Tag: 77008

Crime
05/30/12 10:59am

The MLS Rental Scam Going on Now in the Heights

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Houston Heights, Leasing
22 Comments

How do you discover that the house you’re renting out has become the focus of a scam? Well, If the scam’s targets show up on your doorstep, that’s one clue. The owners of the Heights home on Rutland St. pictured above found themselves in that situation last night. So this morning one of them sent Swamplot this tale, hoping readers will have some helpful advice to offer:

We recently bought a bigger house in the Heights and listed our current house for rent on the MLS. All went well (had a lease signed with a great tenant in just three days!) until last night. This friendly couple rang the doorbell and told me that they had been texting with the owner of the house for a week about renting it. She told them she was on a mission trip in Washington DC and couldn’t show them the house right away, but that they should come by the house and look in the windows. If they liked what they saw they were to send her a deposit check. I was flummoxed since I am the owner and had signed a lease two weeks earlier with someone else. I had heard about this happening with rentals listed on Craigslist but didn’t think the scammers would take it to this level. They had posted fraudulent listings on several sites, including Trulia.com and HotPads.com. They listed it for less rent than the real posting and said we’d take dogs and cats.

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Houston Heights
05/08/12 12:47pm

Stella Sola Rides Off into the Sunset

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Openings and Closings, Restaurants
29 Comments

Are they still gonna serve crepes in the parking lot? Co-owner Bryan Caswell cites the departure of chef Adam Dorris along with the possible impending sale of the wild-western-style mixed-use building his restaurant is housed in as the reasons he shut down Stella Sola over the weekend. “For me to go out and try to recruit a chef would have been the wrong thing to do — to convince a young chef to get excited about something we couldn’t guarantee,” Caswell tells Chronicle food reporter Greg Morago. Stella Sola moved into the restaurant space at the corner of Studewood and 10th St. in late 2009 as a replacement for Bedford, which had opened with the building the previous year.

Photo: Stella Sola

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Homes for Sale
05/02/12 12:46pm

Tweaked and Trying Again in Timbergrove Manor

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Interiors, Timbergrove Manor
15 Comments

A Timbergrove Manor home that changed hands in November 2011 is back on the market and asking $440,000 following an overhaul. Gone is the brown exterior, repainted in a spicy mustard tone, perhaps in homage to Harvest Gold. Other changes to the home built in 1964 include a new roof, new windows, and an automatic driveway gate. Inside, the 3-bedroom, 2-bath home gained stone, tile, granite, carpet, and lighting. Plus fresh paint in shades of pale yellow.

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Nightlife
04/25/12 4:47pm

A New York Post Reporter’s Lost Houston Weekend

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Quicklink, Restaurants, Shady Acres, Tourism
12 Comments

A NEW YORK POST REPORTER’S LOST HOUSTON WEEKEND “Exhausted and content, I retired to the patio at El Gran Malo, a cool but divey tequila bar on a superbly awful corner facing a shoot ’n’ stab gas station, a Mexican restaurant and other assorted random Houstonia; I went here because every chef I encountered during my visit told me that this was the spot. I absolutely had to go, they said. So I went and I drank tequila, because that’s what I saw everyone else doing. A lot of it too, apparently — by the end of the night, I vaguely remember being on the other side of town stalking a food truck selling lobster that may or may not have actually existed. Which was fine — it would be days before I was in a position to eat a proper meal again.” [New York Post] Photo of El Gran Malo: Almost Veggie Houston

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Construction Problems
04/17/12 10:48am

A Kink in the Path

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Houston Heights, Quicklink, Streetscapes
22 Comments

A KINK IN THE PATH “Walking the sidewalks in the Heights is sometimes tricky,” quips the reader who sent in this pic of the year-or-so-old sidewalk in front of the year–or-so-old house at 919 Arlington St.: “This walk is built to the 5′-0″ standards currently in place where as the older walks are built at 4′. However the alignment was so off from the 2′ distance required from the property line location of the other residents’ walks. I could only assume that the developer was thinking that he could allow more room to park a car between the street and walk if he shifted it west two feet.” Photo: Swamplot inbox

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Condos
04/03/12 2:00pm

Meanwhile, at the Corner of 11th and Studewood

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Houston Heights, Mixed Use, New Construction
40 Comments

Some burger stand, street signs, a car wash, bungalows: So many little Heights-y things muck up the foreground in development blog Going Up! City’s construction pix of the 6-story concrete-and-brick condo building going up just north of the restaurant-heavy corner of 11th St. and Studewood. 1111 Studewood Place, which at last report included 9,000 sq. ft. of retail space on its ground floor, has a website up which for now carefully avoids use of the word “condo.”

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Apartments
03/16/12 12:24pm

Peeling Off a Corner Near 22nd and Yale

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Construction Problems, Houston Heights
2 Comments

Repair work on the exterior of the 2125 Yale apartments in the Heights, built 4 years ago on the site of Kaplan’s Ben Hur, has been taking place all week. Gone already: the aluminum panels on the building’s northwest corner, facing 22nd St. But: Couldn’t find any explanation of what’s going on in the complex’s newsletter for residents, a neighbor reports.

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Gardening
03/05/12 4:32pm

Mysterious Oak Beheadings at the Yale and 610 Burger King

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Landscape, Signage, Sunset Heights
17 Comments

A graduate of the crape myrtle school of chainsaw insta-pruning appears to have gotten a little creative with the oak trees surrounding the Burger King at Yale and the 610 North feeder sometime over the last 2 weeks. The oak trunks are still standing tall, but all its broccoli-like heads have been knocked off. Is this the work of a rogue landscaper, or a concerted action meant to send a message to any other oaks that dare raise their leaves near power lines, feeder roads, or fast-food signage? “Its the most bizarre thing, and one can only presume it will get more odd appearing once they start to sprout out,” a Swamplot reader notes. “I know there are regulations to plant parking lot trees, but I guess there are none to make sure that they remain? There must be a story behind this odd act, but I can only drive by and drop my jaw each time I see it.”

More closeups of the oak hackery, and a “before” view, courtesy of Google Street View:

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Demolitions
02/27/12 11:55am

Last Stand at the Alamo Elementary

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Schools, Sunset Heights
13 Comments

Here are a few pics from the battle that began last Friday between demo crews and at least one of the former Alamo Elementary School’s 2 buildings at 201 E. 27th St. in Sunset Heights. The school shut down back in 1980; since then it’s been used as the site of an HISD storage facility and a series of only imagined — and now, it appears, officially defunct — preservation and repurposing schemes. The original 2-story structure was built in 1913; the single-story structure was added in 1926.

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Clark Pines
02/14/12 4:36pm

Opening Up the Inside in Clark Pines

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Homes for Lease, Interiors, Renovations
27 Comments

Only 5 interior walls are left in this 1,275-sq.-ft. house in Clark Pines, west of Shepherd from the Heights. The 2-bedroom, 1-bath property on a 8,093-sq.-ft. lot is listed for rent — for $2,100 a month. A Swamplot reader reworked the property over the course of 2 years. “This is my first remodel and I’m hoping for feedback,” writes the landlord. (Some feedback has already arrived, in the form of a “possible tenant.”)

What sort of work has been done to this place?

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Houston Heights
01/25/12 12:24pm

Recently Derugglefied 11th St. Cafe To Reopen — as Ruggles Green

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Lawsuits, Openings and Closings, Restaurants
19 Comments

The new restaurant opening in the space left behind by the shuttered 11th St. Cafe, also known for a time last year as the Ruggles 11th St. Cafe? Ruggles Green. No, seriously. But apparently it’s not the same Ruggles the restaurant started with.

For about 5 months last summer, the 11th St. Cafe at 748 E. 11th St. took on a new name: Ruggles 11th St. Cafe — after Ruggles Grill owner Bruce Molzan agreed to operate the restaurant. But Molzan later pulled out of the arrangement because “he considered the quality of the food there poor,” he told Chronicle reporter Purva Patel last month. A trademark-infringement lawsuit Molzan then filed against the cafe prompted owner Archie Patterson to remove the Ruggles name from the restaurant in early December; he closed it entirely — after 35 years of operation — at the end of the year, announcing that a new tenant for the space would be named in late January.

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Houston Heights
01/06/12 12:48pm

The End of the 11th St. Cafe

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Openings and Closings, Quicklink, Restaurants
13 Comments

THE END OF THE 11TH ST. CAFE Next step for the 11th St. Cafe after covering over the “Ruggles” on its sign: shutting itself down entirely. A sign on the door from owner Archie Patterson Jr. noted today by the Heights Life blog indicates the restaurant closed at the end of the year — after 35 years of operation. What’s next for the building at the corner of 11th St. and Studewood? “The new tenant will have a press release in late January,” the notice says. [The Heights Life; previously on Swamplot] Photo: The Heights Life

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Houston Heights
12/29/11 11:02am

The Lawsuit Behind the Paper at the 11th St. Cafe

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Quicklink, Restaurants
17 Comments

THE LAWSUIT BEHIND THE PAPER AT THE 11TH ST. CAFE Reporter Purva Patel documents the extensive menu of lawsuits embroiling “more unlucky than most” Ruggles Grill owner Bruce Molzan — which provides Swamplot a terrific opportunity to showcase one of the several photos of the papered-over sign at the now-formerly-Ruggles 11th St. Cafe in the Heights sent in by readers earlier this month. Molzan has charged the cafe with trademark infringement, and tells Patel he pulled out of an operating agreement with the 11th St. restaurant “because he considered the quality of the food there poor.” But cafe owner Archie Patterson says Molzan refused to sign a partnership agreement after running the place for 2 months. Patterson says he had the word “Ruggles” on the signs covered — in advance of getting new ones — as soon as he heard about the worker walkout at Ruggles Grill. [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Swamplot inbox

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