Woodsy trim takes a casual course through a 1941 home in Idylwood, starting with a boarded up wall in the living room (top). The property’s listing earlier this week came with a $459K price tag — and a Sunday afternoon open house on its calendar.
Doubled windows dominate the front of an updated 1946 Idylwood home. Each pair indicates a front-to-back section of the floor plan within. The south-facing property sits on a sloping lot in the neighborhood’s southeast corner; the street, which begins at Wayside Dr. just north of Walmart, eventually bends past the grassy banks of Brays Bayou. Over the weekend, the home popped up on the market as a listing seeking $265K. The same agent handled the property’s previous sale in 2008, when the current owner paid $185K before sprucing it up.
Deep porches on an updated 1915 Eastwood home listed for lease look toward a residential street lined with similarly neighborly vantage points, all shaded by huge palm trees and live oaks. Behind the home run train tracks — and a tract promised for Lovett Commercial’s Harrisburg Crossing, a mix of retail and office space fronting Harrisburg Blvd. between Oakhurst and Lockwood streets. That juxtaposition also puts the rental home around the block from Metro Rail’s Green Line station at Lockwood.
CITY COUNCIL APPROVES BOTANICAL GARDEN ON GLENBROOK PARK GOLF COURSE, GUS WORTHAM COURSE RENOVATIONS 
City council voted unanimously this morning to give the go-ahead to plans to renovate the Gus Wortham Golf Course north of Idylwood, and allow the group that had previously attempted to turn that location into a botanical garden to develop a facility instead on the current site of the 18-hole Glenbrook Park Golf Course, along Sims Bayou on the north side of the Gulf Fwy. south of Loop 610. The long-term lease agreements are victories for the operating organizations behind both efforts, but the garden group clearly got its second choice; an Inner Loop garden on site of the oldest golf course in Texas would have had better access to public transportation including the new light-rail line, and would have been surrounded by less freeway noise. If the Houston Golf Association fails to raise $5 million for the Gus Wortham redo before the end of this year, it’s possible the split could be rejiggered; the Houston Botanic Garden Board is being given until the end of 2017 to raise $20 million for its efforts. [Previously on Swamplot] Photo of Glenbrook Park Golf Course: Houston Golf Nut
Spiffed up more than considerably since its purchase for $93K in September 2014, a double-decker Simms Woods spread maxes out the midcenturyisms. Do the updates — to just about every surface and system — merit the $450K asking price in its listing over the weekend? The 1955 property, in a neighborhood west of Idylwood, is one lot off the intersection of Jefferson and Hackney streets. That puts it catty-corner to the site of a planned 173-home subdivision on a cleared, former 11.93-acre warehouse property adjacent to the HB&T rail line.
Here is the lot plan for University Grove, a 39-lot single-family development to go in at the corner of Leeland St. and Cullen Blvd., across the Gulf Freeway from UH, just across the street from Mandola’s Deli, right behind the Polk St. Kroger and hard by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railway line.
Landowner Leeland Baking Company, Inc. is listed as a subsidiary of Flowers Foods Inc., the Thomasville, GA-based mega-bakery behind such brands as Nature’s Own, Whitewheat, Wonder Bread, Cobblestone Mill, and Tastykake.
Overhauled this year, a 1935 Broadmoor foursquare across the street from a small park is aiming for a sale price of $339,000 — after a purchase in August 2013 for $127,500. What comes with a more-than-$200K bounce? Some of the updates to the property, which is located west of Telephone Rd. and near the neighborhood’s namesake street, include a renovated kitchen and bathrooms, roof, electrical and plumbing systems, and air conditioning. But the home’s interior has kept its 80-year-old proportions, trim, and efficient floor plan:
GOLFERS APPEAR TO HAVE WON GUS WORTHAM 
It might not have sounded quite so explicit to all onlookers, but the Chronicle‘s Mike Morris declares yesterday’s city council vote a death knell for plans to build a botanical garden on the site of the Gus Wortham Golf Course. The vote was taken in support of city efforts to come to an agreement with the Houston Golf Association for a plan to renovate the 106-year-old course at Lawndale and Wayside in the East End, which the nonprofit would then operate. But, writes Morris: “If the city cannot reach terms with HGA, the mayor said, she will seek proposals from private golf operators rather than hand the site to the botanic garden backers, as previously planned.” The HGA will need to meet designated fundraising targets — likely $5 million of a possible total $15 million renovation cost — for its plan to proceed. Mayor Parker and councilmembers appeared eager to steer the group pushing for a city botanical garden 6 miles southeast, to the Glenbrook Park golf course outside the Loop along Sims Bayou, just east of the Gulf Fwy. [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo: PGA
Garden trumps garage in this 1930 cottage in the Lawndale neighborhood of Greater Eastwood. The home, renovated in 1990 and updated inside more recently, looks to have lengthened its footprint at some point on the midblock lot. A tad of leftover lawn behind the house (top) extends into a stub of land by the parking area. In the next block, the street dead ends at the railroad tracks that cross Lawndale St. and Telephone Rd. Listed earlier this month, the home bears an asking price of $349,900.
When renovated by a previous owner in 2007, a 1936 Craftsman-like home in Eastwood modernized but also played up period details. A subtle color wash in pastel shades (above) adds to the pastoral mojo, though house and driveway sit behind an iron fence at the front lot line. Earlier this week, the property popped up on the market with a $345,000 asking price. Its location is 3 lots north of S. Lockwood Dr. and 3 blocks from the Eastwood/Lockwood stop on Metro’s coming East End line.
GOLFERS AND GARDENERS GET GROUND RULES FOR GRABBING GUS WORTHAM PARK 
The deadline for the Houston Golf Association to raise the $15 million the city says it’ll need to save and restore the Gus Wortham Park golf course at Lawndale and Wayside will be the end of next year, Gail Delaughter reports. If the nonprofit organization can’t meet that goal, the city will have a separate set of fundraising goals set up for the group that wants to scrap the greens and build a botanic garden at the 150-acre site, which lies just a couple blocks south of the coming far eastern extension of Metro’s East End light-rail line. If Gus Wortham golf supporters do come up with the funds, the botanical garden will likely be planned for the Glenbrook Park golf course on the northeast side of the Gulf Fwy. outside the loop. The targets and dates will be encoded in separate contracts the city is putting together with the 2 groups and put up for a vote in city council sometime this month. [Houston Public Media; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Houston Parks Board
There’s plenty of buffering yard in back, but this Idylwood home hugs the curve of the street in front, so open grounds swing to the side as well. Palm-crowned, the deep lot has a saw-like shape, with the house holding the “handle” near the jog. Beyond the far-away back fence on the property lies the side parking lot of the Wayside Dr. Walmart Supercenter. The well-tended 1952 home is set on a slight diagonal across its almost quarter-acre kinda-corner lot; but there’s a section (not pictured, though it’s also heavily landscaped) that falls outside any fencing (above) lined up to square off the setback.
Since its purchase in 2010 for $65,000, an Eastwood property has gained what is described as — in the most recent of its 3 separate listings so far this year — a 2011 “Craftsman-inspired” home. The current listing has a $519,000 asking price. That’s down from the $555,000 mentioned in its March through April 2014 market debut and its weeklong appearance in early May at $529,999.
A company that’s been building a growing chain of private college dorms is seeking a 10-year tax abatement from the city to help it build a $56 million 305,076-sq.-ft. complex just north of the Gulf Fwy. from the University of Houston. Houston’s version of Aspen Heights (as the company and all its dorms are named) would sit on 7.7 acres just north of the Catholic Charismatic Center on Cullen Blvd., across the street from the former Finger Furniture warehouse recently purchased by developer Frank Liu. The dorms would sit in the far southeast corner of East Downtown, backing up to the railroad tracks that form the neighborhoods northern and eastern boundary:
