NEW LAWSUIT SEEKS TO BLOCK WASHINGTON HEIGHTS WALMART TAX DEAL A nonprofit group formed to fight the proposed Washington Heights Walmart in the West End filed a lawsuit in district court yesterday, claiming that the tax reimbursement deal between the city and the project’s developer, Ainbinder Heights LLC, violates state law. Responsible Urban Development for Houston calls the $6 million agreement, in which the city promises to pay the developer back for infrastructure improvements, an “unconstitutional gratuitous transfer” that doesn’t meet state standards. The lawsuit also seeks to shut down all similar agreements established by the city, for “failing to provide sufficient controls to ensure that 380 agreements are not abused as either an end run around bond finance procedures or as political favors returned to well connected developers.” City Council is scheduled to vote on a similar agreement, for a new Kroger on Studemont just south of I-10, today. [Houston Politics; lawsuit; West End Walmart coverage]
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Who do you call to help out with delicate removal operations like these?
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOME DECOR BY THE NUMBERS 
“I count eight framed jerseys. But I guess if you do the math — one jersey per 1150 sq ft — it’s not so bad.” [Carol, commenting on On the Market: Woodlands House of 1000 Pigments]
STRIP MALL LIFE 
Late last month undercover detectives arrested 3 women working at the Touch of Class Spa in the strip center at 8201 Broadway in Pearland on prostitution charges; 2 male customers found on site during the sting operation were questioned and released. Last week, a fourth woman, suspected of running the operation, was also arrested. After an intensive investigation that included poring over the massage parlor’s in-house video surveillance system, police officials concluded that the spa workers were not being held against their will: “However, surveillance video revealed the women actually lived and worked at the spa 24 hours-a-day, using their massage tables as make-shift beds.” [Pearland Journal; Pearland Today] Photo: Pearland Journal
The Heights Life passes on drawings and details of the new Kroger grocery store and gas station planned for the former industrial property between Arne’s Warehouse and Party Store and I-10 at 1400 Studemont St. — from notes taken by a Super Neighborhood 22 representative who met with Kroger reps and council member Ed Gonzalez. Though at a planned 79,087 sq. ft. the store would be about 10,000 sq. ft. smaller than the recently renovated Heights store on 11th St. and Shepherd, it’ll look quite similar. The most interesting part of the site plan is the proposed connection of Hicks St., which turns off of Studemont south of the new store, to Summer St., which dead-ends into a parking lot currently filled with the heads of ex-Presidents, just south of the Sawyer Heights Target:
No faux finishing technique — or potential painting surface — was spared in the latest redo of this 21-year-old 9,181-sq.-ft. Woodlands mansion in Grogan’s Point. You’ll count 6 or 7 bedrooms, 8 bathrooms, a study, and gameroom, all with walls carefully protected by multiple coats of carefully splotched pigment. Those finishing touches put the many wall colors of this home beyond the reach of description.
Three days in advance of its planned official introduction, the city department in charge of the brand-new citywide pay-your-parking-meter-by-mobile-phone setup has asked the Atlanta company running the program to can whatever spam it had planned on sending customers. “The City’s agreement with ParkMobile does not allow for promotional emails or texts to be sent to registered users,” Admin & Regulatory Affairs spokesperson Christopher Newport tells Swamplot.
Over the weekend, vendor Parkmobile’s CEO Albert Bogaard denied the company had any plans to send unsolicited emails or texts to the program’s users. But an item posted on InnerLooped (and noted on Swamplot) last week reported otherwise. It pointed to wording in the Terms and Conditions posted online by the company that warned users they could receive as many as 3 emails or SMS messages from Parkmobile or “other affiliated, third-party companies” after using a phone or mobile app for payment. The terms and conditions did indicate that customers could opt out of receiving all text messages or emails from the service, but didn’t describe a way to opt out of ads or marketing messages only.
According to an unattributed report published today on Culturemap, beer-and-movie pioneer Alamo Drafthouse plans to open its second third Houston-area location at 2500 Summer St. off Sawyer in the First Ward, in David Adickes’s former SculpturWorx compound. But a spokesperson for the movie theater’s owners would neither confirm nor deny the plans either to Culturemap or the Chronicle. And Phil Arnett — who with partner L.E. “ Chap” Chapman announced plans last year to buy and redevelop the 3-building, 3-acre compound and convert portions of it into commercial space — tells Swamplot there’s “nothing definitive” about any Alamo Drafthouse plans. Representatives of Triple Tap Ventures, the theater’s parent company, did look at the space, but nothing’s come of it yet, Arnett says.
What large-scale construction project is that about to go up on the north side of the Katy Freeway opposite the 35-story spike-headed Memorial Hermann Tower, a reader wants to know. A sign for MetroNational contractor Anslow Bryant recently went up on the Gessner Rd. site, which was until last year the home of the Gessner Place Shopping Center and Korean grocery store Komart. “It appears that a portion of it (the immediate corner) has been fenced off & the construction signs have gone up,” asks the reader, who also sent in these photos. “My guess is whatever goes here will be vertical.”
A bit east of the tower, and on the opposite side of I-10, Anslow Bryant is currently constructing a 14-story tower for future MetroNational tenant Nexen Petroleum.
- Previously on Swamplot: Nexen Plan at Memorial City: Office Building Now, Strip Centers and More Later, The Cranes Come to Bunker Hill, Swamplot Street Sleuths: Komart’s Best Products, Swamplot Street Sleuths: From the Ruins of Komart Marketplace, There Will Be No Tours of the Death Star, and Other Details About the Hospital in the Belly of the Memorial Hermann Tower
Photos: Swamplot inbox
STUDEMONT KROGER AIMS FOR A CITY TAX DEAL A couple of news bits about the new grocery store Kroger is planning for an 8.5-acre site it purchased in February at 1400 Studemont, just south of I-10 and just north of the Arne’s Warehouse and Party Store: It’ll measure 79,000 sq. ft., and will have a gas station. Plus, Chris Moran reports, Houston’s city council will consider sales and property tax reimbursements to the company of as much as $2.5 million. The proposed deal would require the company to create 170 jobs at the location for 13 years and donate $40,000 for improvements to Olivewood Cemetery across the street. [Houston Politics; previously on Swamplot]
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
Coming back strong with these soon-to-be smashing successes:
Listed earlier this week, for $3.8 million: This 3-story home, designed in 2008 by Houston architect Allen Bianchi for the president of a stone supply company. That would explain the more than 20,000 sq. ft. of stone surfaces attached to the house, including the limestone cladding outside. The 4-bedroom, 5-1/2-bath block sits on 3 3/4 gated acres on West Rivercrest, just a few mansions south of Briar Forest Dr.
Blog-about-town InnerLooped notices the new pay-by-phone signs that have gone up on Downtown parking meters, including this one near Frank’s Pizza on Travis St. The service should be convenient for drivers who are short on change but have extra capacity in their mobile phone text-messaging plans. Here’s a little surprise included in the terms of use for the service posted online (though not mentioned anywhere on the signs): notice that mobile meter payers may receive mobile application, SMS, or email ads from the company that runs the service — Atlanta’s Parkmobile — or “other affiliated, third-party companies” when they park.
- Park here and we’ll send you junk mail [InnerLooped]
- Finally, a Smarter Way To Park [Parkmobile]
Photo: InnerLooped
Just a little dust-up. We’ll have these troublemakers taken care of in no time.