THE SECRET HOMELESS CAVES UNDER DOWNTOWN 
Officers on HPD’s Homeless Outreach Team show teevee reporter Robert Arnold a secret den favored by a portion of Downtown’s homeless population — tucked under the Louisiana St. bridge over Buffalo Bayou. Dubbed “the caves,” the not-tall-enough-to-stand-in space snakes along the bridge, further back than Arnold’s flashlight can shine. Layers of occupied and unoccupied sleeping bags, clothing, and trash cover the surface, and Arnold describes the scent as “thick and unrelenting.” Arnold’s report doesn’t specify how many people are living in the warren-like hideaway, but from the pictures he shows, it’s easy to imagine dozens. “We’ve had whole families in here,” explains police sergeant Stephen Wick. [Click2Houston]
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Tag: 77002
MEDITERRANEAN TWINS IN BAYOU PLACE 
Two replacement restaurants operated by a single owner are now set for the Bayou Place spot Downtown left vacant by Mingalone Italian Bar & Grill when it closed a year ago. Little Napoli Italian Cuisine is moving from its place up the street to share a kitchen with Kabobs Grill Mediterranean Cuisine in the space at 540 Texas Ave. [b4-u-eat; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Mingalone
A 4-year-old child got her foot stuck in the open, unmarked 3-inch gap between the rotating floor and stationary wall at the Spindletop Restaurant atop the Hyatt Regency Hotel Downtown, according to a lawsuit filed by her parents earlier this week. The incident, which took place last October, resulted in several deep lacerations and “likely permanent disfigurement” of the child’s foot, according to the complaint. Her parents were able to pull the girl’s foot out of the gap and trapped shoe after a minute, but only seconds before the floor rotated far enough to push her in front of a pole supporting a handrail along the window.
Looking down onto the roof of the couple-month-old Scott Gertner’s venue downtown, you can see the steel parts of the new rooftop bar soon to be made into a pavilion . . . atop Houston Pavilions. A reader sends this photo of the scene, taken from the Pavilions office tower. At the top left of the photo is the intersection of Fannin and Dallas:
The blue box area located in the middle of the set beams has been there since they started construction for roof access (It used to have the words “No Step” on it). We’ve seen construction workers go in and out of it since then. Most of this work was done last Friday and over the weekend. I’m guessing because of the steel beams they had to close off part of the street to crane it up there.
That’s a good guess, judging from this photo posted on the bar’s Facebook page on Sunday:
Already busy with 3 local apartment projects, including one just beginning construction next to the new Whole Foods on Waugh, a 399-unit development to replace the Montrose Fiesta on Dunlavy, and another on the site of the old Art Institute of Houston building at 1900 Yorktown, developer Marvy Finger says he’s planning to build Downtown as well, reports Real Estate Bisnow‘s Catie Dixon. In the works: an 8-story midrise at the corner of Texas and Crawford St. Yes, that’s the site of the 1926 Ben Milam Hotel, a long-vacant 10-story building remembered as the first Houston hotel ever to feature air conditioning.
ARCO OFFICE GOING DOWN; DOWNTOWN HOUSTON CLUB BUILDING WILL STAY PUT 
Dismemberment of the former ARCO office building west of Eldridge at 15375 Memorial Dr. should begin sometime within a month or two, Catie Dixon reports. What will new owner Skanska USA do with the 21-acre site — rumored as a possible location for the new Phillips 66 headquarters? Skanska is currently hunting for an architect to provide a master plan, Dixon writes, “potentially with a couple of offices.” Meanwhile, the other pre-owned office building purchased recently by the Swedish construction firm appears safe from the wrecking ball: The company’s regional manager tells Dixon he expects to begin remodeling the Houston Club building at 811 Rusk St. downtown by the end of 2012. [Real Estate Bisnow; previously on Swamplot] Photo of Houston Club building: Silberman Properties
EXXONMOBIL’S HUMBLE GIFT TO THE CITY? 
What will happen to its well-shaded 44-story downtown headquarters building at 800 Bell St., once ExxonMobil decamps for the new campus the oil giant is building at Houston’s northern reaches? The company “has not announced what will happen to its downtown building,” writes longtime real estate reporter Ralph Bivins about the iconic 1963 tower that houses at its top the storied Petroleum Club. “One of the most interesting rumors we’ve heard about it is that Exxon Mobil will donate the building to the City of Houston for municipal offices. You know, we can’t sell it, so let’s just give it to Annise Parker instead.” [Culturemap] Photo: Flickr user lc_db
THE DEEP RETAIL DISCOUNTS AT HOUSTON PAVILIONS 
Four years after its opening, the troubled Downtown mall-office complex known as Houston Pavilions may sell for $50 to $75 million below the cost of its construction. To avoid foreclosure on a loan valued at $130.7 million, the developers turned the property over to a receiver late last year; Transwestern is now marketing the project for sale. Offices are fully occupied, but the big problem is the 59-percent-vacant retail portion of the project, says Real Estate Alert: “More than half of the retail tenants haven’t been paying full rent because the overall retail occupancy rate remains below the prescribed threshold cited in their leases. A buyer could convert about 42,000 sf of vacant retail space into offices to exploit downtown Houston’s booming office market . . . However, a conversion of all the retail space isn’t an option, because doing so would make it impossible to meet the retail occupancy threshold necessary for the existing tenants to pay full rent.” [Real Estate Alert; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Flickr user cjt3
No photos of it, but there is this sketch from 1898, showing a 24-ft.-by-24 ft. pier-and-beam structure intended to house the fledgling Rice Institute vocational school. Rice University historian Melissa Kean says it was on 6 1/2 acres of property on Louisiana St. downtown — apparently somewhere near the YMCA building torn down last year. (A construction invoice, detailing the completed price of $498.71, references a fence facing a now-vanished Frederick St.) 14 years later, the Institute got a restart on a swampy 295-acre campus southwest of town.
A real-estate firm out of Indianapolis with a keen interest in developing mixed-use projects plans to build a midrise apartment complex on 2 vacant blocks in Midtown, just south of the Pierce Elevated and 4 blocks east of the light rail line running down Main St. Like almost every other recent residential development in the area built before or after the Post Midtown Square about a dozen blocks to the west, though, the Milhaus Midtown won’t include any lease spaces for stores or restaurants. If you’re wondering why not, the company has a detailed explanation ready.
REPAIRS DONE, WEDGE AS IT WAS 
The Swamplot reader who noted a color change in the panels at the top of the WEDGE International Tower at Louisiana and Bell St. downtown last week informs us that they’ve since been returned to their original appearance, and submits this pic from a perch at the Tellepsen YMCA a couple of blocks away to prove it: “Presumably, as one of the commenters surmised, they were just running through some routine maintenance.” We now return to our regularly scheduled Swamplot programming. Photo: Swamplot inbox
The reddish steel structure shown here is UH architecture grad Neil Denari‘s design for the new light-rail transfer station on Main St. between Capitol and Rusk downtown, where the new East End and Southeast Lines currently under construction will intersect with the existing rail line. Besides Denari, whose firm is based in LA, 3 New York and 1 local architecture firm were invited to dream up schemes for the long open-air, 11-ft.-wide rail platform. A jury selected by Metro will pick the winning design, but Metro is still asking for rider comments on each of them.
A SECOND RUN AT GROCERIES FOR DOWNTOWN 
Today is opening day for Georgia’s Market Downtown at 420 Main St., the same space where Byrd’s Market shut down last summer. The opening of Phoenicia Specialty Foods at One Park Place across from Discovery Green in the meantime means Georgia’s won’t be Downtown’s only grocery store. Like Phoenicia, Georgia’s is a second location of a more suburban operation (Georgia’s Farm to Market, in the former Kmart on the I-10 feeder just east of Dairy Ashford), and includes a cafe and bar (The Cellar, underground). [Eater Houston; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Eater Houston
Is some sort of paint job underway on the WEDGE International Tower at Louisiana and Bell St. downtown? Or is some new material being installed on the building exterior? A reader who wants to know sends in these spandrel surveillance pics from a perch at the new Tellepsen YMCA.
It looks like large portions of the 2.8-mile-long Heritage West Bikeway connecting Stude Park to UH-Downtown are close to completion, but the path along portions of the former UP railway won’t open until summer, according to the city. One important still-missing link: a pedestrian bridge over Little White Oak Bayou. Past the University, the 10-ft. wide trail will connect to the Heritage East Bikeway, which continues along White Oak Bayou to Lockwood.
The new western portion will hook up with the MKT hike-and-bike trail both at Stude Park and at Spring St., providing an alternate along-the-bayou path for bicyclists headed downtown from the Heights. One highlight of the journey: a close-up view of the 17.3 acres of swampland Hakeem Olajuwon flipped to Metro back in 2005 for a cool $15 million:
