11/23/11 11:25am

A reader who happened upon an outing of Blink stations at Memorial Park sends in this photo evidence that the commercial electric-vehicle chargers are multiplying. Two Blink stations at the nearby Houston Arboretum had been installed by the September 8th rollout of a city-wide drive-electric program. A total of 200 Blink-brand stations are being installed in the Houston area.

Photo: Swamplot inbox

11/23/11 8:58am

Photo near Tidal Rd., Deer Park: Flickr user ageing accozzaglia [license]

11/22/11 11:10pm

COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE ADMIRAL MOTEL HIS CASTLE “I would kill for a moat like that. Even if it couldn’t keep the riff raff out, I could mock all those that are subject to water restrictions.” [Hawthorne Mike, commenting on Houston Property Listing Photo of the Day: Flooded with Offers]

11/22/11 5:27pm

Over the weekend, Lance Fegen and Lee Ellis’s long-awaited Liberty Kitchen & Oyster Bar finally opened in the former Stop-N-Go on the last remaining corner of 11th St. and Studewood without some sort of restaurant on it. The new neighbor to Someburger, Ruggles 11th St. Cafe, and Dacapo’s Pastry Cafe is now open to the public for dinner.

Excepting, of course, Chronicle food critic Alison Cook: A carefully designed custom decal on the restaurant’s door appears to be the restaurant’s attempt to bar Cook from entry, perhaps to prevent her from penning a Liberty Kitchen review anything like her epic slam of Fegen’s BRC Gastropub last year. Sample sentence from that review: “What to say — besides no, thank you — of BRC’s putative pimento cheese dip that’s a runny splodge of lumpy pinkness on a white plate, with its advertised Vermont cheddar utterly defeated by great gouts of mayonnaise?” Cook’s plea that Liberty Kitchen’s sister restaurant serve the gloppy dip in a ramekin instead is apparently the inspiration for the reference to white plates in this witty comeback only 15 months in the making.

But surely the Liberty Kitchen crew will allow Cook a cup of lukewarm tea in that coffeehouse they’re planning to open next door?

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11/22/11 11:41am

Survey stakes have gone up around the Montrose Fiesta Market on the southeast corner of Dunlavy and West Alabama, directly across the street from the brand-new H-E-B Montrose Market.

What could that mean? A source who is not a party to the transaction claims that the survey is connected to a sale of the property, which is already under contract for “‘crazy money’ — something on the scale of $85-$90 SF”:

The reputed use will be for a 6 to 7 story multi-use development — something on the order of West Ave or the Read-King chimera promised for the SWC of Alabama and Shepherd. . . . Personally, I find the land purchase price to be pretty hard to believe . . . because market value of land in that area is $40 – $50 max or maybe $60 at a stretch. Fiesta’s lease expires in 2014 with no renewal and either they or the owner has an early out option. The other tenants in the center all have short lease terms with no renewal.

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11/22/11 8:30am

Photo of T.C. Jester trees: Monica Fuentes [Houston Press]

11/21/11 10:59pm

COMMENT OF THE DAY: EASIER TO CONCEAL THOSE SECRET YOGURT BEHAVIORS “I prefer the self-service kind of yogurt place. That way I can put blueberries, white chocolate chips, cap’n crunch and cheesecake bites on my chocolate and pistachio flavored froyo mix – and not get that judgement from the person making it.” [Britt A, commenting on Rice Village TCBY Leaves Franchise, Avoiding Self-Serve Fro-Yo Redo]

11/21/11 2:29pm

A Houston attorney says the site plan for the Ashby Highrise “substantially” copies the one a Dallas-based architecture firm created for the same developers 5 years ago. Patrick Zummo, who is representing Humphreys and Partners Architects in a lawsuit filed last week against Buckhead Investment Partners, tells the West U Examiner‘s Charlotte Aguilar that the plan for the Ashby Highrise site at the corner of Bissonnet and Ashby — which Buckhead attributes to the firm it hired later, EDI Architecture — is “extremely close, if not identical to” both a plan Humphreys drew up for the same site while under contract to Buckhead in 2006 and the site plan the architecture firm produced a few years earlier for the Grant Park Condominium tower in the Elliot Park neighborhood of Minneapolis (above).

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11/21/11 12:11pm

An architecture firm headquartered in Dallas has filed suit against the developers of the Ashby Highrise, alleging that Buckhead Investment Partners made “copies and derivatives” of the firm’s design for the 27-story Grant Park Condominiums tower in Minneapolis. Humphreys and Partners Architects designed that complex (pictured above) in 2003. The lawsuit is also directed at EDI Architecture, the firm Buckhead hired to produce drawings for the proposed highrise at the corner of Bissonnet and Ashby near Southampton.

The lawsuit claims that Buckhead infringed on Humphreys’ copyright by submitting plans for a proposed 23-story tower at 1717 Bissonnet to the city of Houston. Those plans have already received permits. The lawsuit seeks an injunction to prevent Buckhead from constructing the building, because doing so would “necessarily create additional copies and derivatives” of Humphreys’ intellectual property.

How closely does Houston’s proposed tower follow Grant Park’s design?

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11/21/11 8:00am

Photo of Hilton Americas Hotel: Laurie Ballesteros