- 3828 Bellefontaine St. [HAR]
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Tag: 77025
Fully fenced to mark off its “park-like setting” out back, this $364,000 Boxing Day listing sits on the bias of a Westridge corner previously converted into a dead end where it abuts 2 churches, their parking lots just beyond this property. A small drainage gulley also separates the Methodists at Bethany UMC from the Presbyterians at St. Luke’s Church, and it runs behind this lot as well. The neighborhood’s still-sort-of-new Longfellow Elementary School and Linkwood Park are just up the cross street and around the corner, as is a lot of road construction at the moment.
- 3618 Durness Way [HAR]
- 3107 Stanton St. [HAR]
Instead of razing this ranch-style home, the new owner raised the roof, adding a heap of space on the second floor and reworking the original floor plan downstairs. Located in Woodside, near Longfellow Elementary School, the 1957 home morphed via a to-the-studs renovation and addition following its purchase in 2009 for $315,000. Now weighing in at 3,621 sq. ft., the new listing’s asking price is a much heftier $675,000.
- 7911 Greenbush St. [HAR]
Traipse through an arbor gate and garden to enter this Westridge home. It’s more of a complex, actually, as there are 3 linked structures, one of which is listed as 1 1/2 stories. They open onto a central courtyard. As updated, altered, and currently used, the floor plan offers an artsy alternative to the neighborhood’s typical fifties ranch-style homes.
It’s 1 down and 2 to go for the properties comprising Shell Oil’s Bellaire Technology Center on Bellaire Blvd. A 3.2-acre slice leased by Shell for years is under contract for future redevelopment. The tech facility’s remaining 2 properties on the same megablock — one leased, one Shell-owned — will also hit the market as Shell ceases its 75-year presence in Southside Place later this year.
The oil company had announced in 2008 that it would close the center and relocate its operations to other facilities. City of Southside Place sources said the exodus ought to wrap up by the end of November.
Listed a month ago, 3747 Bellaire Blvd. (above) is at the west end of the block that stretches from Braes Blvd. to Poor Farm Ditch. The asking price was about $50 per sq. ft., Transwestern’s listing rep says. He had nothing to add about the buyer or plans for the property, which has 475 ft. of frontage on Bellaire and 300 ft. on Braes Blvd. It’s zoned (yes, zoned) for low-intensity mixed-use development. The transaction is expected to close by the end of the year.
WHY HANK’S ICE CREAM IS CLOSED THIS WEEK 
There’ll be no butter pecan, vanilla, or creamed corn flavors available for the next few days at the southern end of the angled strip center at the corner of Murworth and South Main St. — for a period of mourning. Hank’s Ice Cream owner and founder Hank Wiggins, who opened the shop with his wife Okemah in 1985, passed away on New Year’s Eve. He was 74. [Houston Chronicle] Photo: Edgar V.
A reader asks us to check out the views from the large windows in the master bath of this 1959 Woodshire 4-bedroom. Looks like you can see out, across a little inside court to the red curtains of . . . the master bedroom? Oh, and back atcha! Similarly, uh . . . inspiring views from behind those red curtains, into the bathroom and shower:
There’ll be a West-U-ish Molina’s Cantina location for the first time in 3 years — once the Tex-Mex chain opens up its new digs in one of the spaces left after the twin Terlingua Texas Border Cafe flameouts in March. Molina’s will go into Terlingua’s Braes Heights Shopping Center space on Bellaire near Stella Link. The last West U Molina’s, on Buffalo Speedway, closed down 3 years ago to make way for H-E-B’s Buffalo Market.
In other on-the-ashes-of-failed-restaurants news, the former Sabetta Cafe space at 2411 South Shepherd near Fairview is now the home of recently opened performance-art venue Greatfull Taco.
- New site back in the neighborhood for Molina’s [Bellaire Examiner]
- Self-Described “Elitist” “Asshole” Opening a Restaurant [Eating Our Words]
- Previously on Swamplot: Strip Center Lockout: Terlingua Border Cafe on Studewood Still Closed, Sabetta Café: In and Out on South Shepherd in Less Than 5 Months Flat
Photo of future Molina’s Cantina location, 3801 Bellaire Blvd.: West University Examiner
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THAT’S WHAT THE SURF SOUNDS LIKE IN HOUSTON “. . . I almost bought a home in Woodside (610) but skipped it due to the noise though. I told my wife if you try you could pretend it’s the ocean. It actually sounds JUST like the Gulf does about 12 blocks back in Jamaica Beach in Galveston.” [Craig, commenting on The Sound of the 290 Expansion]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: JUST ANOTHER WOODSIDE GARAGE EMERGENCY OUTPOST “Is that a chalk board I see in the third to last picture? If so, no wonder why cops and EMT types are interested in this place. Maybe they can hold roll call in the den.” [bgreen, commenting on At Loop’s Edge: A Bit of Woodside from 1958]
Hidden behind the tall soundwall that lines the westbound South Loop feeder road, just before Stella Link: this 1958-model kitchen-dining-den cockpit, control center for an original-owner listing in Woodside that went up for sale last week. “Be sure and notice the exceptional original doorknob” on the front door, instructs the listing. What’s more to see here?
