DRIVING THIS STRETCH OF SHEPHERD WILL NEVER BE THE SAME 
Not for a couple more shrink-swell cycles, at least. A reader heralds the coming cataclysm: “Shepherd between Memorial and I-10 has begun to experience a transfiguration ranking with the most sublime heavenly experiences in the history of mankind: Milling trucks have been scraping the ragged, churned old asphalt in preparation for a new road, a new land, a new Jerusalem! Yes — fresh, smooth, new pavement on Shepherd Drive! Hallelujah!” Photo: Rachel Dvoretzky
Sign up for the Newsletter
If any ghosts of Alabama Theater moviegoers were still intent on haunting the spaces once occupied by their old seats, they’d be buried in sand by now. A Swamplot reader and theater buff shows us the current state of the building’s innards — as seen yesterday from strategic views through the front and rear glass doors. On its way to a new level and Trader Joe’s-worthy surface, the auditorium’s basement and raked floor have been transformed into what now appears to be the city’s largest indoor sandbox. (From the photos, it looks like only a single motorized sand toy gets to play in it, though.)
A new, permanent concrete floor ordered by the owners of the landmarked 1939 Art Deco building, Weingarten Realty, will replace the removable raised-floor system put in place in the early 1980s, when the theater at 2922 S. Shepherd Dr. was transformed into the Alabama Bookstop bookstore.
THE HOUSEWRAP RED CARPET TREATMENT 
“Tina McPherson, whose day job is as the supervisor of the William R. Jenkins Art and Architecture Library at U.H., . . . conducted interviews of arriving guests (pretty much anyone who came through) similar to those red-carpet interviews one might see on awards shows or celebrity-oriented shows. I’ve always thought it was weird how the backdrop to these interviews would be wallpaper printed with copies of corporate and/or product logos. iPageant parodied this tendency by putting up Tyvek, the super-strong water-proof paper that home builders use to cover the wooden balloon framing of modern houses. Tyvek has its logo printed in a regular pattern, making Tyvek paper perfect for a red-carpet backdrop. McPherson treated everyone who came in as if they were a celebrity, whose answers to her repetitious questions were actually worth hearing. This went out live on the closed-circuit feed.” — Robert Boyd, describing artist Dennis Harper‘s homey one-night performance last month at The Joanna, across the street from the Menil Collection’s Byzantine Fresco Chapel. [The Great God Pan Is Dead] Photo: The Joanna
HOUSTON, THE PROTOTYPICAL CITY 
With its new “more interactive” 1,600-sq.-ft. prototype store now open in The Woodlands Mall, high-end beanbag and furniture retailer LoveSac “can add its name to the long list of retailers and restaurants that have chosen Houston as the market in which to debut a new store design or concept,” writes Allison Wollam. Her recent tally: “Last month, Pollo Campero unveiled its new prototype restaurant and expanded menu in Houston, and in September, Beef O Brady’s sports bar and restaurant debuted its new store design in nearby Lake Jackson. In May, popular sandwich shop Spicy Pickle Sandwich Co. also chose Houston as the first location for its new prototype, featuring a revamped menu, upscale decor and open kitchen.” [Houston Business Journal; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Pollo Campero
Stop, children. Watts — that sound. Everybody look what’s going down:
- Downtown District Proposes More Shopping, Entertainment to Lure Residents [Prime Property]
- Dynamo Plays Last Game at Robertson Stadium [Hair Balls]
- ‘Gasp’-Worthy Hermann Park Walking Trail Opens This Saturday [Houston Chronicle]
- Mobile Food Vendors Rack Up Violations [KHOU]
- BP Fined $50M for Texas City Pollution [Houston Business Journal]
- Plonk: Still Houston’s Most Elusive Business [Eating Our Words]
Photo: Dan DeLuca [license]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH? “In front of this building, to the right of the staircase, there used to be a sign that said ‘witch parking.’ Not sure why . . .” [Bill, commenting on The Feds Go After Houston’s Allied Home Mortgage]
Yesterday was moving day for 2 unusual Downtown buildings: The 1905 Cohn and 1904 Foley (above) houses cattycorner from the George R. Brown Convention Center. Leftover single-family homes from an area once known as Quality Hill and now strangers in the land of skyscrapers and stadiums, they’d be notable Downtown residents even if they weren’t designated historic structures. The city is moving them across the street and a block closer to Minute Maid Park, where they’re intended to become add-ons to a mysterious Regional Tourism Center proposed for the 600 block of Avenida de las Americas. According to plans flashed at the last public meeting for the Downtown/EaDo Livable Centers Study, this new building dedicated to Upper Texas Gulf Coast vacationers would face the westbound light-rail line along Capitol St. and sit at the bottom of an unidentified residential tower:
Woodlanders wondering where Trader Joe’s is going to land, here’s your answer: Next to Petco in the Woodlands Crossing Shopping Center at 10868 Kuykendahl Rd., across from the H-E-B market at the intersection of Woodlands Pkwy. There’s nothing too dramatic about the plans for it, either: It’ll be a 13,500 sq. ft. space, with what looks like a typical shopping-center storefront:
Frequent Olivewood Cemetery visitor Roger Barnaby came across a disturbing discovery in the historic African-American cemetery south of White Oak Bayou between Heights Blvd. and Studemont not long before dark on Halloween: Survey markers and what look like new fenceposts, installed only a few inches from some marked graves. Barnaby tells Swamplot he’s not certain of the purpose of the posts, but believes they and the survey flags mark an intended expansion of the cemetery’s longtime neighbor to the south and east, grocery distributor Grocers Supply. “You can even see that they pounded a survey spike into one of the graves,” he notes:
Keep at it, keep at it. No rest until they’re all gone.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: COMES WITH THE LAND “If you take the Houston blinders off for a minute, you’ll realize that ‘deed restrictions protect property values’ and ‘zoning distorts property values’ are the same statement. Other things that ‘distort’ property values are: having a functioning police force so you have a reasonable certainty that a band of pirates won’t come steal everything you own; having roads to connect your property to other things; being located in a country with a functioning economy; public support of decent schools; a public health system that prevents outbreaks of Ebola; lack of a brutal murderous dictatorial regime; and not living downwind of a sewage treatment plant. Which of these are ‘evil planning’ vs ‘sensible government’ is, of course, determined by the political views of the speaker.” [John (another one), commenting on Comment of the Day: Keep Houston Cheap]
A popular local dance move, caught on camera. Sent in from a reader who was shopping at the West Gray Kroger over the weekend: what looks like the final curtain call for the former Houston Ballet building a block to the west at 1916 West Gray. The Ballet’s new building opened Downtown earlier this year. Going up in place of its destroyed former home, which was previously a clothing factory: apartments.
- Previously on Swamplot: The Apartments Taking the Place of the Houston Ballet on West Gray
Photo: Nate Frizzell
The big new Asia Society Texas building designed by Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi along Southmore Blvd. in the Museum District won’t officially open until next April, but a new slideshow featured on the organization’s website provides early peeks into some of the 38,000-sq.-ft. structure’s ultra-spare interiors. Included in Paul Hester’s photos: Views of the 280-Poltrona-Frau-seat Brown Foundation Performing Arts Theater, meeting spaces with carefully framed garden perches, and closeups of several sleek staircases. The AsiaStore Texas gift shop will probably look a little different from this once it gets loaded up with stuff to sell:
A decade-long scheme of systemic fraud by Houston-based Allied Home Mortgage Capital Corp. cost taxpayers $834 million in insurance claims on defaulted loans and forced thousands of the company’s customers to lose their homes through mortgages that were “doomed to fail,” according to a lawsuit filed by a former branch manager of the company and which the U.S. government officially joined yesterday. Allied Home, which is based in offices at 6110 Pinemont Dr. (above) off the Northwest Fwy. not far from Houston’s new FBI HQ, claims to be the largest privately held mortgage company in the country (99 percent of the company is owned by founder Jim Hodge), with 200 branches, down from a high of 600. Separately, the company has now been suspended from issuing any FHA-backed loans or GNMA-backed mortgage securities.
