The retail tenants at the bottom of the Americana Building at 811 Dallas across Travis St. from Macy’s downtown have just about cleared out, reports a reader: Popeye’s, the Travis Food Store, and Zero’s Sandwich Shop (pictured at right) are already gone. Fast Signs has a sign up saying it’s moving soon. Subway is still open, but the reader reports hearing that its lease has been bought out. When the James Coney Island on the ground floor of the 15-story office block shut down 2 years ago after 35 years in the same location, a spokesperson complained to KHOU 11 News that the restaurant had been forced to close “because their building is falling apart, but the landlord won’t fix it.”
Photos: Boxer Property (top); Swamplot inbox (below)
Yesterday the Texas Transportation Commission rubber-stamped TxDOT’s selection of a developer for 3 additional segments of the Grand Parkway — if you count FM1960 and Hwy. 6, Houston’s fourth ring road. 
Blogger Robert Boyd is putting on his own art fair to coincide with next month’s Texas Contemporary Art Fair at the GRB. The Pan Art Fair will be housed in a (yet-to-be determined) room in the neighboring Embassy Suites Hotel, across from Discovery Green. Salon des Refusés or after-fair party pad? Maybe a little of both: Individual artists aren’t allowed to set up their own booths at major art fairs — Boyd’s hotel-suite extravaganza has already signed up 2 artists and 2 galleries. “I grew up going to comic book conventions, and art fairs are basically the same thing, except more expensive, more fashionable and less nerdy,” he writes. He’s hoping to drum up more competition: “
