TEARING DOWN TOWNHOMES TO BUILD ANOTHER PEARL 
Prime Property reports that Houston developer Morgan Group will demolish a bunch of townhomes and a small office building on S. Gessner Rd. to make way for another of its Pearl-brand apartment complexes; the Briar Forest property was recently purchased, explains Nancy Sarnoff, and the demo of the 131-unit Quadrangle Townhomes at 2021 and the Tanney School building at 2055 S. Gessner might go down before the new year. The Morgan Group complex pictured here, Pearl Greenway at 3788 Richmond Ave., opened recently; another like complex is under construction in Midtown. Adds Sarnoff: “Morgan said it will work with . . . residents to help them find new apartments nearby before the building is demolished.” [Prime Property; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Morgan Group
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- 614 Marshall St. [HAR]
A reader sends this photo of the construction progress of that Regent Square-ish residential tower the Sovereign. The 21-story, 290-unit building designed by Ziegler Cooper is going up on West Dallas between Rosine and Rochow, where some of the old Allen House Apartments used to stand.
The North Montrose site is just around the corner from Dunlavy, where other dirt is being pushed around to make way for Regent Square. The Sovereign, contrary to its name, was originally planned by Boston developer GID to become one of the uses in that mixed-use spread, but the 2 projects are listed separately on the company website. After the jump, you can see the renderings of the Sovereign that Swamplot published last summer.
WHY NOT BANISH CARS FROM MAIN ST.? 
Monday morning’s fatal collision between the bicycling Rice University architecture student and a southbound Metro train seems to have occasioned the folks at Houston Tomorrow to wonder at the best uses for Main St.: Blogger Kyle Nielsen shows — with a rented B-Cycle and a tape measure — how little room there is for a motorist to give a “vulnerable road user” the 3 ft. now required by the city for “safe passing” and suggests that the Downtown corridor should be closed off, once and for all, to traffic: “It seems to me that it would enhance cyclist and pedestrian safety, encourage the type of walkable retail and bars/restaurants that Downtown needs, decrease motorist frustration at being stuck behind a bicycle, and enhance motorist and transit safety by eliminating the motorist [illegal] left turns that still hit the Metro rail cars sporadically.” [Houston Tomorrow; previously on Swamplot] Photo: kylejack
- Panattoni Buys Land To Build 2M SF Industrial Park near Gessner, Beltway 8 [Houston Business Journal]
- Lancaster Hotel’s $10M Renovation To Wrap Up Next Month [Culturemap; previously on Swamplot]
- Fresh Market Opening Second Houston Store Today on Memorial Near Gessner [Prime Property; previously on Swamplot]
- Work Begins on Next Grand Parkway Segment Between U.S. 59 and U.S. 290 [The Highwayman]
- Archeologists Recovering Artifacts from 200-Year-Old Shipwreck Discovered Off Galveston Coast [abc13]
- Stressed Menil Park Live Oak Could Use a Fence To Protect It [Culturemap]
- Brazoria Museum Wants Your Photos of Hurricane Ike [Houston Chronicle]
- Can You Identify the Art in Valerie Sarofim’s Condo? [The Great God Pan Is Dead; previously on Swamplot]
Photo of Galveston: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool
These understated “Stop the San Felipe Skyscraper” signs started going up about knee-high this weekend in River Oaks and Vermont Commons to protest that shiny 17-story office tower that Hines is proposing to build nearby. Though these signs — spotted at the corner of Spann and Welch and San Felipe and Spann, catty-corner from the proposed site — might be lacking the services of an imaginative cartoonist like their yellow precursors across town in Boulevard Oaks, their message still comes through, directing the onlooker as well to a recently launched website for all things skyscraper-stopping:
Renovated a year after Tropical Storm Allison, this glowing midcentury home plays up its mini-mod origins. The 1952 property is in the Southern Oaks neighborhood of Braeswood Place, located just off Buffalo Speedway north of Brays Bayou. Behind the fortifications (top), a sleek interior lit by a south-facing clerestory (above) shows off furnishings aligned with a more European vision of mod — in black and pearl:
COMMENT OF THE DAY: ALL EMPTIED OUT WITH NOTHING TO DO 
“Sooner or later all of this development will raise the question: what do you do with a grocery store once the grocery store has moved out? It’s a question that’s been grating on me for a while. The space that used to house Randall’s at the corner of Bissonnet and Fondren has been vacant for almost six years. It would be nice to get another grocery store in there — and maybe if we can redevelop and upgrade the apartments around there it’d be a viable option — but if not, what are the options? I mean, other than a charter school campus or a scary after hours nightclub? [ZAW, commenting on What Houston’s Grocer Growth Might Mean for Randall’s]
This crosshatched highrise shows up in a recently published marketing video as a potential development to densify the low-slung Uptown Park. The 50,000-sq.-ft. site HFF and AmREIT seem to have in mind for these apartments-upon-retail is right off the Loop, across Uptown Park Blvd. from the Ziegler Cooper-designed 27-story Villa d’Este condo tower — a site occupied now by a 12,000-sq.-ft. 1-story building at the northern end of the low-density Euro-style shopping spread.
GALVESTON HISTORICAL FOUNDATION CLOSES ON BISHOP’S PALACE 
With the Moody Foundation’s $1.5 million donation as a nice starter, the Galveston Historical Foundation was able to raise the rest of the $3 million it needed to buy the 1892 Bishop’s Palace from the Catholic archdiocese and keep it open as a museum. Designed by Nicholas Clayton for Col. Walter Gresham, the 17,420-sq.-ft. Victorian mansion at the corner of 14th and Broadway had housed clergy since 1921 before the foundation opened it up for tours. The Houston Chronicle reports that the archdiocese plans to use the windfall to renovate the St. Mary’s Basilica, also in in Galveston, while the foundation “plans to restore the roof, the front of the building and do repainting [and] other general repairs” to the Palace. [Houston Chronicle ($); previously on Swamplot] Photo: Galveston Historical Foundation
- First Section of Imperial Sugar Land To Feature 116 Patio Homes, 27 Townhomes Ranging from $300K-$700K [Your Houston News; previously on Swamplot]
- Galveston Home Sales Up 15 Percent; Biggest Gains for West End Beach-Front Property, Neighborhoods Behind Seawall [Galveston County Daily News ($)]
- Driven By Job Growth, Houston Home Construction Up 14 Percent Over This Time Last Year [Prime Property]
- Mr. Peeples Steakhouse To Open Monday with Alligator-Patterned Wallpaper, 2-Story Wine Tower, Purple Everywhere [Eater Houston; previously on Swamplot]
- Online Parking Reservation System Launches in Houston, Dallas Today [The Highwayman]
- Community Helps Paint Wood Strips for Montrose Blvd. Art Installation ‘Funnel Tunnel’ [Glasstire; previously on Swamplot]
Photo of Astroworld Bridge: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool
MAKING SOME FANNIN ST. OFFICE SPACE MORE SPIFFY 
The owners of 1301 Fannin said today that Ziegler Cooper has been contracted to renovate the 24-story Downtown building’s soon-to-be-available office space. Maybe inspired by those unveiled upgrades planned for Houston Pavilions — er, GreenStreet located right next door, the data center and commercial tower with Luby’s on the 13th floor will have almost 80,000 sq. ft. of space come up for lease this August. The building, which just underwent an exterior and lobby renovation in 2009, sits on the block bound by Fannin, San Jacinto, Clay, and Polk. [Swamplot inbox; previously on Swamplot] Photo: LoopNet
