned it anyway when they terminated their contract with the boat service’s operator in February.) Now, their “long-necked replacements” have former passengers taking water travel into their own hands through the use of a rudder — and their feet, by pedaling — to get where they want to go. Lake Robbins and anything past the Anadarko Bridge along the north edge of Lake Woodlands are off-limits — but aside from that, it’s pretty much free swim in the rest of the lake, as well as the upper and lower waterways. After hours, all bird boats rest in the Riva Row Boat House opposite The Pavilion. [Houston Chronicle; more info] Photo: The Woodlands Township
Here’s some of the new plant life that’s just recently sprung up on the bench outside the Mid Main Lofts near Holman St. (top) and at the southwest corner of Main and Winbern streets (above) outside Double Trouble Caffeine & Cocktails. Along with another trio stuck to the identical rusty block on the east side of Main at Winbern, they’ve been literally glued to their seats for the past few days, taking over the 3 public rest areas that appeared along with others adjacent to METRO’s Ensemble/HCC Red Line stop roughly a year ago.
The Midtown Redevelopment Authority — the entity responsible for most of the gardening that goes on in the neighborhood’s public right of way — ruled itself out as the planter yesterday morning, saying it’s looking into how the greenery got there in the first place.
- No one wanted to use these benches, anyway, Midtown [Allyn West]
- Thanks for bringing this to our attention [Midtown Houston]
Photos: Allyn West
You Can’t Sit With Us
- More Than 8,000 People Now Live in Downtown Houston, Up from 3,800 in 2012 [Realty News Report]
- Houston the No. 1 Home Market on New Real Estate Search Site HomLuv.com [Realty News Report]
- Madison Park Apartments in the Westchase District Trades Hands [Realty News Report]
- Developer: Capitol Tower Food Hall To Stand Out from Downtown Crowd at Center of the Tunnel System [HBJ ($)]
- Rapper Slim Thug Giving Away a Remodeled Northeast Houston Home to a Harvey Victim [abc13]
- Field & Tides Adds Separate Bar and Patio Destination Adjacent to Heights Restaurant [Houston Chronicle]
- Signage for Sweet Bribery Show Up on Heights Site Where Cherry Pie Hospitality Had Planned To Open Lee’s Creamery [Eater Houston]
- Houston Bike Share Program BCycle Looking To Add More Than 30 Stations [Houston Chronicle]
Photo of Waugh Dr. Bridge: Marc Longoria via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
Today: Henry’s big break — and other local entanglements:
- 6735 Lindyann Ln. [HAR]
Memorial Dr.’s Tres Market Foods is expanding to the pair of black and off-white buildings pictured above at 2620 Joanel St. behind the Westheimer strip home to River Oaks Donuts and across the street from the 2-story building housing the Honorary Consulate of Ghana. Formerly a row of separate lots, Houston’s city planning commission approved a request to consolidate the warehouse parcels all into a single property earlier this year. Since then, a handful of permits have come through as part the paperwork to prep the structures for remodeling.
Together, they total 5,400 sq.-ft.:
Prepared Food Preparations
WHAT’S ON THE TABLE IN HARRIS COUNTY’S FLOOD BOND MEGA VOTE, STARTING TOMORROW 
Included in the flood control bond package county residents are about to start voting on: $1.2 billion for channel improvements, $401 million for detention basins, $242 million for floodplain land purchases, $184 million (coupled with $500 million in outside funding) for 3,600 home buyouts, $12.5 million for new floodplain mapping, and $1.25 million for a better flood warning system — according to totals the Chronicle’s Zach Despart summed up from the master list of 237 individual projects. Not included: money for a third reservoir, although $750,000 is on the table to help the Army Corps study the possibility of one. Taken together, the $2.5 billion proposal‘s price tag is more than 20 times the Harris County Flood Control District’s annual budget of $120 million. Voting wraps up on Saturday, August 25, the anniversary of Harvey’s arrival in Houston. [Houston Chronicle ($); full list (PDF); previously on Swamplot] Photo of flooding at Creech Elementary School, 4242 S. Mason Rd., Katy:: Breta Gatlin
- Colliers: 43 Full Floors of Houston Sublease Office Space Coming Back in the Next 12 Months [Realty News Report]
- Alliance Residential Breaks Ground on 364-Unit Project Near Katy [HBJ ($)]
- Monthly Rent for Average One-Bedroom Unit in Houston Fell to $1,280 in July, According to Abodo [Bisnow]
- $6.75M Mansion in Carlton Woods Section of The Woodlands Going to Auction [HBJ]
- Where Lake Houston-Area Homeowners and Business Owners Stand a Year After Harvey [Community Impact Newspaper]
- Adair Concepts Opening New Restaurant Concept at Wells Fargo Plaza [HBJ]
- Capitol Tower Getting 2-Story, 7-Vendor Food Hall Dubbed Understory [Houstonia]
- Cafe Benedicte Reopens in the Energy Corridor Nearly a Year Since Closing After Harvey [Eater Houston]
- Heights Cocktail Bar One Armed Scissor Leaving Shared Hughie’s Tavern Space for Downtown [Culturemap]
- Fast-Casual Salad Restaurant SaladHead Coming to West University [Eater Houston]
- Mia’s Table To Add 3 Locations in Houston Suburbs by April 2019 [Houston Chronicle]
- Rico’s Morning Noon Night in Bagby Park Has Closed [Eater Houston]
- $2.5B in Flood Bonds Could Fund 237 Projects in Harris County [Houston Public Media]
- More Than Half of Harris County Residents Will Vote for Bond Package, Finds UH Survey [Houston Public Media]
- Equity Assessments of Metro’s Drafts for Its Long-Term Plan by LINK Houston [The Urban Edge]
- The Birth, Rise, and Spread of New Real Estate Buzzwords [Bisnow]
Photo of Buffalo Heights: 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’ll set anchor here, destroy our ships, and work the land.
- 6240 Old Castle Wy. [HAR]
And in even more beer-related news, another local warehouse is now turning to drinks as its primary occupation. This 7,725-sq.-ft. one — pictured above from Bevis St. between W. 16th and 17th — is about to become New Magnolia Brewing. Its name is a cheers to the original Magnolia Brewing Company — formally the Houston Ice and Brewing Company — that did its concocting along Buffalo Bayou at the corner of Franklin and Milam streets until Prohibition forced it to make ice its flagship product. Following its shutdown, the Magnolia Ballroom took the place over roughly 40 years ago.
The New Magnolia’s 43,560-sq.-ft. digs at 1616 Bevis include this front yard, more than twice the size of the building to its north:
The Brew and the Old
Note: This story has been updated.
The first tenant slated for the soon-to-be redone Imperial Linen & Cleaners building a block west of the Green Line’s Coffee Plant/2nd Ward stop is now on its way there courtesy of Mike Sammons, one of the partners behind Midtown’s 13 Celsius, Mongoose vs Cobra, and Weights + Measures. A TABC notice is up on the building, reports a keen HAIF user, and last month an entity linked to Sammons called How To Survive on Land and Sea LLC filed plans to start converting 2,371 sq.-ft. of interior room into a bar.
That’ll still leave lots of space for the other attractions that developer Jeff Kaplan wants to usher into the 19,969-sq.-ft. structure shown above that he’s now calling the Plant at Harrisburg. (One of them would’ve been Xela Coffee Roasters; it announced plans to move into the building in 2016 but has since rerouted to an forthcoming spot on Canal St., 5 blocks west of Lockwood) Before Kaplan made public his intention to transform the former cleaners, it played host to an art space that presented “visual art, literary readings and guided meditations; in the interest of, open-minded exploration of the transubstantiative properties of art and space.”
That creative endeavor is over — but speaking of transubstantiation, new windows shown above fronting both the south and west sides of the building will reopen its planned retail spaces to look out on Harrisburg and Sampson St. like they used to:
Plant at Harrisburg
