OLD-SCHOOL CHICKEN WINGS TRYING WHERE CARLOS MENCIA’S MODERN MEX FAILED 
Pluckers Wing Bar will be moving into the vacant building at 1400 Shepherd in the West End, one of the 3 Maggie Rita’s locations that comedian Carlos Mencia and Santiago Moreno decided earlier this year to close. Some attributed Maggie Rita’s struggles to a stated misunderstanding of the tastes of some of its patrons; Moreno told Eater Houston that women care only about margaritas. Meanwhile, this will be the 16th Pluckers — a guy-friendly concept that sticks to sports, beer, and Dr Pepper-flavored chicken. Know thyself, eh? After all, reports Prime Property’s David Kaplan, “Pluckers was started by two University of Texas freshmen in a dorm room.” [Prime Property; Eater Houston; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Panoramio user Wolfgang Houston
Sign up for the Newsletter
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOUSTON IS NOT A DESTINATION “The population of Orlando in 1950 was @ 140k. Vegas was @50k. Walt Disney bought up a bunch of cow pastures and swamp land to build Disney World. Vegas was just a place for nuke bomb scientists to live safely away from a-bomb test ranges before Bugsy Siegel showed up and bought desert land that no one wanted to build casinos (dooming Galveston as a gambling venue, ironically). Anyone wanting to build a tourist-worthy venue in Houston will go broke just trying to buy the land. Houston is a great place for visitors. Everyone I have ever hosted had a whale of a time. But, when those folks go home, they don’t tell their friends “you should visit Houston.’ They say ‘if you are ever in Houston, you should . . .'” [Old School, commenting on Comment of the Day: Where To Put a Tourist Gauntlet in Reliant Park]
GIGGLING CO-FOUNDERS OF NATION’S LARGEST PRIVATE PRISON FIRM RECALL HIJINX BEHIND THE CONVERSION OF HOUSTON’S OLYMPIC MOTEL TO IMMIGRANT DETENTION CENTER 
And that motel is still standing, says a rep from Corrections Corporation of America; you can drive by the history yourself at 5714 Werner Rd. — just north, incidentally, of Independence Heights. Of course, the motel doesn’t seem to be taking reservations; the phone has been disconnected. But if you can’t book a room in the building, you can watch these fellas — CCA founders Tom Beasley and Don Hutto — reminisce about it. Though CCA’s practices have been called into question recently by Grassroots Leadership and Hair Balls, you wouldn’t know it from the fondness with which Beasley and Hutto tell the story of flying to Houston on New Year’s Eve in 1982, seeing the motel sign, and fixing up the place for the INS. It was quite a turnaround: Just a few weeks later, on Super Bowl Sunday, Hutto says, the facility was open, processing “87 undocumented aliens” its very first day. You can watch the video here. [Hair Balls; Grassroots Leadership; CCA] Video still: CCA
- 1238 W. 22nd St. [HAR]
SPACE MONTROSE SELLING STUFF TO FUND NEW MONTROSE SPACE TO SELL STUFF 
The Examiner reports that Space Montrose’s 200-ft. relocation to that new retail center at the corner of Westheimer and Dunlavy where pastry chef Roy Shvartzapel is planning a café is requiring some serious dough: a $10,000 buildout, including installing from scratch plumbing, wiring, and HVAC systems in the 1,200-sq.-ft. “cold shell.” How’s a small-scale, husband-and-wife Montrose boutique that sells locally made arts and crafts supposed to pay for something like that? Why, selling locally made arts and crafts: “Owner Leila Peraza is starting an Indiegogo campaign,” reports Sarah Tucker. “[She’s] still in the process of setting up . . . ‘Our hands, united hearts,’ but plans to have different gifts for different levels of donors, such as T-shirts and artist-donated work. She also plans to incorporate the mural by artist Katharine Kearns at the front of the store into the fundraiser and new store space as a thank you.” [The Examiner; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Allyn West
BEYONCé’S DAD COULDN’T FIND THE SCRATCH TO MAKE ASTRODOME SPLASH 
One of those 19 bids that the Harris County Sports and Convention Corporation never really asked for and passed over anyway for its own proposing that the Astrodome be converted into a slimmer, shallower, convention center was submitted, reports the Houston Chronicle’s Kiah Collier, by Beyoncé Knowles’s father. Well, maybe “submitted” is too strong a word: Apparently, Mathew Knowles emailed HCSCC honcho Willie Loston with a promise to email again later with an idea for a Splashtown-like concept for the Dome. But there was never any “financial backing,” reports Collier. (You can almost hear ’em singing: If you liked it, you shoulda tried to pay for it.) Today, the HCSCC will be recommending its $194 million idea to the commissioners court. And where’s that money supposed to come from? Here’s Collier: “Loston said he suspects the court will refer the plan to the county budget or infrastructure office ‘for further study.’ The budget office has said it will look for ways to generate revenue so the county won’t have to ask taxpayers to foot the entire bill.” [Houston Politics; previously on Swamplot] Rendering: HCSCC
- Moody Rambin To Start Construction in September on Town Centre I Office Complex [Houston Business Journal]
- Texas General Land Office Soliciting Proposals for Public Housing in Galveston [Galveston County Daily News ($)]
- Houston a Top City for New Construction Activity, Says Forbes [Houston Business Journal]
- East Downtown Food Truck Park Closed by Regulators After One Day Because It Needs More Shade, Seats [Culturemap; previously on Swamplot]
- Pappasito’s Cantina Opening in Former Spencer’s at Hilton Americas Downtown [Eater Houston]
- Search Begins for Pelican Island Bridge Developer [Galveston County Daily News ($)]
- Neighbors’ Complaints Force Oak Forest Man To Move Big Rig from Driveway, Pay $5K in Fines [Click2Houston]
Photo of Uptown: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool
A WOOD GRILL’S COOKING IN THE WOODLANDS 
This waiting-for-a-logo storefront on Research Forest Dr. just north of The Woodlands in Shenandoah will become the home of a new restaurant called Fielding’s Wood Grill, reports a reader. Both the Facebook page and website for Fielding’s are so far pretty skimpy on details, but they do indicate that the restaurant will be 1) selling food and beverages and 2) opening sometime this fall. And it’ll be doing so at the shopping center at 1699 Research Forest Dr., just west of I-45, between Six Pines Dr. and Grogan Mills Rd. [Swamplot inbox] Photo: Kerry Stessel
- 5415 Cairnleigh Dr. [HAR]
Sporting some of the more evocative ghost signage in Midtown, the vacant former Saigon Cafe #2 seems to be in the process of becoming the future Cafe Helene. This TABC sign is dated May 24, and a rep from the building’s leasing company says that the new sandwich shop should be open here at 3101 Main St. in the next few months. Located between the Ensemble/HCC and McGowen stops, the 8,000-sq.-ft. building dates to 1948, county records show, and it’s catty-corner from the not-quite-3-acre swath of the Midtown Superblock and that back-of-a-strip-center mural that was painted in April. For now, a thorough gutting of the building seems to be underway, at least judging from the size of the pile of scrap in the back:
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHERE TO PUT A TOURIST GAUNTLET IN RELIANT PARK “I’d leave the rail right where it is. Create a City Walk space from the light rail to the Dome. Shopping, night life, restaurants, movies, etc. Sure it’s touristy, but most events at Reliant are visited by tourists.” [Thomas, commenting on Under Plan, Astrodome Would Slim Down Exterior, Shorten Up and Fatten Inside]
COMMENT OF THE DAY RUNNER-UP: HOUSTON TOURISTS, YOU’RE WASTING YOUR TIME “yeah i’ve noticed tourists downtown the last few years. mostly taking pics along Main of buildings and cops on horseback. i’ve also seen what appear to be tour groups with guides in the tunnels which seems like kind of a lame vacation activity if you ask me.” [spiteful, commenting on Headlines: Cheaper Hotels for Convention Center District; A Gilley’s Revival in Pasadena]
More urban dominion: The unwanted vegetation has been ripped out and the foundations poured for the 8-pack of townhouses going by Rosewood Estates, developed by McCollum City Homes and Urban Living. These are just south of Wheeler and west of Almeda in Museum Park on a lot cornered by Rosewood and Jackson. And they appear to stick with that if-it-ain’t-broke 3-bedroom, 4-story design that might by now seem pretty darn familiar. Prices here, anyway, range from $489,000 for a 2,224-sq.-ft. one that faces Rosewood St. to $499,000 for the 2,286-sq.-ft. one that overlooks the shared drivepath and Jackson St.
Inside this mongrelized building on Blodgett St., Museum Park residents Matt Scheiner and Lisa Qualls have opened a friendly neighborhood art gallery they’ve named Gallery Jatad. Their suite at 1517 Blodgett — it’s the one with the unpapered windows — used to house a record and T-shirt shop; it shares the strip center with a nail salon, washateria, and food mart. County records indicate that the center, spanning La Branch and Crawford, dates to the 1940s, though it appears to have been bejeweled with those decorative diamonds and a stucco mask in the ’70s, says Scheiner. Inside, the suite has been renovated to feature museum-issue walls and lighting and the old building’s original slab.
The gallerists’ friend Victor Rojas says he will be opening a showroom right next door at 1515 Blodgett for his own furniture and metalwork; and they say they have another friend considering opening a coffee shop in the endcap.
- Fine Traditional African and Contemporary Art [Gallery Jatad]
Photo: Allyn West
