- 506 Cordell St. [HAR]
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Tag: 77009
- 901 E. 24th St. [HAR]
Facial adjustments to the building at 3701 N. Main have left it rustier than it was when El Taquito Rico shuttered in the same space last May. The former Woodland Heights Mexican restaurant’s yellow sign has been removed, as has the standing seam mansard roof-style awning that wrapped its frontage on N. Main. In their place, a headband of corrugated metal now hugs the top of the structure — which sits on a narrow 8,375-sq.-ft. lot at the end of Pecore St., just west of I-45 (and across the street from the O’Reilly Auto Parts building that Asia Market is moving into).
Floor-to-ceiling windows that lined the restaurant’s entryway have also been truncated:
Heights Wrap-Up
Cricket Wireless shuttered in the northwest corner of the building on N. Main at Pecore St. a few years ago, leaving O’Reilly Auto Parts alone in the structure. Now, signage for Asia Market Thai-Lao Food is up on the carrier’s former location. The aerial photo above views the building at 3600 N. Main adjacent to Whataburger from up over El Taquito Rico’s former spot (also undergoing a turnover) on the narrow corner across the street.
The original Asia Market included a store in addition to the restaurant. Here’s what it looked like in the strip on Cavalcade between Norhill Blvd. and Michaux St. it occupied since 1987:
Under the Hood
14 PEWS’ SURPRISE NON-ENDING 
On her way into a new job as executive director of a larger church-turned-arts center in Portland, Cressandra Thibodeaux appears to have had a change of heart. Which means 14 Pews — the microcinema and performing arts venue that picked up where the Aurora Picture Show left off 8 years ago — will not be closing any time soon. The original movie house at 800 Aurora St. took over the building from the Sunset Height Church of Christ in 1997 and hosted screenings, plays, workshops, and art exhibitions there (as well as a few weddings and memorial services) before turning it over to Thibodeaux in 2010. Since then, programming has continued along those same lines — even as audiences anticipated the venue hitting the market in mid-Februrary. With that plan scrapped, Thidobeaux writes: “We are now teaming up with community leaders to curate several film series, as well as talking with other organizations about bringing unique festivals to Houston.” [14 Pews; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Ed Schipul [license; modified from the original]
- 4604 Norhill Blvd. [HAR]
COMMENT OF THE DAY RUNNER-UP: THERE’S STILL A MISSING LINK IN THE BAYOU BIKE CONNECTOR 
“It’s not complete if you are trying to take the MKT Trail from the Heights into downtown and beyond while staying off streets. The Bayou Greenways interactive map still shows a dotted line for the missing connection between the MKT Trail and the stretch of the trail at Stude Park. When completed, that tiny section will make a big difference.” [Gretchen Lindquist, commenting on Houston’s Bayou Biking Connector Is Now Complete] Image: Bayou Greenways 2020
There’s a new outdoor stairway zig-zagging its way up to the top of the Raven Tower’s above-ground spot at the northwest corner of the White Oak Music Hall complex. The elevated bar opened in January 2016 on North St., just off N. Main east of I-45, but shut down in May of that year after its developer decided to address accessibility issues through renovations. It only received a certificate of occupancy — allowing the venue to operate as a bar — in April of this year.
Railings and landings are still missing from the new stairway. Inside the podium, an indoor stairway wraps around a central elevator shaft that rises from the base of the tower up to its peacock-blue penthouse.
Here’s a view of the tower from beyond an adjacent concert venue, one of several surrounding the White Oak Music Hall’s main building:
WOMH and Friends
- 1515 Everett St. [HAR]
Coming soon to the 1,500-sq.-ft. building on the corner of N. Main and Pecore St. where El Taquito Rico dealt tacos until its closure in May: a new restaurant serving drinks. The building sits on a narrow triangular property at 3701 N. Main, just west of I-45. Puro Mente LLC is listed as the applicant for a variety of TABC permits, including one for late-night service, on the notice taped to the building’s front window, shown in the photo below:
Rico Puro
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOW LAST NIGHT’S A$AP MOB SHOW ON THE WHITE OAK MUSIC HALL LAWN MIGHT’VE BROUGHT DOWN THE HOUSE “Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. WOMH should cut a deal fast to make major sound mitigation improvements before the court and the City shuts them down. People on both sides of I-45 are hopping mad about the concert last night. It is a huge roll of the dice to expect a bunch of jurors to say: ‘Yeah, a big concert venue in the middle of a residential neighborhood is no big deal.’†[Old School, commenting on FEMA Aid Deadline Extended; Pre-Trial Outdoor Shows Can Go On at White Oak Music Hall; Hakeem Olajuwon in the Red Mango Biz] Video clip of last night’s outdoor concert (NSFW): FIRST CLASS BEATS
“If you don’t know that’s a big dip,” reports a reader who scouted the scene of the impromptu lake formed over the weekend on the lawn of the Near Northside’s Hollywood Cemetery, “you don’t appreciate just how much water that is.” The cemetery lies between Little White Oak Bayou and I-45, along the northeast edge of N. Main St. The water level has lowered a bit since these photos were taken on Sunday. Do note the bouquet, presumably perched above one of the completely submerged gravestones, in the right foreground of the view above.
More views of Lake Hollywood:
High Water Marks in the Near Northside
The sign at the Skinny Rita’s Grille at 4002 N. Main St. in Brooke Smith now states that the Mexican restaurant inside has closed, but a note on the door from “Management” is a little less definitive: “This location will be rebranding in the next few weeks and will be temporarily closed,” reads the undated notice — already annotated by a handwritten visitor complaint requesting the information be added to the company’s outgoing phone message. “Please come visit us when we reopen in a few weeks.” The restaurant followed in the footsteps of a sequence of differently branded Mexican restaurants in the same location when it opened at the site, which is bounded by Walton and Melwood streets, in 2014. A Montrose Skinny Rita’s Cantina closed down at 607 W. Gray St. earlier this year, after less than a year of operation.
- Previously on Swamplot: Skinny Rita’s W. Gray Spot Follows March Grand Opening with February Grand Closing; Where Skinny Rita’s Will Be Squeezing in on North Main
Photos: Margo
Relabeling
The new Holiday Inn Express about to begin construction at 3401 N. Main St. in the Near Northside will have some consistently quiet neighbors and some occasionally very loud ones — with the steady drone of the adjacent North Fwy. available to somehow bridge the gap. The 1.44-acre site, where the Casa Grande Mexican Restaurant stood until it was torn down 2 years ago (and Stuarts Drive-In before it), sits across N. Main St. from the Hollywood Cemetery (yes, the same cemetery featured in Wes Anderson movie Rushmore). And it’s just a bit more than a quarter-mile up N. Main from the White Oak Music Hall complex, whose outdoor concert habit spurred nearby residents kept up late at night by the noise to file suit against the venue — and later, the city of Houston — for failing to follow (and enforce) local sound ordinances.
Late last month, crews removed the concrete paving left behind after the Casa Grande demolition (see photos above). Just this week, a city permit was granted for a 58,929-sq.-ft., 95-room Holiday Inn Express on the site — up 10 rooms from the 85 promised a couple of years ago, when the developers submitted these drawings as part of an application for a variance that would allow them not to have to extend or widen Norma St., on the north end of the lot:
Near Near Northside
The landscaping promised for the courtyard area that doubles as a driveway in back of the newly expanded and renovated home at 707 Euclid St. in Woodland Heights is now installed. We know this because a Swamplot reader was kind enough to send in the above photo of the scene. It provides an update to the photos in the listing (below), which show only unplanted planting beds in the driveway, before the most recent additions:
Garage Front
