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- Bikers Decry Closure of Popular White Oak Bike Trail [Houston Chronicle]
- Surveillance Video Captures Mob of Thieves Striking Hermès on Post Oak [abc13]
- UH Architecture Students Try Their Hands at Designs for Proposed Galveston Levees [UH]
- Harris County to Implement Wildfire Protection Plan [abc13]
- Drought Leaving Texas Rivers, Lakes with More Bacteria [State Impact]
- Ozone Pollution Spiked in Texas This Year [Texas Tribune]
- UT Lab Studies Algae’s Potential To Become Source of Biofuel [State Impact]
Photo of Brazos Bend State Park: Visitor Center Mike Fisher [license]
We’ve announced 8 categories so far in the 2011 Swamplot Awards for Houston Real Estate: Favorite Houston Design Cliché, Best Demolition, Best Parking Lot Dining Experience, Most Notable Recycling Effort, the “No Zoning†Award, the Award for Special Achievement in Sprawl, Best Neighborhood Upgrade, and Neighborhood of the Year. That’s a lot of ground to cover. What’s left?
Here it is, the 9th and final category. And maybe the biggest of them all: What was the Greatest Moment in Houston Real Estate of 2011?
Covering great moments in Houston real estate is the whole point of Swamplot; it’s why we’re here. Browse through the site if it’ll help you to draw up a list of contenders; or raid your own memory banks. (Did we miss a few this year?) Tell us what moment deserves this recognition — and why.
A great moment is lost if there’s no one there to chronicle it or cherish it. Which is why we need your help. Add your comments or send us an email describing the moments you’d like to nominate. (If you’ve got questions about how to make a nomination, you’ll likely find the answers here.)
- Now Open for Your Nominations: Neighborhood of the Year 2011, What Was the Best Neighborhood Upgrade in the Houston Area in 2011?, Announcing the Swamplot Award for Special Achievement in Sprawl. Your Nominations, Please?, A New Category for the Swampies This Year: The “No Zoning†Award, Nominations Needed for Houston’s Most Notable Recycling Effort, Your Nominations, Please, for Houston’s Best Parking Lot Dining Experience, Best Demolition of 2011: Your Nominations, Please, Houston’s Design Cliché of the Moment: Which Would You Nominate? [Swamplot]
- The Swamplot Awards for Houston Real Estate 2011: How To Make a Nomination [Swamplot]
- Swamplot Award Nominations 2011 [Swamplot]
Dedicated Houston Apple Store sleuth Tracy Evans has posted a revised sketch of the glass-ceilinged retail space going up at 4012 Westheimer Rd. in the Highland Village Shopping Center, showing a number of details he’s figured out from careful study. The new sketch shows the store’s glass facade extending beyond the front of the bookending limestone-clad slabs on the east and west sides, as it does in the Upper West Side store this location is clearly modeled after. And contrary to an apparently mistaken report from another source, Evans says the Highland Village Apple Store will feature an entrance in its all-glass back wall, facing the back parking lot and Marmi and Francesca’s behind it.
The 3,100-sq.-ft. Houston store across Drexel St. from Crate and Barrel will be Apple’s first glass-ceiling structure to have glass walls and entrances at the front and back. So where will the back-of-house space go? Evans thinks it’ll be masquerading as part of the cupcake shop next door:
- Swarm of Thieves Ransacks Hermès on Post Oak; Storefront Glass Broken at Galleria Louis Vuitton [Culturemap]
- NASA Audit: More than 500 Collected Moon Rocks, Comet Chunks Missing Since 1970 [Space Ref]
- Proposed 130-Mile Coastal Recreation Area Gains Prominent Proponents [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot]
- As Population Moves West to Katy, So Do Major Hospitals [Houston Community Newspapers]
- Clear Channel May Lose Conroe Billboard After Clear-Cutting 15 Trees on I-45 [Courier of Montgomery County]
- Pilfered Christmas Tree Anonymously Returned to Hyde Park, Now Secured with Steel [Culturemap]
- Annual Gingerbread Construction Competition Planned for Market Square Park [Houston Business Journal]
Photo of Fort San Jacinto: Patrick Feller [license]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: APPLE’S CRYSTAL CATHEDRAL “Also, does anyone else think that the design looks more than a little like a protestant church, with the vaulted roof, minimal design, and the identical tables setup in rows looking like pews?” [JL, commenting on Comment of the Day: Apple Store Symbolism]
We’re almost to the end of the categories in this year’s Swamplot Awards for Houston Real Estate. So far, we’ve opened nominations for Favorite Houston Design Cliché, Best Demolition, Best Parking Lot Dining Experience, Most Notable Recycling Effort, the “No Zoning†Award, the Award for Special Achievement in Sprawl, and Best Neighborhood Upgrade. Have you added your own suggestions for each of them?
The next category is Neighborhood of the Year. What qualifications does a neighborhood need to meet in order to be declared Houston Neighborhood of the Year? You tell us — as you make your nomination! Of course, a neighborhood might be considered for Swamplot’s Neighborhood of the Year award for vastly different reasons than another one might be considered for an award of the same name from, say, the GHBA.
Please note that entrants in this category — as well as all the others — need not be located strictly inside Houston’s municipal boundaries. Swamplot tries to track the idea of Houston as it regularly travels outside the city limits. (In fact, the 2009 winner of the Houston Neighborhood of the Year award was . . . yes, Galveston.)
We’re ready to receive your nominations in the comments below, or in an email. If you need more guidance, consult the official rules. This year, who are the contenders for this award?
- What Was the Best Neighborhood Upgrade in the Houston Area in 2011?, Announcing the Swamplot Award for Special Achievement in Sprawl. Your Nominations, Please?, A New Category for the Swampies This Year: The “No Zoning†Award, Nominations Needed for Houston’s Most Notable Recycling Effort, Your Nominations, Please, for Houston’s Best Parking Lot Dining Experience, Best Demolition of 2011: Your Nominations, Please, Houston’s Design Cliché of the Moment: Which Would You Nominate? [Swamplot]
- The Swamplot Awards for Houston Real Estate 2011: How To Make a Nomination [Swamplot]
- Swamplot Award Nominations 2011 [Swamplot]
- 5304 Michaux St. [HAR]
We’re on the home stretch! Yesterday Swamplot opened 2 more categories for nominations in the 4th annual Swamplot Awards for Houston Real Estate. Here’s the list of what we have so far: Favorite Houston Design Cliché, Best Demolition, Best Parking Lot Dining Experience, Most Notable Recycling Effort, the “No Zoning†Award, and the Award for Special Achievement in Sprawl.
Already, great suggestions have come in for each of these. But to make these awards as smart and razzle-dazzly as they can be, we still need your help!
The next category up: Best Neighborhood Upgrade. Yes, this category is meant to be just as ambiguous as it sounds. Is it meant to celebrate an upgrade in one of the city’s best neighborhoods? An upgrade that happened to take place in a particular neighborhood? Or a neighborhood that itself has been upgraded? And what exactly is an upgrade, anyway? We hope you’ll take a stab at answering those questions with your own clever nominations and explanations. Look around you: What thing, place, or effort deserves this award?
If you’ve been following the Swampies, you know what to do by now: Add your smartly worded nomination as a comment below — or send it in an email to Swamplot. Be sure to include a convincing explanation for your choice. You’ll find the complete nomination rules here. Who we got this time?
- Announcing the Swamplot Award for Special Achievement in Sprawl. Your Nominations, Please?, A New Category for the Swampies This Year: The “No Zoning†Award, Nominations Needed for Houston’s Most Notable Recycling Effort, Your Nominations, Please, for Houston’s Best Parking Lot Dining Experience, Best Demolition of 2011: Your Nominations, Please, Houston’s Design Cliché of the Moment: Which Would You Nominate? [Swamplot]
- The Swamplot Awards for Houston Real Estate 2011: How To Make a Nomination [Swamplot]
- Swamplot Award Nominations 2011 [Swamplot]
TINY “FREESTANDING” INNER-LOOP BARS AND RESTAURANTS ESCAPE INCREASED PARKING REQUIREMENTS [Note: Story corrected and updated below.] The planning commission has made a few adjustments to the proposed changes to the city’s parking rules it’s likely to forward to city council after a meeting today. The revised draft ordinance exempts freestanding restaurants smaller than 2,000 sq. ft. and bars smaller than 1,000 2,000 sq. ft. from the major increase in parking spaces the new rules will be requiring of most new eat-and-drinkeries — as long as they’re inside the 610 Loop. Also included: a major potential boon for bike parking. By providing 4 bicycle spaces in place of each required car space, new Inside-the-Loop businesses would be able to reduce their parking requirements by up to 10 percent. [Planning & Development (see 3 PDF links at bottom of page); previously on Swamplot] Update, 1:45 pm: As a few local restaurateurs have noted, the exemption may turn out to be not much of a change at all: “The major bright, flashing verbiage in that should be ‘free-standing,’” notes chef Justin Yu of the just-announced Oxheart. “I’ve looked for the past 4 years for a quality free standing building under that size. Unless I build it myself, it doesn’t exist.”
- Katy Residents Protest New Aldi Discount Grocery Store Next to Oak Park Trails [abc13]
- Council Puts Brakes on Auto Repair Shop Regulations [Houston Chronicle]
- Overwhelmed by Emails, Attorney General To Start Charging for Online Public Records Requests [Texas Watchdog]
- County Approves Ban on Rocket and Missile Fireworks for New Year’s Eve [Memorial Examiner]
- Rumors Over Possible Buyer of Dunlavy Fiesta Shopping Center [Prime Property; previously on Swamplot]
- Bulkhead Collapses at Texas City Dock, Oil Spill Avoided [Galveston County Daily News]
- Getting to the Bottom of Those Red Dots Around Montrose [Art Attack]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: APPLE STORE SYMBOLISM “Given that none of Apple’s execs are women, a glass ceiling is entirely appropriate.” [Brad, commenting on Highland Village Apple Store Will Have Glass Ceiling, Front, and Back]