Demolitions
07/27/11 4:26pm

Battle Over Swank Sugar Land Supermod Won By Komatsu Excavator

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Courtesy of a Swamplot reader who spied the wreckage, we now have photo confirmation that the recently renovated former home of Astrodome builder H.A. Lott, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright devotee Karl Kamrath in 1975, is currently being smashed to pieces. That’s the steel frame of the north end of the house being mangled above. And we have a video, too! Not of the demolition — but of the sleek-looking home itself last year, when it was on the market for just over a million bucks. Treacly but ultimately ineffective soundtrack included:

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Cancellations and Delays
07/27/11 3:32pm

Downtown Brewery Can’t Get the Taps Flowing

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DOWNTOWN BREWERY CAN’T GET THE TAPS FLOWING San Antonio’s Freetail Brewing Co. has announced an “indefinite suspension” of its plans to build a 3-story, 20,000-sq.-ft. brewery, store, and restaurant in an unidentified existing building near the corner of Main and Prairie St. The problem: plenty of hops, not enough yeast: “I began to run into an increasing level of resistance in capital markets,” brewery owner Scott Metzger politely explains in a press release. He tells beer blogger Ronnie Crocker he wasn’t willing to scale back the $4.2 million project, and will keep fiddling with the company’s San Antonio operation instead. [Beer, TX; previously on Swamplot]

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Crime
07/27/11 2:02pm

How Houston Con Men Blow Their Covers

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HOW HOUSTON CON MEN BLOW THEIR COVERS Jennifer Estopinal gets all Encyclopedia Brown on Dinesh Shah, aka Dennis Shaw, aka the subject of Michael Phillips’s recent book Monster in River Oaks and John Nova Lomax’s 2-part con-man saga: “Estopinal then asked Shah what kind of law he practiced, and told her he was a semiretired New York corporate attorney back home in Houston to manage his many investments. ‘And I’m from River Oaks,’ he added. The arrow on Estopinal’s bullshit detector immediately leaped to DefCon Five. ‘People from River Oaks don’t just go around saying that,’ she says. ‘That was when I really knew something was up.’” [Houston Press; part one]

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Houston Architects
07/27/11 9:14am

Remaining Houston Mods To Star in Their Own Movie

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The director of a recent documentary about the late architect and educator Samuel Mockbee says he’s already received pledges for about half the money he thinks he and his production team will need to raise for his next project: a feature-length film about midcentury modern architecture in Houston — or what’s left of it. Houston native Sam Wainwright Douglas’s Citizen Architect: Samuel Mockbee and the Spirit of the Rural Studio has appeared on PBS, in local theaters, and on the museum circuit since its debut at SXSW last year. Douglas says he hasn’t fixed the lineup for his Houston movie, but he’s hoping to profile local architects Harwood Taylor, Hugo Neuhaus, Howard Barnstone, and William Jenkins and their work, as well as buildings by modernist firms such as MacKie and Kamrath and Lloyd & Morgan. (If he wants to capture any portions of MacKie and Kamrath’s Sugar Land oeuvre, he’ll have to hurry.)

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East End
07/26/11 4:05pm

East End Line Will Get Its Harrisburg Underpass

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Harrisburg Blvd. and the East End light-rail line Metro is building along it will dip under the Union Pacific East Belt freight rail line between the future Altic and Cesar Chavez stations, Mayor Parker announced today. The city has committed $20.6 million of “existing money” to the build the underpass — in part by delaying other area improvement projects. The alternative, a longer freeway-style overpass, was opposed by many area residents and businesses.

Drawing: City of Houston

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East Houston
07/26/11 2:05pm

New Fuddruckers Drive-Thru Now on Menu of I-10 Luby’s

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A Fuddruckers Express has taken over a portion of the Luby’s Cafeteria on the I-10 East feeder between Federal Rd. and Maxey. The 1,500-sq.-ft. hamburger joint was carved out of the former Luby’s takeout area and drive-thru, but the 2 restaurants share a kitchen in the 12,200-sq.-ft. freestanding building. Luby’s bought out the Fuddruckers chain last year.

Photo: Luby’s

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Galleria
07/26/11 12:30pm

Your Feedback Was Important To Us

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YOUR FEEDBACK WAS IMPORTANT TO US The Borders “nothing held back” liquidation sale has brought out a slew of not-so-well wishers to the Galleria store, Jef Rouner finds: “The clerks told us that a pretty significant amount of customers had come in to gloat about the liquidation prices, scold the clerks for bad business practices, harp about how Borders got just what was coming to it, and finally, openly mock the soon to be un-employees.” [Art Attack; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Flickr user e_walk [license]

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Public Health
07/26/11 12:02pm

Spurring a Toilet Revolution

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SPURRING A TOILET REVOLUTION What the world needs now, according to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation: better places to poop. This year, the foundation will spend $3 million to fund 8 university teams working to reinvent the toilet. New off-sewer-system toilets for the 21st century would save lives around the world and “turn crap into valuable resources.” And who knows? Backwards thinking like that might end up making it cheaper to build more of our beloved way-out burbs around here too. [Gates Foundation] Video: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

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Bankruptcies
07/25/11 11:26pm

Comment of the Day: Borders Bids You Adieu

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COMMENT OF THE DAY: BORDERS BIDS YOU ADIEU “Do what I did at my store when they announced it was liquidating in February. Immediately unplug the wi-fi router. Immediately section-off the cafe with caution tape. Immediately move all of the seating off the sales floor. This isn’t the time to lounge around, it’s the time to buy shit and get the fuck out. It’s also not the place to take your morning shit anymore, so make sure to also permanently close the restrooms to the public.” [Chris, commenting on Borders Liquidation Sales Begin]

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Buying and Selling
07/25/11 1:07pm

OMG Mod Begone: Sugar Land’s Lott House Meets Its Wrecking Crew

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Yes, it looks like demo equipment has already arrived in the driveway of the MacKie and Kamrath house in Sugar Creek featured a little less than a year ago on Swamplot. The home was originally built in 1975 for Astrodome builder H.A. Lott, in the Houston architects’ famed signature Frank-Lloyd-Wright-without-the-cape style. The photo above was sent in by a reader, who passes on a rumor from neighbors — that the 4,426-sq.-ft. home’s new owners plan on tearing down the structure and putting up a 2-story something in its place. After an extensive renovation, the the 4-bedroom on a 36,041-sq.-ft. waterfront lot was listed for north of $1 million last August. It sold in April for around $800K. A few pics of what now appears to be headed for the landfill:

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Harbordale
07/25/11 12:30pm

At the Sign of the Apple: Largest Food Bank Ever

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The silver apple went up late last week on the enormous new Houston Food Bank location carved out of the former Sysco Foods warehouse at 535 Portwall St., just northwest of the I-10 East-610 Loop intersection. The 310,000-sq.-ft. facility will include a cafe, a community room and training center that’s open to the public, and a volunteer program called Serving for Success that’s open to inmates and probationers. The organization hopes to use its new space to double the amount of food it distributes (to 120 million lbs. a year) by 2018. Official opening date: September 23rd.

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Mangum Manor
07/25/11 9:58am

Former Steak and Ale on Mangum Rd. To Begin New Life as Strip Club

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Whatever steak and ale was left in this building at 2425 Mangum Rd. has been taken off . . . very slowly. Only to be brought back in a new form: A reader who’s noted some heavy construction — including the covering-up of windows — at this former restaurant on the southwest side of 290 over the last month and a half says the new occupants appeared to have applied for a liquor license under the name “Mangum Steakhouse.” Actual name of the new joint: Sunset Strip, a “totally latex free” club where you’ll find “the hottest entertainers in H-Town” — once they’re hired, of course. Scheduled opening date: August 3rd. Any resemblance between Highway 290 and the actual Sunset Strip, of course, is courtesy of the ghost of Anna Nicole Smith, and the Pleasures she left behind on the other side of the freeway at 34th St.

Photo: LoopNet

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