COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHO’S PAYING FOR THIS SPREAD? “Ironically, it is GOVERNMENT rules and funding that promotes suburban, space-wasting development. If people had to pay every day for the cost of the roads they use, or for the government-required parking spaces (subsidized by non-car users in the prices they pay), they might think differently. Instead, the [cost] is hidden in catch-all taxes. And, after all, isn;t it a goverment regulation that these developers are trying to waive? . . . The city government, with the support of many Houstonians who see no value in an attractive city, and prefer to retreat indoors, actively makes urbanization difficult, and promotes far-flung developments with miles of expensive infrastructure at taxpayer cost.” [Marco Roberts, commenting on Apartment Building Replacing Tavern on Gray Won’t Have Any Retail, But Really Wants To Hug the Street Anyway]
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The apartment complex the Richdale Group is planning to put in place of the just-vacated Houston Ballet building at 1916 West Gray will indeed have retail space on the ground floor — if you count the facility’s leasing office, that is. Also right in front on the first floor: 2 apartments and 4 head-in parking spaces, for potential tenants only. The parking garage will go in back, accessed from Bell St. A plan for the development, labeled the Graybelle subdivision, was submitted as part of a variance request for this Thursday’s planning commission meeting. The developers are requesting a 15-ft. setback along West Gray in place of the usual 25 ft. requirement. The lot is directly west of Randall Davis’s gargoyle-festooned Metropolis condo building.
Tucked into that sorta-industrial area just south of Garden Oaks, behind the warehouse at 954 Wakefield: A brand-new array of beach volleyball courts under construction. The reader who sent in this photo of the scene wants to know what’s up — or at least whose serve it is. A closer view of the nets:
A buyer has at last been found for the carefully constructed Forbidden City exhibit at the shuttered Forbidden Gardens attraction in Katy. Well . . . for a portion of it, at least. Ben Cornblath is director of the museum and cultural center that closed under mysterious circumstances in February, then held an open-to-the-public selloff of many of its holdings. He tells Swamplot that a group of people in an “environmental” company associated with the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo has expressed interest in . . . that big shed that’s been standing over the model and protecting it from things like sleet, Hurricane Ike, and the Houston sun. The park is still awaiting the company’s bid. Cornblath says such structures appear to be a rare commodity around the metropolitan area, and this one has a strong track record of sheltering an entire miniature Middle Kingdom city for nearly a decade and a half. But getting the steel structure out of there won’t be easy: The move may require a crane.
What about that thing beneath the sought-after roof, the one-twentieth-scale model of Beijing’s Forbidden City?
- 2011 Croydon Ct. [HAR]
Swamplot’s Daily Demolition Report lists buildings that received City of Houston demolition permits the previous weekday.
Fore! We tee off the week with these shots into the rough:
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHY WALK, WHEN YOU CAN DRIVE? “If I live in a ‘walkable’ neighborhood I have access to a couple of restaurants and maybe a couple of services but with my CAR I have access to THOUSANDS of restaurants, services, venues, malls, etc. without having to use the same one twice . . . Why would I give a sh*t about a ‘walkable’ neighborhood?!?!??!?” [commonsense, commenting on Apartment Building Replacing Tavern on Gray Won’t Have Any Retail, But Really Wants To Hug the Street Anyway]
HOUSTON’S SPACE SHUTTLE TRIBUTE — IN PIECES 
Sure, Houston won’t be the rest home of choice for any of the space shuttles that retired intact, but what about the ones that blew up? Mayor Parker says she now supports a plan being promoted by several family members of Columbia and Challenger astronauts to store recovered remnants of the exploded Columbia orbiter in a large warehouse connected to Space Center Houston. More than 80,000 separate pieces of debris recovered from the 2003 disaster are currently stored in a 16th floor office in the Vehicle Assembly Building of Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. Parker tells the Chronicle‘s Mike Morris she thinks an exhibit of burnt and broken shuttle parts here could “create a fitting memorial to those astronauts. Not a tourist attraction, but to really recognize the commitment that Houston and Houstonians have made and the sacrifices they’ve made for space. That is an opportunity.” [Houston Politics; previously on Swamplot] Photo of Columbia debris: CollectSpace
Listed just last week for just under $1.8 million: the maxxed-out home in Southampton that NBA star Shane Battier and his wife, Heidi Ufer, bought just a couple of months after he joined the Houston Rockets in 2006. Battier was traded back to the Memphis Grizzlies this past February. A few pro basketball players who’ve spent time in Houston have held onto their homes here, but Battier is putting this one up: a quaint little 1905 farmhouse-looking thing expanded and tricked out by previous owners to just under 6,000 sq. ft. Sure, there’s the media room, the game room, the commercial-grade appliances, the big barrel-armed furniture, and the earthy tones straight out of NBA interior design school you’d expect to find here, but there are a few surprises too:
- 1506 Wichman St. [HAR]
- Previously on Swamplot: Olivewood Cemetery’s Grave Situation: Not Washed Down to the Bayou Yet
COMMENT OF THE DAY: DOWN IN FRONT “Actually, ground floor retail is an uphill struggle. Apartment managers want to manage apartments. Shopping center managers want to manage retail tenants. Plus, with the slim profile of this lot…where 10 extra feet is needed for the parking…putting 50 or 100 foot deep retailers in the garage would be even worse. And, despite the claims of the poster several spots up, mixed use retail space is a very hard sell. Dallas pushed several developers to include ground floor retail in new complexes, and most of them sit idle. The fact is, Houston is capable of separating the two, so developers and retailers prefer to do so. Only in dense urban areas do retailers attempt to carve out space wherever they can find it. Despite the love affair with mixed use retail, it is still a very rare bird . . . especially in new development. . . .” [Dave, commenting on Apartment Building Replacing Tavern on Gray Won’t Have Any Retail, But Really Wants To Hug the Street Anyway]
LANDMARK FOR SALE 
Dallas Mavericks owner and billionaire Mark Cuban, whose company 2929 Entertainment has owned Landmark Theatres since 2003, is putting the arthouse cinema chain up for sale by auction — along with its sister independent-film distribution company, Magnolia Pictures. Landmark operates 55 cinemas with 245 screens in 21 cities. In Houston, Landmark leases the art deco 1939-vintage River Oaks Theatre at 2009 West Gray — from Weingarten Realty. Offers are expected to come in as early as next week, but Cuban tells Bloomberg News he is only “testing the waters . . . We won’t sell unless the offer is very, very compelling.†[Art Attack] Photo: Flickr user Loren-zo
Houston’s own Hanover Company wants to build this 5-story apartment complex on the current site of the Tavern on Gray, just east of the shopping district that extends along West Gray to Shepherd. And it’s hoping to get a variance from the planning commission that would allow the buildings to have smaller setbacks than current regulations allow: 15 ft. along Waugh (where 25 would otherwise be required) and just 5 ft. along West Gray (otherwise they’d need 15). Sure, the Hanover West Gray project would have 2 floors of parking (one of them underground) underneath 4 residential floors — but the extremely persuasive variance request kinda makes it hard not to wish the place had conditions that were less — you know, tough and urban:
- 1345 Foxwood Rd. [HAR]
