HERE’S YOUR RICE VILLAGE GROUND-FLOOR RETAIL 
The first tenant to open on the Morningside side of Hanover Rice Village will be Coppa Osteria, reports Eater Houston’s Darla Guillen, who pins the date in September. Coppa will be run by the folks who bring you Ibiza, Brasserie 19, and Coppa Ristorante Italiano, a fact that strikes Guillen as emblematic of a pattern in Houston’s culinary scene: “It seems like many upscale restaurants feel compelled to open the cool little brother to their high-end establishments.” At any rate, Coppa appears to have a cool walk-thru pizza window and cool neon signage. At 5210 Morningside and Dunstan, it’s right across the street from the site of the old Garden Gate, where Hanover is planning to build that 12-story tower with no ground-floor retail. Also coming soon to the Morningside side? Chef Chris Leung’s Cloud 10 Creamery, the signage for which has been strung up right next door. [Eater Houston; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Allyn West
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Tag: 77005
A buildout of the old Wolf Camera spot in Rice Village has fixed up this strip-center suite at 2526 Rice Blvd. into a franchise of The Boardroom, which says it provides “a relaxed grooming experience for men.” That experience here includes — besides the little flourish of authenticity that is that barber’s pole — waxes, hot lather shaves, massages, and color treatments. This 3rd 2nd Houston location opened about a week ago; there’s one in Highland Village and another up in The Woodlands. Inside, polished wood floors and finishes and a pool table imply the sophistication of these upper-management-level proceedings; a trim of the power beard will set you back $12; a haircut $40.
- Salon for Men [The Boardroom]
- Previously on Swamplot: Camera Stores Crying Wolf, Camera Stores Shuttered, Wolf Sheepish About Closings
Photo: Allyn West
A HAIF user posted this rendering of what appears to be the 12-story apartment complex that Hanover is busy making room for near the Rice Village. The demolition of the creaky Village Apartments and Garden Gate that used to stand here on the eastern half of the block bound by Kelvin, Morningside, Dunstan, and Tangley is nearly done (save for a lone tree in the middle of the site under the shade of which sits a picnic table). Hanover has said that this second building, unlike the first 6-story one, won’t have any ground-floor retail.
- Hanover Rice Village Phase II [HAIF]
- Previously on Swamplot: Hanover Knocking Over Village Apartments To Build More Village Apartments, Hanover at Rice Village Feeding the Hungry, First Signs of Hanover’s First Village Tenant, Hanover Reaping More Rice Village Property, Garden Gate Shutting, Cloud 10 Hitting Sweet Spot in the Village, Hanover at Rice Village: What’s Going Up Over Bolsover
Rendering: The Hanover Company
- 4151 Bissonnet St. [HAR]
So the site where the 21-story Ashby Highrise is going up appears to have been cleared now of the Maryland Manor apartments and bordered with a nice new fence, which appears to have been freshly tagged with some carefully considered —Â commentary? The reader who sends these photos suspects that the all-caps shout-outs to 2 of Houston’s most well-known towers showed up early this morning
- Ashby Highrise coverage [Swamplot]
Photos: Swamplot inbox
Once the scrap pile is cleared, Hanover will begin building a 12-story residential tower on this site near Rice Village. The demolition started yesterday to get rid of the aging Village Apartments facing Tangley and the Garden Gate facing Morningside; these properties share the block bound as well by Dunstan and Kelvin with the Village Commons restaurants. And that might be why — unlike its shorter predecessor on the other side of Dunstan, which you can see looming in the background in the photo above — this proposed tower isn’t planned to have any street-level retail. A notice sent earlier this year to Southampton residents suggests that it will have about 200 units.
Just down the block from that recent fence-related mishap at the all-cleared Ashby Highrise site is the proposed site of the . . . Ashby Midrise? Well, the official moniker of this 5-story condo box at Ashby and Sunset is Chateau Ten. And if that name (or the purple-hued rendering pictured on the sign) seems familiar, it’s because an identical building from the Randall Davis Company is already going up on Spann and Welch on the lot adjacent to where Hines might or might not be building that 17-story office tower off San Felipe.
Responding to last Friday’s video and story showing Cherry Demolition crews knocking a brick wall of the Maryland Manor apartments onto the backyard fence of Ashby Highrise neighbor (and videographer) Scott Reamer the previous Wednesday, apartment tower developer Matthew Morgan of Buckhead Investment Partners offers a few clarifications. In the video, which was posted on Swamplot and Culturemap, Reamer doesn’t come across as particularly happy about the way demolition is proceeding. “You got it! Good job! Now what about my dog?,” he shouts as the bricks fall, just a few feet from the back of his home.
According to a statement issued by Morgan, however, the 55-second video doesn’t tell the whole story:
“Nice!” says homeowner Scott Reamer in this video he shot today from his backyard, just 5 ft. away from the Ashby Highrise site, when a bunch of bricks from the Maryland Manor Apartments wall that demo workers were banging on to take down topples his fence.
- Oops! Controversial Ashby high rise build accidently crushes a neighbor’s fence: Bricks are flying! [Culturemap]
- Ashby Highrise coverage [Swamplot]
Video: Scott Reamer via Tyler Rudick
What’s this sandbox right beside the Hungry’s Cafe and Bistro in Rice Village going to be? A Hungry’s. An employee at the not-that-old one next door at 2356 Rice Blvd. says it will be demolished and turned into a parking lot for what a rendering on a sign at this construction site shows is a 2-story new one.
Hungry’s, you’ll remember, is owned by an entity controlled by Fred Sharifi, who earlier this year purchased and now appears to have plans to redevelop the Gramercy Place Apartments on the 200 block of Portland St. — just a few miles away on the east side of Montrose Blvd. — into townhomes.
A rendering of the new Hungry’s wasn’t made immediately available; what follows after the jump is a photo of what’s on that sign at the construction site:
That steel frame on Centenary St. that roused some West U residents to name-calling and concern-raising 2 years ago now has a steel house built around it — and a single father and his two sons inside. Still, says architect Cameron Armstrong, the build wasn’t as smooth as it might have been: “[C]ertain neighbors were actually quite hostile — they heckled the subcontractors (and not always from across the street!), and made numerous frivolous complaints to the police about things like (non-existent) parking violations by workers. . . . They thought they were living on a street with a predictable visual future, which turned out not to be the case.” Adds Armstrong: “[I]t’s hard to identify substantive objections. . . . The good news is that most of the neighbors are just fine with how the design turned out.”
The only difference between this 1981 West University property’s new listing and a previous one in mid-March appears to be the $110,000 escalation in price since its sale in mid-April, for $525,000. The current photos are a bit grainy and bleak, but they document how the unoccupied interior and lot-filling pool and deck have been faring as prices rise:
Here’s what’s going down over at 1717 Bissonnet. Making way for the Ashby Highrise — whose developers this week signed new builder Pepper-Lawson Construction to replace Linbeck, which decided to back out earlier this year — the salvaging and knocking down of Maryland Manor started last week. And this is what things looked like this morning:
A NEW BUILDER FOR THE ASHBY HIGHRISE 
Though it remains to be decided in a court of law whether the 21-story Ashby Highrise will deprive nearby Boulevard Oaks homes of sunlight and rain, there now seems to be a firm at least agreeing to build it: Prime Property’s Nancy Sarnoff reports that Pepper-Lawson Construction has signed on, replacing Linbeck, which decided to back out of the project earlier this year. The Maryland Manor Apartments, shown here standing in the way at 1717 Bissonnet, started coming down last week. [Prime Property; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Candace Garcia
