A pair of Swamplot readers, employees at Hughes Hangar across the street and Kwik Lube next door, and the Facebook page of late-night weekend jitney service Houston Wave all have heard that this building going up on Washington Ave will be a new Sonic. But a rep from the company can’t confirm the location, saying yesterday that there is nothing to add about “the specific possibility” of a Sonic here at 2720 Washington, and there doesn’t appear to be any tell-tale signage up yet.
The low-lying Skylane Central apartments beside the Taylor St. bridge are about to be sold to Greystar, which says it plans to tear them down and put up something like this parkside 8-story complex — but that’s just one of several renderings the Houston Chronicle is reporting that the developer is considering for the site near White Oak Dr. at the southern end of the Woodland Heights. The deal should be done by September.
Rendering: Meeks + Partners
A new stick frame began going up Wednesday on the corner of Heights Blvd. and E. 2nd St., on a concrete slab cleared of the heap of wood studs, trusses, shear walls, and framed staircases that had landed there with a crash last Saturday night. All remnants of the 2 toppled Keystone Classic Homes 4-story townhouses in the Madison Park development just south of White Oak Bayou have been swept away. The site, pictured above in a photo taken by a Swamplot reader this morning, now looks rather different from the way it appeared last Sunday:
A Swamplot reader writes in with some identifying info about the Katy homebuilder whose Heights Blvd. townhouse construction collapsed into a pile of sticks over the weekend. The collapse of two 4-story structures under construction shortly after the end of Saturday night’s storm didn’t end up injuring anyone, but it did set back construction and marketing efforts for the Madison Park development just south of White Oak Bayou.
The builder of the toppled properties at 103-117 E. 2nd St., in a corral of townhomes built earlier by another developer, is Keystone Classic Homes, an LLC managed by Michael D. Surface. That appears to be the same Mike Surface who found himself in local headlines a couple of years ago, before and after he admitted to a judge that he intended to influence his longtime friend, Harris County Commissioner Jerry Eversole, with approximately $100,000 in cash and gifts. As part of a plea deal, Surface ended up pleading guilty to filing a false income tax return and making false statements to federal officials in connection with that bribery case, which centered around county contracts; in November 2011 he received a sentence of 2 years’ probation, along with a restriction barring him from being able to do any business with federal, county, or city governments for 5 years.
And then there was Surface’s job on the Astrodome.
Those light-blue dots? That’s where you’ll be able to pay to park now on Washington Ave. The city’s first Parking Benefit District (or PBD) went live as of this morning, with dozens of these pay-to-stay meters installed between Westcott and Houston that will charge you about a buck an hour between 7 a.m. and 2 a.m.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE NEW TALLER TOWNHOMES THAT FELL OVER NEXT DOOR “Just to add a little clarification here. I live in one of the already existing structures there. They have been there since 2008 and have fared quite well during storms since being constructed. The ones that collapsed had started being built about 5 or 6 weeks ago. They were being built by completely different builders. There were two frames up. Each were four stories tall. The crazy thing was how tall they were. The second story on the new construction was taller than the third story of the ones that had already been there. They were however a completely different design than the already existing ones. In any event the weather wasn’t that bad. I was awake when they collapsed and actually saw the second one fall after the first hit it. Scary. Regardless of wind sheathing, that should not have happened. Someone could have been seriously injured or worse.” [Mike, commenting on The Heights Blvd. Townhomes That Collapsed Overnight]
There’ll be a — um — slight delay in the move-in date for the purchasers of the brand-new Madison Park townhomes at 111 and 107 E. 2nd St., just south of White Oak Bayou. Yes, it appears that the 2 stick-framed structures backing up to Heights Blvd. that toppled violently Saturday night — an hour or so after a not-exactly-fierce storm passed through the area — were in fact among the 4 that developer Keystone Classic Homes had been claiming on its website and in a construction-fence-mounted banner were already sold. Their listing in MLS provides perhaps a more conservative assessment: A bank of 4 townhomes — including 111 and 107 — were listed as “pending,” usually an indicator that a contract has been accepted by the seller but that no closing has yet taken place.
If you happen to be the lucky buyer on hook for one of these addresses — presuming you still want in — how much time will the weekend’s rack-and-rumble set you back?
Note: Story updated here.
Some big bad wolf huffed and puffed and blew down a couple of 4-story stick-framed townhomes under construction at the corner of Heights Blvd. and 2nd St. around midnight Saturday night. Several readers have written in with accounts and photos, and a source close to the action reports that no one was hurt. A few neighboring garage doors on completed (and occupied) townhomes were damaged by wayward wall parts, however, and the driveway shared by new owners in the Madison Park complex was blocked by a Three Little Pigs–worthy pile of studs, which was cleared out of the way the following day by the builder, Keystone Classic Homes.
Hey! What happened to that neon sign at Huston’s Drugs? Artist Chris Bramel, who’s working to renovate the former pharmacy on Washington in the Old Sixth Ward into a space where he can live and work, explains: “The sign was claimed by the original owner and he’s going to hang it at his house or ranch.” To deal with the emptiness, Bramel is having a replacement sign built for him, he says, “and I will have that thing lighting up the street every night.”
Photos: Allyn West
“It looks like someone has bought the whole block between Feagan, Westcott, and Knox in Rice Military next to the Commonwealth Title office building,” a reader writes in accompaniment of a series of photos. “There are several old cottages with for sale signs showing the houses as ‘to be moved’ although they don’t look salvageable to me.” What, the reader wants to know, is going to happen here?
Well, that was quick: This bygone apartment complex from the 1950s at 4118 Center St. — which you might recognize from this morning’s Daily Demolition Report — has come down. What was the rush? To make way for Allen Trace, apparently: Last Thursday, the city planning commission approved an application to divide the not-quite-half-an-acre West End property into 10 parcels for single-family townhomes.
A reader sends more photos of the cleansing of the palate:
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHAT TO CALL THE GREATER WEST END “Forgive me if this has been discussed before, but am I the only one who thinks that the Wash Ave area needs one, unifying neighborhood name? I live in Magnolia Grove, but no one knows what that is, so I have to just say “Off Wash Ave†(though that implies that I moved there to be close to Wash Ave bars, which is NOT the case) or say that I’m in between Montrose and the Heights (which is a stretch). Rice Military stops at Durham/Shepherd so that isn’t accurate. The neighborhoods can continue to retain their individual neighborhood names, but the entire area [PDF] can have one unifying name so that folks know what you’re talking about (e.g., Montrose is the larger neighborhood that contains Hyde Park). I would think realtors and retailers would both jump at the chance to not have to describe the area by referring to street names. Part of the area is called the West End (I think the area between Shepherd, Wash Ave, Heights, and Katy Freeway), and I think that would be a cool name to describe the whole area (particularly given the fact that the area used to be the end of town). I’m sure there are other cool names too, but any name should not contain ‘Heights’ in the title, as the area is decidedly not the Heights and the feel/look is incredibly different. The area’s former name, ‘Smokeytown,’ should also be out for obvious reasons.” [Eric, commenting on New Shepherd Dr. Little Woodrow’s To Serve Pub Fare, Too]
NEW SHEPHERD DR. LITTLE WOODROW’S TO SERVE PUB FARE, TOO 
Beer after wine: Closed back in November, Block 7 at 720 South Shepherd Dr. is being replaced by Little Woodrow’s, reports Eater Houston’s Eric Sandler. Just south of the Washington Corridor in Rice Military Magnolia Grove and a block east from the about-to-open Katch 22 from Roger Clemens’s kid Kory, the new Shepherd spot, rep Nick Menage tells Sandler, will house no ordinary Woodrow’s: “In a twist, this location will have a full kitchen that will serve an updated mix of bar foods including burgers, nachos and pizzas from the old Block 7 oven. Menage assures fans of the bar’s popular steak nights that there are plans to maintain that tradition, too.” [Eater Houston; previously on Swamplot] Photo of Block 7: Panoramio user Wolfgang Houston
And here are the apartments designed to replace those mini storage sheds being torn down on the north side of Memorial Dr. at 159 Birdsall St. The demo, says a rep from developer Sunrise Luxury Living, is about 75 percent complete — only 20 sheds remain — and construction on the 5-story Birdsall Memorial Apartments is expected to begin in the next four months. Plans show the new complex squeezing 180 1- and 2-bedroom units onto the property where the 300 storage sheds stood.
Here’s a nifty aerial view of the area:
