- 2100 Troon Rd. [HAR]
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Victorian’s Barbecue has now made its mark at 19 N. York St., including a bovine play on that lovable Austin mural; it’s featured on the East End building’s McAshan-St.-side. The former food truck business put its vehicle up on Craiglist last month and began blackening the exterior of the stationary spot it plans to take over.
Both its street-fronting sides started out pink (as shown above), with some green in the rear:
Keep East End Werid
A new downtown hole-in-the-wall is making its debut at the foot of the city’s longstanding famous buildings. Among all the openings in the house now standing in the middle of Sam Houston Park, the most accessible one (ADA-certified) is at the end of the ramp pictured above. Cherry Moving was the first to add holes to the building: it inserted the more conventional windows after scooping up the 80-year old, 16-by-24-ft. single-story from the East End in order to resell it. The buyers: serial house tweakers Dan Havel and Dean Ruck, who perforated its façades and lined the bubbles with PVC piping to make them watertight.
You can see the piping’s light blue tint from the angle below:
Say Cheese
A fresh batch of renderings released by Midway paints the clearest picture yet of what’s planned for the 136-acre former KBR campus that stretches along Buffalo Bayou, between Hirsch Rd. and Jensen Dr. Cobbled together from a mixture of glass and other materials, the tallest structure shown in the image at top spikes up behind a lower-slung retail building that fronts a junction of walking paths intersecting in a central park. You can see a further-away view of the airy column, foregrounded by street-level retailers in the view above.
A confection-colored map put out by the developer last month included a long strip of green along Buffalo Bayou’s north bank reserved for park space.
It’s now reappearing in the view below from up above the waterway:
Great Glass Spike
WHAT’S ON TAP ACROSS FROM THE MATCH 
A building permit filed just recently reveals the latest tenant in the group that’s been ganging up in the ground floor of the double-block-long Mid Main Lofts over the past few months: The Brass Tap. With 8 locations already open in Texas — but none in Houston — the Florida-born, alloy-themed franchise had been looking around town for a good spot to make its local debut, reported the Chronicle back in January. It’s settled on 922 Holman St., putting it around the corner from newcomer Kura Revolving Sushi Bar on Main St. (pictured above in advance of its opening earlier this year), close to that other bar now cropping up on the apartment’s Travis-St.-side, and directly across the street from the MATCH. The number of actual taps that can be expected to operate inside: roughly 60, with supplementary bottled offerings bringing the total beer count to about 200 national and international selections. [Previously on Swamplot] Photo of Kura Revolving Sushi Bar: Natalie W
- Greenway Plaza Office Building Formerly Known as River Oaks Tower To Be Renamed T-Mobile Tower [Houston Chronicle]
- Howard Hughes Developing First Medical Office Project in The Woodlands [Realty News Report]
- Houston Office Market Vacancy Rate Up to 28.2% in Second Quarter, Finds Savills Studley [HBJ ($)]
- Houston Ranks High on List of Cities Where Renters Pay a Premium for Prime Location [Culturemap]
- Houston’s First Whole Foods Market 365 Opening in Independence Heights on Aug. 22 [HBJ]
- Montrose Mediterranean Restaurant Aladdin Expanding to Garden Oaks This Week [Eater Houston]
- And Montrose Wine Bar Camerata at Paulie’s Expanding to Oak Forest Next Year [Culturemap]
- Mercedes Crashes into Underbelly in Montrose While Restaurant is Under Renovation [Houston Chronicle]
- Astros Extend Lease at Minute Maid Park Through 2050 [Houston Press]
- Houston Leg from San Antonio Not Part of Current Hyperloop Projects [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot]
- Harris County Approves Plan for How It Would Spent $1.1B in Federal Harvey Relief [Houston Public Media]
- County Engineer John Blount on the State of Flood Mitigation in Houston Post-Harvey [OffCite]
- Texans Name Downtown’s Bank of America Center as Their State’s Favorite ‘Architectural Masterpiece’ [Houston Chronicle]
Photo of Kim Son: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
Macy’s Outlet on the outs; barnstorming in South Houston Gardens; other structural deficits:
- 2622 Skyview Downs Dr. [HAR]
Surf’s up at El Segundo Swim Club, the Second Ward swimming pool bar that’s now soaking up the sun on the formerly vacant lot at 5180 Avenue L, north of Navigation Blvd. The watering hole has been inviting swimmers in to take a dip over the past few days through a series of ticketed preview events that are planned to continue through this weekend.
Shade comes courtesy of the bright orange umbrellas now surrounding the pool deck — in place of the folded-up, gray ones shown above during the site’s transition phase back in February. A few modified shipping containers give visitors room to get out of the sun, too — except for the one on the left in the photo at top; it houses the bar.
The 15,000-sq.-ft. lot didn’t have much flora before the redo, but that’s changed thanks to these transplants:
Wet Bar
The bandana-clad figure atop the trailer pictured above demonstrates the type of behavior that’s expected from patients at the ReadyPet clinic, parked and open for business in the parking lot on the corner of Stella Link and S. Braeswood Blvd. While the vehicle itself has been there since late 2016, its rooftop topping didn’t arrive until the following year. Among the services offered inside: ear cleanings, blood work, nail trimmings, vaccinations, and other routine veterinary procedures for dogs as well as cats, despite their lack of representation on the exterior.
The clinic’s location puts it just north of the former Preferred Bank branch indicated by the standalone yellow rectangle on the left in the map above. A bit further away is the largest storefront in the Stella Link Shopping Center, home now to the clinic’s affiliate, the Houston Pets Alive animal shelter.
It took over the former Sellers Bros. grocery store — pictured below — that closed down in the strip in 2015:
Top Dog
BOBCAT TEDDY’S NEW BCYCLE STATION IS READY TO ROLL 
The recent docking of a new BCycle station outside the former Jimmy’s turned Bobcat Teddy’s Ice House on the corner of White Oak Dr. and Threlkeld St. brings the total number of bike hubs in the system to around 60. Its installation was supported in part by a fundraiser held at the bar last month during which representatives from Texas Gold Sprint’em — an operator that hosts stationary bike races complete with emcees and accompanying AV equipment — were on hand to organize competition. Now that road-ready vehicles are on-site at the venue, they fill in a gap along White Oak Dr., where no other BCycle station currently exists. [Houston City Planning Department; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Houston City Planning Department
- JLL: Houston Industrial Market Saw Negative Absorption in Second Quarter [HBJ ($)]
- Asian Retirement Community Developer STOA Architects Planning Second Houston Project at 6955 Turtlewood [HBJ ($)]
- Developer Buys Harvey-Damaged Spaghetti Warehouse Building [Houston Chronicle]
- Warehouse and Storage Company CustomSpace Opening First Texas Location on Polk Street [Realty News Report]
- Midtown Restaurant America Gardens Seeking Investors on Crowdfunding Platform NextSeed [Eater Houston; previously on Swamplot]
- What the U.S. Geological Survey’s New Harvey Study Tells Us About Flooding in Houston [Houston Public Media]
- Underground Sewer Main Leaks Likely Cause of Houston Sinkholes [Houston Chronicle]
- Houston Ranks Among 10 Most Dangerous U.S. Cities for Cyclists, According to Your Local Security [Culturemap]
- Sleuthing Where Andrew Zimmern Filmed in Houston for His Travel Channel Show [Culturemap]
Photo: Russell Hancock via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Headlines
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
A bit of re-burgering at Westheimer and Montrose, a Napoleon defeat, and other Houston ploughing-overs:
- 8 Cedar Lawn Cir. [HAR]
Since longtime Times Blvd. tenant G&G Model Shop left its storefront last August, the space has been whitened, renovated and snapped up by ArtMix Creative Learning Center — a children’s art school that relocated from 3701 W. Alabama St. earlier this year. But the model shop — located at 2522 Times for over 60 years — remains attached to the space. A G&G representative told Swamplot previously that the metal sign would follow the business over to its new spot in the strip center at the corner of 59 and Shepherd (home to a few more elderly Rice Village expats as well).
But just last Thursday, a poster on HAIF noted that address is still crowned by a temporary vinyl banner:
Rice Village Relics
