And a few other spots littered with buildings:
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- Apartment Buildings and More on the Rise in Uptown [Houston Chronicle]
- Conroe Area Firefighters Battling Lack of Hydrants in Rural Areas [Courier of Montgomery County]
- Student’s Car Stuck in Galveston Island Sinkhole After Waterline Breaks [Galveston County Daily News]
- Danbury Residents Fed Up with Faucets Running Brown Water [abc13]
- Bald Eagle Power Line Deaths On the Rise [Houston Chronicle]
- Poetic First Ward For Sale Signs Explained [Art Attack; previously on Swamplot]
- Family-Run Ladco Washington Park Design Center Houston’s Largest Decorative Showroom for Interior Designers [Houston Chronicle]
- Lake Houston Water Quality May Suffer from Trinity River Link, Urbanized Tributaries [Houston Chronicle]
Photo of Main St. at Prairie: James Ramos via Swamplot Flickr Pool
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOW DOES THE COIN-OP STRATEGY WORK? “Speaking of quarter car washes . . . how much money do those things make? There must be 6 of them on Studemont sitting on some pretty valuable real estate. Do they even make enough money to cover the property taxes?” [Walt, commenting on Meanwhile, at the Corner of 11th and Studewood]
This home’s walls have ears. And eyes. And behind all the portraits lining them, a lot of nail holes for new owners to fill. Located at the corner of 9th St. and Tulane in the Houston Heights, this little casa is part of a small enclave of Spanish Colonial homes that rose on the block a decade ago. Inside you’ll find 3 bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths, and enough wall space to field a collection of collections.
- 2819 Cedar Woods Pl. [HAR]
Some burger stand, street signs, a car wash, bungalows: So many little Heights-y things muck up the foreground in development blog Going Up! City’s construction pix of the 6-story concrete-and-brick condo building going up just north of the restaurant-heavy corner of 11th St. and Studewood. 1111 Studewood Place, which at last report included 9,000 sq. ft. of retail space on its ground floor, has a website up which for now carefully avoids use of the word “condo.”
- Angelika Loses Arbitration, Ordered To Pay Bayou Place $80K for Lease Dispute [Prime Property]
- Kinder Morgan To Take Over, Rename El Paso Building at 1001 Louisiana [Houston Business Journal]
- Five-Story Apartment Complex Going Up Near Lakes on Post Oak [Prime Property]
- Dual Restaurants Taking Over Former Gravitas Space at Taft and Allen Pkwy. [Culturemap; previously on Swamplot]
- Is All That Land-Clearing Next to La Marque’s Walmart for a Sam’s Club? [Galveston County Daily News]
- Tree Falls on Hurricane Ike Victims’ New Baytown Home During Yesterday’s Storm [Click2Houston]
- Rock Band’s Auto Shop Rehearsals Annoy Stone Pine Neighbors [abc13]
- 10-Foot-Long Alligator Caught Near Sienna Crossing Elementary in Fort Bend County [Click2Houston]
- Texas Population Now an Estimated 26 Million [Houston Business Journal]
- Brio Tuscan Grill Taking Over Shuttered Pesce Space at Kirby and West Alabama [Culturemap]
Photo of fence on West Alabama St.: Christopher Newsom via Swamplot Flickr Pool
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHY THEY WOULD HAVE HAD TO GUT JERRY J. MOORE’S MANSION ANYWAY “By the way, I still have the interior room keys to that house. Each was unique and labelled in French. Plain nickel plated keys for the utility areas, bronze keys for the secondary bedrooms and elaborate sculpted gold keys for the formal areas. It was quite a unique place.” [John McReynolds, commenting on On Second Thought, Nevermind: The $5 Million Gut-and-Flip of Jerry J. Moore’s Little French Castle in Houston]
Stalking the new Trader Joe’s is apparently a competitive sport in The Woodlands. And here’s the latest score, sent in by yet another Woodlands-area Swamplot reader who’s marking construction progress at the Woodlands Crossing Shopping Center at 10868 Kuykendahl, just south of Woodlands Pkwy. and across the street from H-E-B. Yes, the very first TJ’s in the Houston area looks for all the world like just another steel-frame-and-stucco building at the butt-end of a parking lot. Except, of course, this one’s got the Trader Joe’s sign attached to the facade’s high forehead:
Art galleries that are within sight and walking distance of other art galleries might do better than standalone spaces, guesses blogger Robert Boyd after mapping the somewhat clustered Inner Loop locations of Houston’s 9 art-gallery clusters (above): “Since I started this blog, none of the institutions in clusters have shut their doors except for Joan Wich’s gallery, which died when she did. But isolated, non-clustered institutions have had problems.” Call it Houston’s might-as-well effect: “Visiting an art gallery or museum generally requires someone drive (or bike) to it–to make a dedicated trip, in other words. But if there is a second gallery there, the marginal effort required to visit the second art space is practically nil. Might as well, right?”
- Clusters [The Great God Pan Is Dead]
Map: Robert Boyd
- 1619 Ave. O [HAR]
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
Follow the breadcrumbs to these disappearing sites:
- Trailblazing Houston Architect John Chase Dies [Houston Chronicle]
- Texas Supreme Court Upholds Property Rights On West Galveston Beaches [KUHF]
- Developers Eager for Stalled Rule Change Allowing Increasing Density Outside the Loop [Houston Chronicle]
- Accused Swindler’s West Houston Home on Market as Short Sale for $995K [Prime Property]
- Metro To Spend $100K Moving Tree in Light Rail Path, $650K Building MLK Memorial Nearby [Houston Chronicle]
- Discovery Green Looking To Raise $25K To Replant Dead Grass [Culturemap]
- Galveston Paid Seawall Parking Program Going Back To Drawing Board [Galveston County Daily News]
- HISD Plan To Annex North Forest ISD Off for Now [abc13]
- Homeowners in Ike Disaster Housing Program Facing Liens [Galveston County Daily News]
- Tomball Moves Forward with Grant Process for Property Damaged in Ike [Tomball Potpourri]
- Residents Being Paid To Take Down Campaign Signs [Sugar Land Sun]
- Charges Dropped Against Clear Lake Shores Blogger Arrested for Encouraging Spamming of Council Member’s Email [Galveston County Daily News]
- Houston’s Best Parking Lots [Houston Chronicle]
- Alligator Spotted in Pond Behind League City Apartment Complex [Click2Houston]
Photo of Main St., Pasadena: Stephen J. Alexander via Swamplot Flickr Pool
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE BEST IDEAS FOR REINVENTING THE ASTRODOME WILL COME AFTER IT’S DEMOLISHED “. . . Yes, it’s hard to find a profitable idea for it now, but if we tear it down, we could spend hundreds of years saying ‘Oh, why didn’t we just think to do this?’ Most buildings that we think of now as grand and historic went through a long time when people thought they were worthless. They came close to tearing down Notre Dame cathedral and Grand Central Station . . . and they actually did tear down Penn Station and the Abbey of Cluny. And looking back you say, ‘How was it possible?’ But almost all great buildings go through phases where it’s not obvious why it should remain standing. Better to hold off on the trigger finger.” [Mike, commenting on How Harris County Has Been Letting the Astrodome Rot]