- 16510 Trinidad Way [HAR]
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As brick and stucco construction of more recent vintage slowly transforms this Bellaire block near Condit Elementary School, an updated 1937 Cape Cod-style home — behind a winding front walkway and camera-ready white picket fence — continues to hold down its corner right across from a campus gate and a little on-street school parking. The throwback property listed Friday at $599,000 — as a renovate-or-rebuild address.
And here are the apartments designed to replace those mini storage sheds being torn down on the north side of Memorial Dr. at 159 Birdsall St. The demo, says a rep from developer Sunrise Luxury Living, is about 75 percent complete — only 20 sheds remain — and construction on the 5-story Birdsall Memorial Apartments is expected to begin in the next four months. Plans show the new complex squeezing 180 1- and 2-bedroom units onto the property where the 300 storage sheds stood.
Here’s a nifty aerial view of the area:
DESIGNING HOUSTON’S BICYCLE UNDERBELLY 
Peter Muessig’s graduate thesis for the Rice School of Architecture imagines a system of symbiotic bike-only features he’s calling “Veloducts” that would be fused on, under, around, and through the city’s existing car-dominated infrastructure. This rendering shows just such a Veloduct, which appears to be similar to those foot bridges already spanning Buffalo Bayou. But OffCite’s Sara C. Rolater explains how a Veloduct is much more ambitious: “In variations of concrete, joists, and steel, [a Veloduct] can be grafted onto the pillars of freeways, hang suspended by girders, or stand on its own columns. . . . [allowing] cyclists to capitalize on precisely those systems that have previously hindered them. That [the project] enables different modes of transport to coexist without crowding each other seems especially critical for Houston, where a lack of safe-passage laws have made many of Google Maps’ bright-green highlighted ‘bike-friendly’ roads anything but.” [OffCite; previously on Swamplot] Rendering: Peter Muessig
It’s you, me, and a couple scrawny houses. What do you think’s gonna happen next?
- 10K-15K People Each Month Combine Bike and Bus Travel [KUHF]
- Harris County Expected To Pay $500 for 13 SF Tract of Land Valued at $59 That’s Needed for Hardy Toll Road Extension [Houston Chronicle ($)]
- Main Event Entertainment Opening Fourth Houston Location at US-59, South Kirkwood [Prime Property]
- Max’s Wine Dive Adding Second Houston Location on Fairview Next to Cuchara [Culturemap]
- Prescribed Burn Planned for Jones State Forest Today Near FM 1488, Texas 242 [Courier of Montgomery County]
- Heights-Northside Mobility Study Meeting Tonight [Home in the Heights]
Photo of Downtown: Pete Molick via Swamplot Flickr Pool
A no-fuss shed dormer and its smaller companion perched on the back roof help make this updated home one of the largest on its block in Hilltop Acres. That’s the name given to a hill-free neighborhood west of the West Belt just south of W. Little York; though the listing for the home names it Silver Meadows. Available since Friday, the home has an initial asking price of $119,900; its listing cites all sorts of updates, from paint and floors to kitchen fittings — and a little landscaping streetside. Perhaps of equal interest, however, are the not-updated features touted: EZ access to the tollway and an absence of deed restrictions.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE STRIP CENTER MANDATE “Wait, so there’s no nail salon now? Is that legal? I thought that municipal laws required all strip centers of a certain size to have tax prep, a dry cleaner, a nail salon, and a coffee shop/ice cream parlor/yogurt bar.” [Sihaya, commenting on Telephone Road’s New Sweet and Sweat Shops]
- 20623 Winlock Trace Dr. [HAR]
As though mandated by some surgeon general recommendation for commercial development, the new neighbors in the Tlaquepaque Market at Telephone and Lockwood are an ice cream shop and a fitness studio. Scoops, the sign for which recently appeared above those window bars, is replacing a nail salon at 724 Telephone; it will share a wall with a Zumba studio, a former dollar store that doesn’t have a sign yet — but it does appear to have been renovated to provide rump-shakers inside the comfort and convenience of opaque window screens. These new interests are just a few blocks from the new Oak Leaf Smokehouse that opened for lunch in late February at 1000 Telephone Rd., and just a few suites from the new-ish Blue Line Bike Lab.
- Previously on Swamplot: Telephone Road Smokehouse Replaces Telephone Road Smokehouse, Heights Bike Lab Expands, Opens Shop Near UH in East End
Photos: Allyn West
NOW ON YOUR MOBILE DEVICE: WHY YOU CAN’T BREATHE 
A team comprising researchers at UH, Air Alliance Houston, and the American Lung Association have launched OzoneMap, an app that “monitors chemical weather,” reports John Metcalfe of The Atlantic blog Cities. And whether the app helps explain your coughing fit or alerts you to the chance of a really pretty toxic sunset, the best part is that it’s only available in Houston! And why Houston, of all places? Besides the industrial flares, that is? Here’s Metcalfe: “The Houston/Baytown/Huntsville region comes in eighth place for most ozone-polluted cities in America, as ranked by the American Lung Association. Persistently sunny weather, a battalion of petrochemical facilities and scads of fuming cars on the road make Houston a nightmare for anyone who’s chemically sensitive. For these folks, walking outside is like playing a lower-stakes version of Russian roulette, with 30 to 40 days of the year fogged with hazardous levels of ozone.” [Cities; previously on Swamplot] Map: Cities
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
We’re coming to your town, we’ll help you knock them down. We’re an American band.
- Why the Astrodome’s Category 5 Hurricane-Proof Structure Makes It So Expensive To Blow Up [Houston Politics]
- Paid Parking To Begin on Galveston’s Seawall by Summer [abc13]
- Houston Railroad Museum Weighing Moves to East End, Tomball [KUHF]
- Apartments at Downtown’s Humble Oil Building Being Converted into Hotel Rooms [Houston Chronicle ($); previously on Swamplot]
- Northwest Houston Poised for Future Economic Growth [Community Impact Newspaper]
- 3 Apartment Deals Across Houston Totaling Nearly 1,500 Show Strength of Multifamily Market [Houston Chronicle ($)]
- Remembering Brownwood, the Suburb that Sank by the Ship Channel [Houston Chronicle ($); photos]
- Bolivar Peninsula Residents, Anglers Battle State’s Plans To Close Rollover Pass [Galveston County Daily News ($)]
- Conroe, Sugar Land Air Control Towers Closing in April [Houston Business Journal]
- Konstantin Dimopoulos’s “The Blue Trees” Installation at Waugh and Memorial To Last About 6 Months [Arts + Culture]
- Meet the Lone Star State’s Official Photographer [Houston Chronicle ($)]
Photo of Buffalo Bayou Park near Waugh: Randall Pugh [license]
A tile-and-paver prone property in Briargrove Park deploys its preferred flooring on pathways, courtyards, patios — and interior rooms. Located on a quarter-acre corner lot in the middle of the neighborhood (north of Briar Forest Dr. near the West Belt), the home hit the market this week with an initial asking price of $719,900.
- 1655 Marshall St. Unit A [HAR]
