One clue that the Social Junkie Sports Bar has come to the end of its almost-4-year run at the northwest corner of Washington Ave and Sawyer St.: The end-zone-styled valet parking lot pictured in the above recent photo is empty — all the way to the 25-yard line. Another clue: the “It’s been real . . . we out” goodbye notice posted to the establishment’s Instagram feed over the weekend. A reader tells us the place is shuttered and everything inside has been “thrown away.”
The self-styled “House of a Million Parts” at 1225 Sawyer St. once known as Johnny Frank’s Auto Parts Company was torn to pieces last summer. Freshly applied to the chain-link fence surrounding the now-vacant lot: a new TABC notice, announcing to passers-by that an establishment named the Sawyer Ice House is hoping to sling cocktails on the premises before too long. The land is across the road from those arted-up rice silos on Sawyer St., which are across Edwards St. from the Shops at Sawyer Yards. It appears to be another of the projects in that neck of the woods that trace back to Lovett Commercial, which is working on parking lots and a slew of other developments in the area as well. Here’s what Sawyer Ice House might look like, per what appears to be the bar’s new save-the-name Facebook page:
You might not immediately gather, from the pastoral setting in the rendering above, that this is a view of what’s planned for the former Berger Iron Works property, tucked around back behind the Walmart at Yale and Koehler streets in the section of Katyville last rebranded as Washington Heights. (The footprint of the land is marked as a little blue rectangle in the map above.) The new name Riverway Properties is applying to the retail-redo-to-be appears to be Bonner Heights (presumably after Bonner St., which runs along the quiet western front of the property). Here’s how the 2 buildings on the site could be split up for leasing:
TEMPORARY, HUGE, AND LAST MINUTE: THE CLUB NOMADIC STORY 
The team behind Club Nomadic, the 3-story, 64,000-sq.-ft. comes-with-the-Super Bowl traveling behemoth of a temporary nightclub that was open for 3 nights only at 2121 Edwards St. earlier this year, starts planning for its next incarnation “roughly a year” in advance, lead designer Joanna-Maria Helinurm says. Materials travel to the site on 36 trucks, and the building typically takes 60 days to erect. But last-minute jockeying with city permitting officials, in Helinurm’s telling, appears to be standard practice: “All this goes on up until the very last day before the opening until the occupancy permits are granted,” she tells Cynthia Dehlavi. “In Houston, we ended up renting almost two city blocks to be able to control the flow and traffic around the event. Temporary Place of Assembly certificates are a critical component, but we often have to apply for additional special permits, for example like electric-powered signs and the use of pyrotechnics inside the building.” On Super Bowl weekend this year, Club Nomadic got its final okays from Houston officials just 6 hours before doors opened for performances by Sam Hunt and The Chainsmokers on Super Bowl weekend. [OffCite; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Michael Garfield
It may not look like a hole lot is going on in there in this photo taken a few months ago, but the 2,492-sq.-ft. 1940-vintage retail building at the southeast corner of White Oak Dr. and Oxford St. in the Heights — a crooked saunter across the street from Onion Creek Coffee House and a lot and a street down from the Heights hike-and-bike trail (and this) — will be filled with bagels this summer, promises its new proprietor. Behind its plywood poker face, the property at 3119 White Oak Dr. has been stuffed with a bagel oven, tile-front counters, and a walk-in refrigerator, according to the social media accounts of the establishment, known as Golden Bagels and Coffee. Soon to be on the menu, in addition to the comestibles promised in the shop’s name: local cured and smoked fish.
A flyer from NewQuest Properties is now hawking an imagined retail-or-restaurant building at 3215 White Oak Dr., across the street from the parking lot for Juiceland and Black Swan Yoga. The lot, which spans from the corner of Columbia St. to the western edge of the Heights hike-and-bike trail that slices diagonally across White Oak, is currently home to an Aqua Hand Car Wash (seen from Columbia St. above), as well as a few rented-out residences behind it and next to the trail.
The included renderings show the building fronting the sidewalk on White Oak, with a patio in front:
All those folks who were wringing hands about last year’s electoral nixing of the rule against carry-out alcohol sales in the Houston Heights possibly opening the door to a future rollback of the area’s other alcohol restrictions — well, you may find yourselves feeling kinda vindicated right about now: the petition process has just kicked off to once again crank up the ol’ special election machinery, this time on the question of alcohol sales for on-site consumption in the Heights Dry-ish Zone. The goal: no more private-club workarounds for the area’s bars and restaurants — just regular drink sales.
What do we know so far about the cast of characters starring in this new season of Heights electoral intrigue? At least one familiar name has entered the picture, so far:
One of the hazards of having a street-facing 3,000-sq.-ft. garden adjacent to your restaurant’s back patio: plant theft. But Coltivare chef Ryan Pera tells Bloomberg reporter Kate Krader that the Heights restaurant has more to watch out for than your typical fruit-off-the-vine snatchings by grabby customers. Namely: 3 of the restaurant’s fruit trees have gone missing, including “a 6-ft.-tall kumquat tree, worth about $175.” Pera tells Krader he was “stunned and hurt, but more awed by the fact that it was obviously planned. I mean, someone had to come prepared with proper garden tools, a truck, and the know-how on how to steal a tree.”
Photo of Coltivare, 3320 White Oak Dr.: Coltivare
Another potential future target in striking walking range of that 542-space parking lot Lovett Commercial looks to be planning at Center and Silver streets: the color-splashed warehouse redo sketched out above, as seen in another of the company’s current leasing fliers. This one is for a facelift of the 1970s building former occupied by Mass Electric Construction Company at 1201 Oliver St., a few blocks west down the railroad tracks past Sawyer St. Clustered nearby are a fair number of other Lovett-affiliated developments (including some of the artsy hubbub between Sawyer and Silver).
Renderings and site plans suggest a cidery could be taking over the west end of the building — the flier includes a north-is-down look at plans for splitting up the space, including a cutout for a breezeway:
The partially ruined former Jefferson Davis Hospital nurses quarters at 1225 Elder St. — until very recently in the running for a spot on the National Register of Historic Places — was recommended for demolition at last week’s Harris County Commissioner’s Court meeting following a public hearing the day before. The building, tucked west of the elevated freeway tangle where I-45 splits from I-10 near Downtown, would have joined the nextdoor former Jefferson Davis Hospital itself on the historic registry — instead, it looks like the structure will finally meet meet the ‘dozers after its long slow decline, accelerated by damage from a fire in 2013 that lead to last year’s semi-collapse.
Next door, the 4-story hospital structure (built in 1924, and replaced by 1938 with another Jefferson Davis Hospital where the Federal Reserve building now stands on Allen Pkwy.) cycled through various modes of use and disuse until its early 2000’s restoration into the Elder Street Artist Lofts, which serve as low-rent apartments and studios for artsy types. That redevelopment, of course, involved carefully digging around the dozens of unmarked graves turned up on the surrounding land, which beginning in 1840 had served as the second city cemetery (and as the final resting place for a hodgepodge likely including  Confederate soldiers, former slaves, victims of the 1860s yellow fever epidemics, people who died in duels, Masons, and a variety of others). The hospital’s name is still carved above the lofts’ entrance:
Catty-corner to the southwest of the area’s newest self-storage midrise, the block at N. Shepherd Dr. and Nett St. housing Bethel Church is now broadcasting plans for a mixed-use development from several large signs standing around on the property. A couple of readers reported the new decor from various angles late on Friday (including the one above, which includes a glimpse of finally settled, named, and opened FM Kitchen + Bar on the former Alva Graphics lot across the street). The church’s 1.48-acre block (bounded by Durham Dr. and Center St. on the other 2 sides) hit the market last summer, and looks to be getting wrapped into the Hunington development fold.
The conversion of the church property would put a mixed-use development right next to the Azure Apartments midrise currently going up right across Durham:
The paved lot now being marketed as 1818 Washington Ave. (across Silver St. from that recently recolonized cluster of ex-nightclub buildings, and bookended to the east by the former bakery now housing B&B Butchers) appears to be marked for some higher purposes, per recently released leasing materials for the property. Plans on Lovett Commercial’s flier for the site show 2 structures (rendered above as things might look from Washington Ave., facing toward Tacodeli) that pretty much fill up the whole piece of land — but fear not, parking-requirement hawks! The land directly north of the property, a 2-block elongated space nestled mostly between Center St. and a stretch of Union Pacific railroad, is marked up to become a 4-plus-acre surface lot, with room for 542 cars or so; that’d likely more than make up for the parking spaces that B&B would lose, too.
That’s the apparent plan for now, anyway — the flier does point out that some kind of garage structure is probably on the table for later on. As for the yet-unbuilt spaces for lease: The site plans show an L-shaped 2-story building, plus a smaller, squatter freestanding restaurant space tucked back along the corner of Silver and Center. The larger structure has spots marked off for a couple of upstairs patios, as well as office use:Â
PUTTING THE HEIGHTS BACK IN ITS . . . UH, PLACES 
“In their rush to capitalize on the popularity of the district, businesses and developers have awkwardly assumed the mantle of the name ‘Heights,’ even though they’re clearly outside the zone of its accepted borders,” writes Jeff Balke this morning for the Houston Press. Where exactly are those accepted borders? And which variation means what? Balke suggests something between a taxonomical scheme and an etiquette lesson on selecting the proper name for whatever flavor of Heights, Heights-adjacent and Heights-aspiring territory you may be seeking to invoke — from the historic city originally spurring the name, all the way to the fringe territories of Katyville and the Heights Walmart. [Houston Press; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Swamplot inbox
A little more of the what’ll-go-where has been filled in lately for Midway’s H-E-B-footed midrise, planned at the corner of Waugh St. and Washington Ave. (and now under construction following the corner’s clear-out earlier this year).  The glassy box overlooking Washington from above the main H-E-B entrance will hold the structure’s office spaces, with the face of the parking garage visible a bit further to the left; an updated siteplan also shows that the sides of the development will also be insulated from the street and sidewalks with a layer or 2 of parking spaces:
