A reader sends in this photo showing the results of a recent heavy metal delivery to the median of Fulton St. across from Moody Park: Rails, for the coming 5.3-mile North Line extension to Lindale Park. Swamplot’s Northside construction correspondent reports the street appears paved and ready for the tracks to be installed.
Photo: Swamplot inbox
The recommendations of a planning commission subcommittee aren’t going to get any Houstonians in the growing anti-free-parking crowd too excited — they only propose a series of incremental adjustments to the city’s existing off-street parking regulations. Among the newly issued report’s more notable suggestions: requiring shared-driveway townhome developments to provide a single guest parking space for every 6 units, or at least preserve on-street spaces; allowing takeout- or drive-thru-only restaurants and dessert shops to provide fewer off-street spaces and requiring all other restaurants, bars, and clubs to provide more; a minimum 5-year length for any parking lease agreements used to meet minimums, as well as language that automatically revokes an establishment’s certificate of occupancy when they expire; extending the maximum distance to offsite parking to 800 ft. and giving the planning director the authority to stretch it further in some instances; more notification — including signs — when parking variances are applied for; adjusting the rules for how locations can be “grandfathered” under previous parking requirements; and allowing the creation of new “parking districts” in free-for-all areas such as Washington Ave.
Uh . . . Wolverine! That’s about it.
Silicon Valley automotive startup Tesla Motors plans to open a Houston dealership for the company’s all-electric cars within the next 60 days — in the Nordstrom wing of the Galleria. The company-operated store, inspired by Apple Stores, Starbucks, and airport frequent-flier clubs, will include samples of the company’s Model S and Roadster models that visitors will be encouraged to climb into, as well as a Design Studio for assembling and pricing an EV to your own specifications.
Photos: Tesla Motors (store in Lone Tree, Colorado); Purva Patel (Galleria)
BABY DOLLS STRIP CLUB OWNED BY ACTUAL BABY According to documents presented in a lawsuit filed last week, the now-shuttered strip club Baby Dolls at 6340 Westheimer Rd. past Fountainview was owned between 2005 and 2006 by the estate of its former owner, Aris Mylonas — whose heir was an infant born shortly after the father’s death. From there, the story gets even stranger: The baby’s mother claims in the lawsuit that she sold the baby’s interest in Baby Dolls to a business entity partly controlled by James Cabella, a/k/a Vincent Cabella, whom she later learned was also a/k/a Vincent Palermo and a/k/a Vinny Ocean. He’s the former New Jersey mob boss whose testimony helped take down the DeCavalcante crime family, and who was later resettled in Houston under the federal witness protection program. (He’s also rumored to have been one of the models for TV character Tony Soprano; plus he’s the still-proud owner of this Memorial Drive mansion.) Lisa Hansegard is suing Cabella, his wife, and son to get back the close to $1.3 million she says they still owe her and her child for the sale. [Houston Chronicle; more details]
Houston may have missed out on its opportunity to play host to one of the 4 retired orbiters doled out recently by NASA. But it will end up with a space-shuttle-related attraction that jibes well with the Johnson Space Center’s longtime role as a practice and simulation site for training astronauts. Space news website CollectSpace is reporting that Space Center Houston will soon receive the Space Shuttle Explorer, a full-size orbiter mockup currently on display at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida.
One advantage of the Explorer over the 4 orbiters Houstonians wanted but couldn’t get (besides not having any layers of space dust to clean off): Visitors will be able to walk through it.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOUSTON MOD LOVERS’ GOOGIE CONDO COLLECTIVE “OK mod lovers, this is your ONE BIG CHANCE. How many of you have commented on Swamplot that you would love to buy that about-to-be-torn-down mod home if you only could afford it? Six of you guys put your heads together and buy this place. You can each have a 1,000+ SF condo unit in an iconic building in a great neighborhood for less than $125,000 per person.” [Bernard, commenting on Penguin Arms, Houston’s Only Googie Apartment Building, Is Now for Sale]
Arthur Moss’s 1950 Penguin Arms Apartments at 2902 Revere St. behind the Kirby Dr. Whole Foods is now on the market. Sadly, no pix showing the condition of the interior are included with the listing, though the agent’s reference to “lots of deferred maintenance” — along with the comments of a former tenant — should provide a clue. What gives this unique building its Googie cred? Well, a photo of it was included in the original 1952 House and Home magazine article that gave the style its name (amidst complaints about its “orgiastic” and “organic” features, of course). Penguin Arms “looks like something that Frank Lloyd Wright designed for George Jetson,” Chron columnist Lisa Gray declared a few years ago. These days, that’s considered a compliment.
A reader who spotted a group of “official looking folks with hard hats and fluorescent vests” looking at the grounds of the Park Memorial Condominiums at 5292 Memorial Dr. last week (and sent in photos of the group congregating at the Detering St. entrance to prove it) wants to know if the visit means something is about to happen to the abandoned property. Swamplot’s most recent first-person report on the complex came from a runner who passed through with a group in March, to admire the mosquito-infested pool and “creepy” surroundings. Condo owners have been stuck in limbo for the last 3 years, since city officials ordered the property vacated. Attempts to sell the property to a third party for redevelopment have failed so far because condo owners have been unable to agree on terms.
Photo: Swamplot inbox
Opponents of the 8-month-old Montrose Management District are now claiming they have collected enough signatures to dissolve the entity. Created in February from the combination of the East Montrose Management District and the recently established Harris Country Improvement District No. 11, the new district is one of several such organizations given taxing authority by the state legislature; its assessments and security, business development, transportation, and visual improvement projects are aimed at the approximately 1,400 commercial and multifamily properties in the area bounded roughly by Shepherd, West Dallas, Taft St. and Spur 527, and the Southwest Fwy. (also included: a small portion of the Museum District east of Boulevard Oaks). Stop the District organizers say creation of the district required the signatures of only 25 property owners, but that their dissolution petition has been signed by property owners representing more than 75 percent of the property value in the area.
RICHMOND FROM LUCKY BURGER TO THE HARP, READY FOR SOMETHING 
New owners of a 50,000-sq.-ft. site at the southwest corner of Richmond and Mandell in Montrose, which includes Lucky Burger, The Harp Irish Pub, Maria Selma’s Mexican Restaurant, and Orange Bar: a partnership controlled by Braun Enterprises — the same group that bought the former Harold’s in the Heights clothing store last month. Space in the retail buildings totals more than 11,000 sq. ft. Braun tells reporter Katherine Feser his group plans to hold onto the property for now but imagines some new retail development could take place next. Leases for all 4 properties expire in 2014. [Houston Chronicle] Photo: Braun Enterprises
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
Knock 3 times on the ceilings that you don’t want to see, twice on the pipe you don’t want to show.
Real estate developer Michael Surface, who as chairman of the Harris County Sports and Convention Corp. was in charge of deciding the Astrodome’s future for the first 8 years of its life as an empty sports venue, pled guilty this morning to filing a false tax statement and making a false statement to federal agents. As part of a plea agreement connected to corruption charges filed against him and Harris County commissioner Jerry Eversole, Surface will likely receive a sentence of less than 5 years in prison capped by less than 3 years’ supervised release and a fine of less than $250,000.
Okay, which one of you sneeze-and-greet types was the inspiration for a local real-estate development and investment firm to get into the hand sanitizer business? Yes, those little single-use rip-and-squeeze packets of B4 Hand Sanitizer you’ve seen at Eddie V’s and your favorite Sysco-supplied restaurants are the latest project of the Midway Companies, best known locally as the developers behind Town & Country Mall replacement CityCentre. Company CEO Brad Feels says it was a pre-dining encounter with an outstretched, just-sneezed-into hand that inspired him to create and market the product: “At that moment in the restaurant, I looked down and wished that there were hand sanitizers where the Sweet’N Low packets were,†he tells the HBJ‘s Allison Wollam.
The company’s next real-estate acquisition: shelf space at H-E-B and Rice Epicurean markets, where boxes of B4 packets will be stocked for sale in the next 2 weeks.
