Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
No room for ghosts — with the old haunts gone.
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- 710 Hogan Dr. [HAR]
Both daytime and nighttime players are accommodated at Bingo Paradise Houston, the 38,876-sq.-ft. gaming hall fronting College Ave. just off the Gulf Fwy. in South Houston. It’s been on the scene for years with its outside appearance unchanged — except for a new paintjob that turned the previously white lettering yellow within the past year.
Before the current business moved in, a discount retail warehouse occupied the space. Now, the building — put up in 1959 — is pushing 60 years on its 4-acre lot at 1520 College Ave.
Photo: Swamplox inbox
Always Game
AN UNDERCOVER BARFLY’S REPORT FROM DOWN THE STREET 
From the report of former Texas peace office and expert bar witness Darren K. Coleman who recently performed an assessment of Cottage Grove bar Down the Street at 5746 Larkin St.: “On April 20, 2018, Mr. Coleman made an anonymous visit to the Bar to make personal observations. During his visit, Mr. Coleman observed numerous cars parked along the street, some being cars belonging to Bar patrons and some belonging to residents and/or residents’ guests. He observed that traffic was not impeded by cars parked along the street; however, two cars could not pass at the same time. He assessed that this was not uncommon for any neighborhood where cars are parked along the street. Mr. Coleman did not observe litter in the area. Additionally, he observed the patrons to be well-behaved and polite. No one was intoxicated or displayed belligerent, loud, aggressive, or lewd behavior. The indoor music was at a moderate volume and was not loud enough to interfere with normal conversation.” Coleman’s report was included in testimony presented to a state judge after a group of neighbors protested the bar’s request to renew its TABC license. Based in part on Coleman’s outside opinion, the judge found Wednesday that the bar wasn’t violating any TABC rules and recommended the TABC approve its requested renewal. [Texas Office of Administrative Hearings] Photo: Down the Street
Pacific Poke is the latest newcomer to Houston’s booming raw fish restaurant scene, and it’s taking over the empty 1,802-sq.-ft. spot on Richmond once occupied by Starbucks, next to what’s now Roostar Vietnamese Grill. The Starbucks location — shown above —Â closed down shortly before a brand-new Starbucks showed up across the street from it, just east of Chimney Rock in early 2016.
That left the building briefly vacant before Roostar arrived the following year in the spot next door to the abandoned coffee shop — now slated for a redo. Its Vietnamese restaurant space is shown below, done up with the 2-location chain’s abstract poultry-like logo:
Raw Seafood Chaser
Today we thank Houston’s own Central Bank — our Sponsor of the Day! Swamplot appreciates the continuing support.
Central Bank has 4 (central) Houston branches available to meet your business or personal needs: in Midtown, the Heights, West Houston, and Post Oak Place.
Central Bank believes that change is essential to its success; the company actively pursues the latest in service, technology, and products. Central Bank aims to know its customers personally and to be their primary business and personal financial resource. The bank’s staff values relationships and strives to be available when you need them.
To learn more about how Central Bank can meet your banking needs, please call any of the following Senior Vice Presidents: Kenny Beard, at 832.485.2376; Bonnie Purvis, at 832.485.2354; or Carlos Alvarez, at 832.485.2372. You can also find out more on the bank’s website.
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A view from up in the U.S. Home building at 1177 West Loop South shows the white house originally home to architecture firm Caudill Rowlett Scott — and for the last couple decades home to Gulf Coast Veterinary Specialists — now getting crunched along Buffalo Bayou. The properties now occupied by 1177 and its nearly-demolished neighbor at 1111 West Loop South were bought together as a single tract by CRS in the late ’60s.
A 1997 feature on the iconic (and difficult to photograph) building in Cite magazine by architect Jay Baker explains that prior purchasing the land, the firm had been working out of the Dow Center at the corner of Richmond and Edloe — but having become the largest architectural practice in Houston, its execs wanted to get into a more eye-catching workspace. The 8-acre, largely-in-the-floodplain property they bought, however — which included a 40-ft. drop-off — proved tough to design on . . . and its tenants tough to design for. In June 1967, CRS founder Bill Caudill wrote to his mother: “Boy what a week I am having . . . In my twenty years of practice I have never had such a terrible client. Imagine an architect doing a building for 15 other architects.â€
The completed building went as much into the site as on it: Two office levels were fitted facing bayou-side greenery, low enough (and ultimately beneath the 100-year-flood level) to allow a 50-ft.-long bridge from the 610 feeder road to access the roof-deck parking lot that was placed on top.
Here’s a closer-up view of the ruins:
The Final Photo
Caffé di Firenze is the name of the coffee shop now on its way to the 127-year-old Henry Brashear building at 910 Prairie St., across from El Big Bad and Local Foods’s downtown location. Despite a renovation in 2016 that added red face-paint to the building’s formerly-black façade, its first floor has remained vacant for the past several years. Plans now call for that story to include a sidewalk seating area that’ll hang out in front of it.
Meanwhile, the building’s longtime owner is still working to get one or more tenants in the upper 2 floors — which include this outdoor patio:
Coffee Grounds
- Sale of 1001 McKinney Office Tower Closes [HBJ]
- Third Office Building Breaks Ground in Chasewood Crossing Business Park [HBJ]
- CityPlace at Springwoods Village Breaks Ground on First Office Building [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot]
- Houston Restaurateur Johnny Carrabba Lists Memorial Home for Nearly $19M [Houston Chronicle ($)]
- Mattress Mack To Transform Some Gallery Furniture Stores into Both Retail and Community Center Space [HBJ]
- Anvil Owner Bobby Heugel To Take Over Neighboring Etro Space in Montrose [Culturemap; previously on Swamplot]
- Fusion Taco Expanding to Greenway Plaza Next Month [Houston Chronicle]
- Restaurant Chain Pepper Twins Opening Sixth Location at CityCentre This Fall [Eater Houston]
- Dish Society To Add Fifth Location in the Heights Later This Year [HBJ]
- Remembering Quality Hill, Houston’s First Affluent Neighborhood on the Northeastern Side of What’s Now Downtown [Houston Chronicle]
Photo of Market Square Park: Marc Longoria via Swamplot Flickr Pool
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Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
Adios, vacuum shed! And this little piece of West Gray:
- 12380 Lake Vista Dr. [HAR]
THE 2021 WORLD TRANSPLANT GAMES ARE COMING TO HOUSTON 
After 41 years abroad, the World Transplant Games will be returning to the U.S. — and their location of choice, as announced by the city yesterday: Houston. When the international competition for those who’ve undergone organ swaps made its last stateside stop in New York, it was a young tradition: just 2 years old. Since then, the annual tournament (originally biannual before the introduction of the every-other-year winter games in 1994) has hit every continent and now features more than 50 events including cycling, swimming, racquet sports, and bowling — open to any body-part recipient age 4 to 80. Earlier this year, the competition’s winters games wrapped up in Anzere, Switzerland with nearly 70 member countries in attendance. Before that, the coastal Spanish town of Málaga played host to last year’s summer events. [City of Houston; more info] Photo of crowd at 2017 games in Málaga, Spain: World Transplant Games
Here’s what’s now being stabbed onto the vacant Midtown block bounded by Gray, Austin, Webster, and LaBranch streets catty-corner to the parking lot fronting St. Joseph Professional building and its recently-fallen cross: a 216-unit apartment building. The 5-story brick-and-stucco structure — pictured in the rendering above from architect Steinberg Dickey Collaborative — rests on 2 stories of parking. Its developer Winther Investment bought the full block along with the adjacent one southeast of it in 2013, where it plans to plant another residential building once this current cube is complete.
Rendering: Steinberg Dickey Collaborative
Stack of Bricks
And just like that, the next Houston warehouse-to-doghouse conversion is underway at 1029 W. 26th St. — just over two thirds of a mile away from that other pet project near 34th and Ella. Unlike the outer-Loop facility however, this latest post-industrial vision foresees a “dog training and enrichment center” dubbed Believe in Dog Training on its property — pictured at top a quarter mile west of Durham — as opposed to just a place that looks after the animals. A building permit was just filed yesterday for the job, but interior work — pictured above — has been going on inside the 4,500-sq.-ft. structure since at least April.
- 1029 W. 26th St. [LoopNet]
- Previously on Swamplot: Pet Resort Conversion Experts Refashioning the Rest of 34th St. Warehouse Trio into Dog Boarding Complex
Photos: LoopNet (exterior); Believe in Dog Training (interior)
Shady Acres
- Self-Storage Properties in Baytown, The Woodlands Trade Hands [Houston Chronicle]
- Multi-Level Retail Projects a Growing Trend Among Developers [Houston Public Media]
- Houston a ‘Too-Many-Amenities Metro’ in Rental Market, According to Apartment List [Bisnow]
- How To Make Houston Housing More Resilient [The Urban Edge]
- The New Restaurant Row in the Galleria [Houston Chronicle ($)]
- Kau Ba Saigon Kitchen Debuts Next Month in Former Bacchus Space at 2502 Dunlavy St. [Eater Houston]
- Clé Group Opening French Restaurant Bisou in Just-Shuttered Taverna Space in the River Oaks District [PaperCity Magazine]
- Nitro-Themed Ice Cream Shop Sub Zero Opens in Generation Park [Houston Chronicle]
- Houston Council Approves Plan for First $1B in Harvey Aid [Houston Chronicle]
- After Harvey, Houston Has To Get Greener [Houston Chronicle ($)]
Photo: Jackson Myers via Swamplot Flickr Pool
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