There’s nothing left standing at Michelangelo’s Restaurant since its demolition yesterday — except for the tree that used to grow in its dining room, visible in the photo at top. The restaurant’s days had been numbered since March, when its owners sold the building and adjacent parking lot on Westheimer to a developer with plans to build a gym-anchored strip center.
The gym will be Houston’s first Spenga fitness studio, brought here by a Chicago-based chain that signed a 4,011-sq.-ft. lease for the replacement building’s entire second floor back in June. Here it is up above street level:
***
The strip center is planned to extend east beyond the parking lot that runs left and out of frame in the image below, and onto the site of an existing 2-story building on Westheimer at Mason St.
- Fitness studio Spenga to spin into Houston [Houston Chronicle]
- Previously on Swamplot:Â New Cantilevered Retail Strip Shown Hanging Out in Michaelangelo’s Westheimer Spot
Photos:Â Loves Swamplot (demolition);Â HAR (Michelangelo’s Restaurant);Â Swamplot inbox (demolition from across Westheimer Dr.). Rendering: Spenga
The “existing 2-story building on Westheimer at Mason St.” is among the few, rapidly disappearing original houses remaining on Westheimer Rd. east of Shepherd, and the only one that’s well maintained and in unmolested condition.
Very sad to see it go.