COMMENT OF THE DAY: THAT HOUSTON SOUND “I used to live 750 feet from 610. And before that, I lived 1,000 feet from active railroad tracks and kept my windows open at night. The sound that eminated from these sources would definitely exceed City or State standards, but is exempted. I had no right to silence and nor did I care. I even sort of miss the trains and the booming noises from the hump yard a mile to the south. I wish we had that in the Boulevard Oaks area and the Museum District. It’d make them a little more authentically Houston.” [TheNiche, commenting on Headlines: Noise Ordinance Complaints; Galveston’s Coming ‘Maginot Line’]
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It’s not just the Hunington Properties sign posted in front of Vargo’s announcing a new mixed-use development on the 8.71-acre property, or the more plaintive and direct Land for Sale notice put up more recently. (Asking price: $9 million.) Now there’s another, more compelling harbinger of doom for the 47-year-old lakeside restaurant and event venue at Fondren and Woodway festooned with azaleas and peacocks: A trustee appointed to manage the restaurant’s bankruptcy (which was filed last October but converted to Chapter 7 last month) has ordered Vargo’s shut down for failure to pay rent.
Picture windows street-side align with sliding glass doors across the back of this 1961 home, so there’s a front-to-back fishbowl view through the living room and into the covered patio beyond. Other windows in the 3-bedroom, 2-bath home are smaller and higher.
This 2,064-sq.-ft. home is a new listing, asking $264,990. It’s located on a 7,800-sq.-ft. lot north of Willowbend Blvd. near Mullins Dr. in the Mayerling Meadows neighborhood of Maplewood. Having hit the half-century mark, it appears to have had a little work done:
Here’s a view of the 4-story, 93,760-sq.-ft. performing arts center the University of St. Thomas plans to build on the northwest corner of its Montrose campus, on the full city block bounded by West Alabama, Yupon, Sul Ross, and Graustark. A feature article on the project in the university’s magazine describes the site provocatively as being “adjacent to the Menil Collection,” but it’s really catty-corner to the Menil block that contains the Rothko Chapel, a long block east of the Menil’s famed shielded-by-bungalows main building. In the drawing above you’re looking at the new UST center from high above the Rothko Chapel’s east lawn, toward the corner of Sul Ross and Yupon.
- Bar Owners Say Noise Ordinance Attacking Their Livelihood, Damaging Houston’s Reputation [Houston Press; previously on Swamplot]
- Four Houston Communities Getting $151M in Ike Funds [KUHF]
- ‘Maginot Line’ of Galveston Beach Bulkheads Predicted in Aftermath of Supreme Court’s Open Beaches Ruling [Houston Chronicle]
- Galveston Art Boom as Galleries and Businesses Open, Expand [Galveston County Daily News]
- Hundreds of Shoppers Turn Out for Laniers’ High-End Tag Sale [KHOU]
- Galleria Owner Now Largest Real Estate Company in the World [Click2Houston]
- Time Running Out To Use State Funds for Proposed Bellaire Town Square Disc Golf Course [Bellaire Examiner]
- Officer Pins Alligator in Conroe Back Yard [Courier of Montgomery County]
- Houston Named One of Top 25 U.S. Travel Destinations, Ranked Ahead of Sedona, Napa, Austin, Philadelphia [TripAdvisor via Houston Chronicle]
Photo of the Fred Hartman Bridge: Jackson Myers via Swamplot Flickr Pool
COMMENT OF THE DAY: UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS AT KIRBY AND WEST ALABAMA “Ulta Cosmetics is taking the ground floor of the former Borders space and Texas Children’s Hospital is taking the upstairs.” [Keep Houston Scenic, commenting on Borders Activity Report]
The city recently bought 2 custom roll-off trailers so it could set up its brand-new fleet of 17 solar-powered shipping containers without having to hire contractors or cranes. And the method of opening the solar panels (or closing them before a hurricane hits the area) is now OSHA-compliant, says Andrew Vrana of Metalab, the local architecture and fabrication firm that designed them. (2 people on a ladder can do it pretty quickly.) The photos above show the unit installed recently at Fire Station 72 at 17401 Saturn Ln. just north of NASA Rd. 1, near the Johnson Space Center. “Yes they do produce a little power on a cloudy day,” Vrana reports.
All the units have now been delivered to their sites. In the event of a major power outage, the 140-sq.-ft. containers will become staffed disaster response centers — air-conditioned information and water-distribution centers: a place to charge your cell phone or laptop, power a medical device, or keep medicines refrigerated. In short, the kind of space it might have been nice to have nearby after Hurricane Ike hit. (As long as the solar panels are folded in and latched, the units will withstand hurricane-force winds.) In the meantime, they’ll provide additional office space and power for the facilities that host them. The container at Lake Houston Park, for example, will become an office for the new woodland archery range.
Here’s a map showing the fire stations, schools, and other locations around the city where you can now find the completely off-grid structures:
BORDERS ACTIVITY REPORT 
There appears to be some construction going on inside the former Borders Books at the corner of Kirby and West Alabama in the Centre at River Oaks Shopping Center. Next door, at the restaurant spot formerly occupied by Pesce, workers are busy transforming and expanding the space into a Brio Tuscan Grille. But a Swamplot reader says the work on Borders looks separate: “Workers were going in and out. The whole inside looks gutted and the doors to specifically Borders were open and there was a table behind the green fence with water coolers. Even the 2nd floor doors where the coffee place was inside Borders were open. . . . When they initially started the demo at Pesce the green fence didn’t extend. Its only recently been there.” [Culturemap; Previously on Swamplot] Photo: Swamplot inbox
TODAY IN MAJOR MEDIA MARKET LINKBAIT 
The marketing folks at real estate brokerage Movoto have drummed up this pointless factoid: If the White House were located in Houston, it would cost $20 million — far less than it would if it were in any of the 6 other major markets they ran the spreadsheet calculation for. (Costs would probably be even lower in suburban Waco, but they’d have generated too few pageviews from calculating that figure to make it worthwhile.) Next least expensive of the calculated cities: Miami, with an imaginary White House worth $39 million. Most expensive: New York, at $387 million. No, this isn’t the cost to build another White House, it’s how much it would cost to buy it, if it were for sale, in a city where it doesn’t exist. [Movoto] Graphic: Movoto
- 5906 Echo Lake Ln. [HAR]
- Title Co. Economist Predicts Area Housing Prices Will Rise This Year [Prime Property]
- Property Value Protests on the Decline [KUHF]
- LaCenterra Shopping Center in Katy To Expand Retail Space by 40,000 SF [Houston Chronicle]
- House of Blues’ Gross Monthly Rent to Houston Pavilions is $70,833 [The Isiah Factor]
- $5.3M Road-Widening Project Begins on West End’s Stewart Rd. [Galveston County Daily News]
- ‘Shuttlebration Weekend’ Celebrations June 1 Will Mark Arrival of Space Shuttle Mockup to Space Center Houston Parking Lot [Pasadena Citizen; previously on Swamplot]
- Where’s Houston’s Emergency-Preparedness Flash-Mob Song? [Hair Balls]
- Biggest Buc-ee’s Yet Opens in New Braunfels off I-35 at Exit 191 [Houston Chronicle]
Photo of Blumenthal Sheet Metal’s “MetalHenge” in the Fifth Ward: Candace Garcia via Swamplot Flickr Pool
Even without a thatched roof, this Spring home makes a tidy example of suburban Tudor Revival, early seventies-style. The dormers, half-timbers, herringbone accents, and diamond-paned windows associated with that style only face the street. The back elevation has a simpler, lighter, more modern design, focused on a tall exposed chimney. Listed earlier this month at $175,000, the 2,652-sq.-ft. home occupies a third-of-an-acre lot just south of the Willowcreek Golf Club — and less than 8 miles west of the new ExxonMobil campus.
Are they still gonna serve crepes in the parking lot? Co-owner Bryan Caswell cites the departure of chef Adam Dorris along with the possible impending sale of the wild-western-style mixed-use building his restaurant is housed in as the reasons he shut down Stella Sola over the weekend. “For me to go out and try to recruit a chef would have been the wrong thing to do — to convince a young chef to get excited about something we couldn’t guarantee,” Caswell tells Chronicle food reporter Greg Morago. Stella Sola moved into the restaurant space at the corner of Studewood and 10th St. in late 2009 as a replacement for Bedford, which had opened with the building the previous year.
- Bryan Caswell closes Stella Sola [29-95]
- Stella Sola Closed Its Doors on Sunday [Eating Our Words]
- Previously on Swamplot: Studewood Gets Its Spaghetti Western, The Old West Side of Studewood
Photo: Stella Sola
