JUSTIN YU TO CLOSE OXHEART, SPEND SOME TIME IN THE HEIGHTS 
Next in the line of succession for the corner spot at 1302 Nance St. currently occupied by Oxheart: . . . well, something else. So says James-Beard-ed chef and owner Justin Yu, who announced today that the restaurant will close on its 5th birthday in mid-March — to reopen with a new name, a redone interior, and former Oxheart sous chef Jason White at the helm in the kitchen. Eric Sandler notes that Yu will eventually be splitting his hours between the yet-unnamed redo of the Nance space, wine and whiskey bar Public Services in the Cotton Exchange building on Travis, and whatever he’s doing with Bobby Heugel over on Yale St., in the former home of Dry Creek Cafe. [CultureMap; previously on Swamplot] Photo of 1302 Nance St.: Ken L.
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Tag: 77002
Today’s look at up-and-coming personified downtown highrises includes a reader’s fresh snap of Hotel Alessandra, which reached full height in August and has been filling out a bit since then. The latest rendering (released after the original question mark design was scrapped) depicts mostly the buildin’s glassier Dallas-St.-facing side; the shot up top is facing the structure’s beige-er south corner. Midway announced a few weeks after the Tax Day flood that the hotel wouldn’t be open in time for the Super Bowl after all, citing weather-related logistical issues. The developers are now planning to open up later on in 2017.
Meanwhile, at the opposite corner of the GreenStreet complex — where Polk and Caroline streets meet — Randall Davis’s Marlowe condo tower is getting off the ground behind The Dirt Bar and Reserve, at the edge of a sea of parked cars:
Up and Out Around GreenStreet
The outdoor garden and patio space at 301 Main St. is being tended this week as Salt N Pepper group’s taco restaurant and bar Dizzy Kaktus finishes setting up near the Preston light-rail stop. City historical records say the Victorian structure was built in 1889, after which the Sweeney & Coombs jewelry company jumped across the street from the building currently footed by The Pastry War; the ground floor space of the structure went up for lease after Nit Noi closed last year, and signage noting the restaurant’s liquor license application was posted in October.
The reader who snapped the shots above and below says a worker on the site mentioned an opening next week, and that while the interior layout was still a bit jumbled, the outside appeared to be shaping up:
Historic District Taco Bar
Ghost-story hub and beer bar Brewery Tap reopened this weekend, after about nearly 11 months of remodeling in the wake of a January ownership swap. The bar is located in the building at 717 Franklin St., preivously part of Houston Ice & Brewing Co.’s Magnolia Brewery complex on the edge of Buffalo Bayou. Down the slope beneath the Franklin St. bridge is the mid-1800’s crypt previously occupied by the remains of 3 members of the Donnellan family; the early Houston settler and his wife and son were moved west to Glenwood Cemetery around 1903, after which the crypt was incorporated into the structure of the Franklin St. bridge:
Digging Up Downtown History
The glossed-up scene above, which shows a pushing-its-limits White Oak Bayou flirting with the lower edge of the Height Hike and Bike Trail bridge, made an appearance in this month’s edition of Kia Ora, Air New Zealand’s in-flight magazine. A sky-high peruser on Reddit noticed the article, which is currently employing the flood photo to promote Houston and several other Texas cities as tourist destinations. The original source looks to be a Getty Images contributor who captioned the shot (along with another expansively aquatic view from 2015) as stock images of Downtown Houston in the rain. For comparison with the normal scenic view of Downtown’s northernmost freeway tangle, below is a recent shot of that trail construction near the Leonel Castillo Community Center, which caught the same angle and foliage (minus the high water, but plus some heavy equipment):
Water Under the Bridge
This week’s SpaceCom expo at the prettied-up George R. Brown Convention Center included a preview of some more down-to-earth plans for the immediate neighborhood — including the NASA-themed drop tower Mars mission ride to be installed for Super Bowl visitors at Discovery Green across the street. The ride, called Future Flight, will include virtual reality goggles; the rest of the setup will include a chance to try out the goggles for people who like virtual reality but don’t want to take the plunge, as well as some exhibits of next-gen space hardware  and some kid-geared activities.
The ride’ll be free — if you can get a spot. Chris Baldwin points out that about a million people are expected to show up at the pre-Super Bowl festival planned for the week before the game, but timeslots on the ride will be limited to a few thousand per day between January 28 and February 5 (and the details on how to get a spot aren’t out yet).
The burnt-orange scaffolding of the drop tower roughly matches the color scheme for the latest long-haul rocket setup NASA is working on:
Free Free Falling Downtown
CITY TRACKING DOWN THE LEAD IN CITY HALL’S DRINKING FOUNTAINS, EYEING OTHER DOWNTOWN FAUCETS 
The city is planning to check in on the water at other buildings downtown, Scott Noll reports, in the wake of those lead tests KHOU did on drinking water from just City Hall and the City Hall Annex buildings last week. Those tests turned up lead levels so high above federal limits in at least 1 fountain that the city has shut them all off (and cleaned out the ice machines) while more extensive testing is done on the system. City spokesperson Janice Evans says city testing a few years ago didn’t show concern-worthy lead levels, but the fountains will stay off while the source of the current problem is traced out: “Is it the pipes? Is it the drinking fountains? Is it water coming into the building? It could be [any of the 3] options. There’s a lot of deferred maintenance in this building.”  [KHOU; previously on Swamplot] Photo of City Hall: City of Houston
Fresh off the email from Swamplot’s anonymous tunnel correspondent: the latest dispatch from the downtown underground, including word (and photo) of a second Hot Toppings in the works:
The remainder of the space that used to be a Ninfa’s at 919 Milam is scheduled to become Hot Toppings Pizza. (The other portion of the space was taken over by Bullrito’s in March.) As part of the conversion to a pizza joint, it look’s like they’re modifying the wall where the Ninfa’s entrance used to be (that’s the plywood covering in the left of the photo).
Plus, bonus shot of the almost-ready Houston outpost of Argentinian-Chicagoan 5411 Empanadas, now moving in beneath nearby 811 Louisiana and reportedly planning to open on Monday:
Tales from the Tunnels
The brick building at Travis and Winbern streets, wedged between the Breakfast Klub to the south and Continental Club to the east, is occupied these days by Winbern Mess Hall — a joint truck-to-brick-and-mortar project involving both Korean-Mexican fusion truck Oh My Gogi! and Asian-fusion hotdog truck Happy Endings. The fused fusion truckers quietly opened shop in October, with plans for a grander opening tentatively planned for mid-December. A rep tells Swamplot that items from both trucks are on the menu, and a bar is also in the works.
Winbern has moved into the spot in the wake of the sudden May flight of Sparrow Bar + Cookshop, another animal-mascotted endeavor of Beaver’s chef Monica Pope. The red banner by the tucked-away front door on Travis (above) has been updated to reflect the switchover, though the new occupants say they haven’t changed too much inside the place. Here’s a shot of the spot (from back when it still played host to the avian theme):
Winbern Fusion Fusion Joint
A reader sends a few shots from the corner of Main and Franklin streets, where the family that owns La Colombe D’Or is now turning the 1890’s-or-so buildings at 104, 108, 110, and 114 Main into co-working space. The ground floor of the block (occupied in large part by the Bayou Lofts building) has seen some tenant movement too in the last few years; signage for bars Gossip Ultralounge, Barringer Lounge, and recently-opened Lilly & Bloom can all be spotted hanging out while exterior work is underway.
As for the Franklin side of the block: Next to watch-shop-turned-whiskey-bar Houston Watch Company, The Brit will be moving into what was once PI lounge at 911 Franklin; a bit further west, past newly-opened La Calle Tacos & Tortas, the space formerly holding that beer incubator that closed after a naked Twister incident is being prepped for bottle shop Craft Beer Cellar:
Main St. Move-Ins
The new, new design views of the Ivy Lofts highrise have been trickling out this week, and the glossy view above is fresh out into the digital ether as of late last night. The project’s marketing folks are prepping for a Saturday afternoon sales relaunch party at the converted grocery warehouse on the site (bounded by Nagle, Leeland, Live Oak, and the would-be path of Pease St., just north of the Texas Art Asylum and 59).
The tiny-condos highrise developers swapped architects a few months ago, midway through a redesign intended to turn the place into a double-lobbied condo-hotel mashup; the latest design, from EDI Architecture, is back to no hotel component and is down to just 1 main tower, with a 5-story parking garage filling in the extra space on top of a layer of ground floor storefronts. As for the building’s tiniest units, the 360-ish-sq.-ft. Tokyo, they’ve put on a little floorspace (and now measure in closer to 400 sq. ft.).
Here’s a closer view of some of those 14,228-sq.-ft. of retail space, from the corner of Live Oak and Leeland:
EaDo Pre-Do Redo
The dust-up above on the northeast corner of 3300 Main St., where the former city code enforcement building has been getting disassembled to make way for that retail-footed residential highrise, was part of the on-site scene this past Thursday, a reader notes. Crews started in on the late-60’s building after those August demolition permits were issued (following a round of asbestos extraction). The shot catches both the MATCH theater building on the left and the tiny red canopy of Thien Thao Chinese Herbs, on Travis and Francis streets behind the post-wok-fire redo of Mai’s.
- Previously on Swamplot: Main St. Mod Code Building Under Assault From Rooftop, Ground Level, Interior; Asbestos-Laden Mod Code Enforcement Office Now Getting Swapped for Mixed Use Highrise on Main St.; Digging into the Dirt Around the Old Code Enforcement Building in Midtown; Developer Buys Old City Codes Building; Decoding the Code Building Sale; Downtown Warehouse Rehab: Houston’s Next Permit Office
Photo: Swamplot inbox
Shorter, Then Taller
A few readers note that work is underway on the site of the new parking garage planned next to music-themed office highrise Lyric Centre at the corner of Louisiana and Preston streets (catty-corner from Market Square Tower’s newly-filled sky-high resident display tank). The top photo above shows the crews digging around on the former surface parking lot as of yesterday afternoon; the city issued a permit for work on the building-to-be’s exterior shell earlier this month.  A glass-skinned design for the structure can be seen in the rendering above, which peers at the site from the north along Smith St., looking past the skybridge between the Wortham Theater and the Houston Ballet’s Center for Dance. The drawing shows folks making use of the ground floor of the structure, which is intended to house retail (in contrast to the garage going up a few blocks north at Milam and Franklin streets, which is intended to look like it could house retail).
The floorplan included with the listing for that 41,000 sq. ft. of space shows a ramp for the garage hitting Smith St.:
Sowing Downtown Parking Space
Crews are digging in at the northeast corner of Milam and Franklin streets, a reader notes, where a 10-story parking garage is planned. The rendering up top (labeled as Powers & Brown’s) made a recent appearance at a city historical and archaeological commission meeting, following several months of deferrals and redesigns — including the addition of some ground-floor canopies and simulated window frames (which will have no glass “for flood reasons”). The application says the features are meant help the structure blend in with the surrounding buildings in the Main Street Market Square Historical District, including the Magnolia Ballroom across Milam, the Cotton Exchange building across Franklin at Travis St., and the Bayou Lofts building one block to the east.
Here’s the garage design originally submitted back in June:
Ground Floor Faux Retail
Just added: water for the cantilevered glass-bottom pool jutting out of Market Square Tower’s rooftop deck, some 41-plus-or-minus-the-penthouses stories above street level. Woodway is now advertising leasing availability for November, with some of the smaller one-bedroom units listed for $2,100 and up per month (and the largest of the penthouses, a 3-bedroom 3.5-bathroom 3-balcony affair, listed at $18,175) . The current floorplans available on the site now also suggest that the ground floor retail options will include a cafe, in addition to that CVS announced last month.
Those not enthused by the prospect of dangling over the downtown streetscape can opt for the other pool on the 4th-floor terrace, which overlooks Preston and Milam St.:
Filling Up Downtown
