- 2518 Straight Creek Dr. [HAR]
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Tag: 77017
Berry Bayou’s banks lie behind an aqua-tipped and aqua-tinted 1962 mod in Meadowcreek Village. The ravine lot property popped up on the market today, with a $99,900 asking price. Many of the home’s original details are intact:
Hollowed Grounds
WHY THESE SEISMIC VIBRATOR TRUCKS HAVE BEEN SHAKING UP SOUTHEAST HOUSTON 
A neighborhood resident tells Swamplot what George Henderson, owner of Premier Geophysical Services, told the Park Place Civic Club last week about what the firm’s seismic vibrator trucks have been doing in the area: “He is going west as far as I-45 and south of I-10 from Beltway 8 East. He is mapping gas, oil, and minerals. Per Henderson, Park Place property owners own the mineral rights. No, he will not divulge his client. No, COH does not have access to his findings. He gave an example in the past where they set up equipment on a commercial lot and purchased a house next to it for a hefty sum. He said they can work across long distances from set-ups like that. They should be done here in two weeks.” Photo: Swamplot inbox
Almost matching wings of a deep set 1960 “rancho deluxe” mod extend across the front of a wedge lot formed by the street curling off Forest Oaks Dr. in Meadowcreek Village. When listed last week, the asking price was $215,000 for the property — believed to have been custom built back in the day for the owner of Moore Paper Co. It’s still a swank spread offering many period details — and a few curiosities . . .
Roofing Hangover
A couple residents of Park Place Acre Villa are interested in finding out what the point was of this fleet of Boone Exploration seismic vibrator vehicles rolling up Detroit St. and Findlay St. this week — and areas further east of the Gulfgate-area neighborhood earlier. After a few phone calls, a representative of council member Robert Gallegos reportedly showed up to talk to the crew from Premier Geophysical Services, which has been conducting seismic testing in the area.
Urban Prospecting
CROWDWATERING, CROWDGOBBLING SUCCESSES 
Crowdfunding efforts for 2 separate Houston ventures featured on Swamplot last month have achieved their fundraising goals. Rebecca Masson tells Swamplot that “Fluff Bake Bar will happen,” after a campaign on Kickstarter brought in $53,580 in donations. But Masson says she’s “still in talks” with the landlord about the new Midtown retail sweet shop she’s planning; location details won’t be announced until there’s a signed lease. Meanwhile, $3,035 brought in from a campaign on YouCaring means 20 new trees donated to Meadowcreek Village Park by Trees for Houston will have enough water to drink for 2 years. Got concerns about what the trees will drink after that? The campaign still has 9 days to go before it closes. Map: Meadowcreek Village Civic Club Beautification Committee
A TREESTARTER FOR MEADOWCREEK VILLAGE PARK 
There’s no ponderous selfie video to go with the appeal (a more generic promotional vid from Trees for Houston is posted instead), but the Beautification Committee of the Meadowcreek Village Civic Club has taken to a crowdfunding site to raise money for twenty 15-gallon trees they hope to plant at drought-stricken Meadowcreek Village Park on Forest Oaks Blvd. just south of Allendale Rd. The $3,000 the committee hopes to raise from online donations won’t be going to buy the trees, however — Trees for Houston has already donated them. Instead, they’re trying to fund the trees’ watering costs for 2 years, which committee chair Joe Rocha figures will cost $75 per tree per annum. With a mere 43 days to go before the end-of-the-year watering-fund deadline, the campaign is almost a third of the way toward its goal. [YouCaring] Drawing of Meadowcreek Village Park: Beautification Committee
COASTAL INSPIRATIONS BROUGHT HOME IN MEADOWBROOK 
“Needs lots of TLC,” says one of the captions of one of the few photos of this 1934 house, designed and built by the C.C. Bell Construction Company just southeast of the Glenbrook Park Golf Course here in Meadowbrook. But the caption and the rest of the photos in the listing suggest only what the house might need in the near future, failing to mention much about its past: The 3-bedroom, 2.5-bath Spanish Mediterranean is described in Stephen Fox’s most recent edition of the AIA guide as one of the “original Coral Gables-inspired bungalows” built in this neighborhood by Bell after a trip to Florida in the ’20s. Want this piece of — er, history? The 2,258-sq.-ft. fixer-upper went on the market on Friday, with an asking price of $135,000. [HAR] Photo: HAR
Custom in 1967, this barn-meets-barn Dutch-like home spreads across a lot of lot over in Pasadena. An early example of an upscale Kickerillo number, the listing’s interior finishes offer cavernous ceilings — some of them given an extra bit of zip by some vibrant plaid wallpaper (above) — and “built-ins galore,” including a handy off-the-den pre-SodaStream soda fountain bar (at right). The super-sized property listed last month with an asking price of $379,210.
Dark-stained flooring and darker-stained paneling, cabinetry, and such transform parts of this 1955 ranchburger into something akin to an in-country cabin. The home and its woodsy lot sit off a shoot of Sims Bayou in Meadowbrook, near Old Galveston Rd. south of Park Place Blvd. Last week, not long after its initial listing in late March, the recently re-mulched property with the shingled-cottage mailbox dropped its asking price $5K — to $134,999.
A MEADOWCREEK VILLAGE HELP-YOU-SELL 
“SELLER WILL DO NO REPAIRS,” shouts the listing. But . . . um, visitors to this past Sunday’s open house did bring their own period furniture to dress up a brick flat-roofed Modern 4-bedroom in Meadowcreek Village celebrating its 49th birthday — as a foreclosure. That was for Houston Mod’s hastily announced Mod of the Month event. The instant living room arrangement from Heights vintage shop The Mod Pod is gone now, but the 2,558-sq.-ft. vinyl-over-terrazzo home at 2042 Forest Oaks Dr. is still on the market at $99,900. [HAIF; listing] Photo: Mod Pod/Karen Moyers
OUT WITH MAMA NINFA’S, IN WITH MAGGIE RITA’S 
What’s behind the rebranding of the 3 non-Navigation Ninfa’s Mexican Food restaurants — on Kirby at Richmond, Post Oak north of San Felipe, and the Gulf Fwy. feeder Rd. at Winkler — into Maggie Rita’s Grill & Bar locations, and the attendant replacement of the well-known Houston restaurant’s Tex-Mex classics with . . . tapas? Besides freeing himself and co-owner Carlos Mencia from licensing payments for using the Ninfa’s name, Suave Restaurants’ Santiago Moreno explains, switching to the Maggie Rita’s chain means a lighter menu that customers might be able to eat from as often as 3 times a week. But by his calculation the food switch may not make much of a difference anyway: “We’ve found out consumer decisions are made by women,” Moreno tells Eric Sandler. “When we track what makes a woman decide where to eat Mexican food, it has to do with margaritas. It has nothing to do with food.” The changes won’t effect Ninfa’s on Navigation, which has been owned since 2007 by Legacy Restaurants. [Eater Houston] Photo of Ninfa’s at 1650 Post Oak Blvd.: AmREIT
Who snuck all the wood paneling into this 4-plus-bedroom Meadowcreek Village mod on Berry Bayou? Its original owners, according to the home’s seller, who reports they ran a Houston lumber shop called All Woods Schroeder. The shop was located in the industrial complex at 5401 Lawndale just west of Country Club Place; this home served as a showcase for some of the exotic and fine woods it carried. That’s teak paneling you’re looking at above, wrapping the kitchen. For walnut, try the living room and dining room:
Eastside mod chaser (and Swamplot advertiser) Robert Searcy reports on a peculiar property he toured last week on Allendale Rd., not too far from Meadowcreek Village Park:
“. . . it is an odd mix style & architecture wise. The exterior looks like some suburban office building while the interior has a semi-commercial utilitarian feel with a heavy dose of Boogie Nights decor. The rooms are all ridiculously large with huge vaulted ceilings and lots of glass. Giant room dividers, not unlike what you see to partition off hotel ball room spaces, divide the giant open kitchen from . . . large U shaped front living areas. Could be a living room and a den, or a conference room and a reception area. Walking through the cavernous space, which appears much larger than HCAD records, you find yourself describing the rooms with sentences that all start with “well it could be either….”
Seems to fit right in with another hint in the listing: If you like that cute little white home you see next door [see bottom photo], it’s . . . available too!
PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE BAYOU Lisa Gray gets a glimpse of the “chai-colored” waters of Berry Bayou behind her 1966-model Meadowcreek home: “Most of the new houses sprouting in the neighborhood did their level best to ignore the bayou. Most of them still do; it’s rarely a selling point. A year ago, I was delighted to find that not only was it possible to buy a non-flooding bayou house for $150K, but that it might not cost any more than a similar three-bedroom house on a neighboring suburban lot. On har.com’s real estate listings, bayou frontage either went unmentioned or hid under the faint praise ‘no backyard neighbors’ — the same thing sellers say when a house backs up to train tracks. When first looking at the house I now live in, I had to stand on an overturned bucket to see over the privacy fence and down to the water.” [Houston Chronicle]