This white box, covering up the emergency exit of a vacated belly-dancing studio, will be the new entrance of Houston’s first indoor rowing facility, says founder Greg Scheinman. In West University Place, ROW Studios is building out the former Sirrom Dance behind the Randall’s in Weslayan Plaza and resurfacing the parking lot facing Academy St.
LOW-CAL RESTAURANT TO OPEN INSIDE WESTHEIMER’S HIGH STREET REDEVELOPMENT 
The shell shown here was about as high as High Street got before the ambitious mixed-use development was scrapped in 2008. In 2011, the property was sold and the project downsized by Dinerstein and given a timeless, compensatory new name: Millennium High Street. Yesterday, reports the Houston Business Journal, the redevelopment at 4410 Westheimer announced a new tenant: Season 52, a low-calorie restaurant with 2 other Texas locations, will open sometime this April. Besides the restaurant, reports Olivia Pulsinelli, Millennium High Street is expected to include 15,000 square feet of retail and 336 apartments. [Houston Business Journal; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Swamplot inbox
Just shy of a Norman castle, this 2007 chateau with Scheherazade-swagged interior occupies a corner lot of, fittingly, Newcastle Dr., on a spit of Afton Oaks lying south of Richmond Ave. The 2-plus story property rises regally (top) above the rooftops of neighboring one-story fifties-era ranch-style homes. The fairy-tale festooning (above) found within several rooms provides a voluminous, unifying motif — and also helps screen the presence of the Southwest Fwy. sound barrier located just beyond a live oak canopy and cross street. Re-listed mid-month after a brief breather early in the year, the home has otherwise been on the market since the end of 2010, with an asking price stuck at $1,190,000.
A source close to Blanco’s ownership tells Swamplot that by November the West Alabama bar and grill will close. Meanwhile, Blanco’s will be scouting for a new location, the source says, “somewhere in the area.” Swamplot reported in January that St. John’s School was buying 13 acres of property in River Oaks that include 3406 West Alabama St., where the incongruous honky-tonk and its dusty parking lot — owned for decades by Barry E. DeBakey, the heart surgeon’s son who died in 2007 of liver failure — have been for 30 years.
RIVER OAKS DISTRICT TO SEE ACTION, ADVENTURE 
The last we heard the River Oaks District was providing “move out concierges” to help Westcreek Apartment residents get off the property west of Highland Village where the upscale mixed-use cluster is going; now it appears that something’s moving in, the Houston Chronicle‘s Nancy Sarnoff reports: Florida-based iPic has signed a lease to build a 560-seat octoplex. It might not end up looking like the rendering shown here, but it will be called “Escape,” reports Sarnoff, and it will allow moviegoers to pick — get it? — among escalators, self-serve ticket kiosks, beers on tap, recliners, and pillows and blankets. [Prime Property; previously on Swamplot] Rendering: Oliver McMillan
There sure has been a lot of activity in the past few months here in Highland Village: the former Tootsie’s building is having a little taken off the top and being split in two for new J. Crew and Anthropologie stores coming this spring, though these recent photos of the building at 4045 Westheimer suggest that Anthropologie — or at least that mauve and understated storefront — is further along. But then J. Crew has farther to go: Anthropologie’s moving only across the street from its 4066 Westheimer store (shown at right).
St. John’s School has purchased 13 acres of land, expanding its 29-acre campus in River Oaks. Headmaster Mark Desjardins tells the Houston Chronicle that the school on Westheimer won’t be developing the new acreage right away and hasn’t decided what will become of the businesses already there at the intersection of W. Alabama and Buffalo Speedway. Those include a fortune teller, the River Oaks Plant House, known for its oversized topiary-like Chia pets (dancing at left), and Blanco’s Bar & Grill, sitting there in a dusty parking lot as though it’s on a far-flung farm road and not right across the street from the 23-story Lamar Tower. (It’s hiding behind the Blanco’s sign in the photo above.)
Workers at the Highland Village Shopping Center appear to be doing some demo work to the vacant building at 4045 Westheimer, a reader notes: They’re removing bricks from the parapet wall of the front facade. The dramatic Mod overhang that once wrapped the front and framed the entrance of Tootsies is gone. The building has been without a tenant since the upscale boutique left for Upper Kirby 2 years ago. A year before that, as Tootsies announced its move to West Ave, Highland Village owner Haidar Barbouti said he planned to tear down the building and build a 100,000-sq.-ft. multi-level retail space — with underground parking — in its place.
If you streamlined a multi-peaked Cotswaldian cottage and stuccoed it, the results might look like this crisp patio home in West Lake Annex, north of Richmond Ave. between Afton Oaks and the railroad tracks. The mid-block property debuted as a listing last week at $675,000. It sits on the back half of a shared-access lot; its stylized, tree-topped balconies (above) face the back of its closer-to-curbside neighbor.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOUSTON FIRST SKIPS THE BULLY SALES BLOCK “Instead of ‘hoping’ to get residential/retail development on the site, why not REQUIRE such development on the site via deed restrictions or other contractual agreements with the buyer? This is how HISD screwed themselves on the sale of their old administration building. They sold to the highest bidder and ‘hoped’ they would build something like the fancy mixed use rendering they were passing around. Instead we got a Costco and an LA Fitness. When you consider that HISD pockets more than 50 percent of every tax dollar paid by the property, they might have made more money in the long run by GIVING AWAY their land to someone who would have developed it more intensely.” [Bernard, commenting on Headlines: Downtown Block for Sale; Accessing Remote Hermann Park]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WON’T GET MOVED AGAIN “The move out procedure has been pretty crazy so far. You have to go and schedule your move out date (down to a 4hr window) to qualify for any of the incentives (a month of rent back) if they catch you moving outside of the window they claim they could hold out on the incentive. You have to make the move out appointment soon, i.e. in the next couple days. What we found was that it made for a difficult time finding a new place given the strong rental market right now. My family member is on a fixed income, so we needed cheap with easy bus access. We got her in to Maryland Manor, on Bissonnet, should be a stable community for awhile, and they had lots of space.” [MH005, commenting on 4444 Westheimer Residents To Be Gently Escorted from Their Domiciles]
“Move out concierges” are standing by to assist renters in the massive 4444 Westheimer apartment complex to deal with their impending evictions residence transitions. “Each resident has a specific member of our concierge team assigned to assist them to make their transition as smooth as possible,” a release sent to the Chronicle by property owner Oliver McMillan states. “In addition, we have developed a comprehensive move out package which includes a listing of neighboring communities, moving procedures and an incentive plan. The move-out plan includes incentive payments for up to a one-month rebate of rent plus return of full security deposits. Our concern for our residents is that we help them find a new home and that their move from 4444 Westheimer is done in a safe manner for everyone who lives there.”
No matter their function, the presence of actual concierges should help upgrade the overall feel of the property, which used to be known as the Westcreek Apartments. Oliver McMillan plans to move it, too: To River Oaks. After the apartments near the corner of Westcreek and Westheimer (just west of the Highland Village Shopping Center) are demolished (sparing units north of Bettis Ave.), the company plans to change the property’s name to the River Oaks District, and begin construction there of a $275 million mixed-use center.
A top-heavy brick tower tacked onto the front and Euro touches inside this designer-owned spread morphs a 1968 Lynn Park home into a something less provincial and more Provençal — or so the listing suggests. The slightly asymmetrical corner-lot property is a block east of the railroad tracks and two blocks north of Richmond Ave. at Drexel Dr. It’s a newly re-listed home seeking $899,900 with a new agent and agency, after a summer fling with a price tag $25K higher.
The 8-plex at 4725 Oakshire went down in a cloud of dust last week. “Bummer,” writes Jared Meadors, the landlord next door who bought and renovated the largely identical building at 4719 Oakshire 10 years ago. And who claims he “would have totally paid more than lot value for these and restored them as I did the units at 4719” if he’d had the chance. Meadors’s pinkish brick building to the west of the cleared lot is visible at the left of this photo:
