02/21/19 4:00pm

Amid the hodgepodge of roadside restaurants and retailers shown fronting the I-10 westbound feeder in the leasing map for the Village Plaza at Bunker Hill shopping center, a newcomer has cropped up: Chuy’s Tex-Mex. Its mark is shown on the 5,800-sq.-ft. portion of the building at the west side of the complex that previously housed Boudreaux’s Cajun Kitchen.

Whether the new Chuy’s is planned as a replacement or companion for the chain’s existing standalone restaurant 3 miles away on Westheimer near Gessner is anyone’s guess seeing as that location’s still doling out burritos the like. Unlike the existing spot however, the new location will have a bit of competition to contend with: Freebirds World Burrito is at the opposite end of the building it plans to move into. In the space between, Bora Bora Nails, the Sacred Heart emergency medical clinic, Clear Direct Orthodontics, Memorial Tailors, Great Clips hair salon, and skin care clinic Skin 101 fill out the rest of what’s leaseable.

Photo: Jon B. Map: Fidelis Realty

Off the Katy
01/14/19 4:00pm

Now that the former XCars service center across from the Silber St. Walmart has been torn down, construction is underway on the Enterprise Rent-a-Car building that’s taking its place. The new 960-sq.-ft. building’s placement on the third-acre lot suggests there will be plenty of room to fit a fleet of cars there, too. The L-shaped structure that stood on the property previously was a bit bigger — 1,200-sq.-ft. — and featured a long canopy extending out over its parking lot and toward the El Pollo Loco that went up directly across the street in 2015.

Right now, Enterprise’s closest rental office is just down the street, across Silber from the Marq-E Entertainment Center and directly adjacent to Italian car dealership Helfman Imports.

Photo: Swamplot inbox

Walmart’s New Neighbor
11/09/18 2:30pm

A Swamplot reader sends the photo at top showing a relative newcomer to the semi-circular metal retail structure in the foreground: Mattress Outlet. It opened for business 6 months ago at the corner of Hempstead Rd. and Post Oak southwest of what’s now the Northwest Mall (and what public and private officials say could become the Houston end of that Dallas-bound high-speed rail line.) The 2 huts have been there for decades were at one time neighbored to the south by 2 more of their kind — until that pair vanished around the turn of the century.

Signage isn’t up yet, but a custom hardwood furniture business is now on its way into larger, blue hut next-door:

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Cozy New Digs
10/11/18 1:45pm

Between 1111 Guinea Dr.’s 1966 appearance in Better Homes & Gardens and the date it listed last Tuesday, there’s been time to mix things up in both the kitchen and the rest of the house. Not that everything’s different inside, though — those racket-like chairs, while not the originals, definitely take a page out of the magazine.

The house, a couple blocks west of Wirt Rd., is under contract now; it’s asking price: $890,000. Stepping on through the double doors pictured at top puts you right around the corner from the living area shown below:

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1111 Guinea Dr.
12/18/17 2:45pm

One of these 3 spots revealed in a report from the Federal Railroad Administration will be the planned site for the Houston-Dallas high-speed rail line’s Houston terminal. All 3 are near the intersection of the 610 Loop and the BNSF rail tracks that run parallel to Hempstead Rd. just south of 290.

In the map at top, the station takes the land directly north of the Northwest Transit Center, where an industrial complex home to Icon Electric, Engineering Consulting Services, and others exists now. Hempstead Rd. is shown fronting Northwest Mall at the top of the plan.

Another proposal puts the station in the spot where the mall is now:

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Bullet Train Station
09/14/17 11:00am

WEST HOUSTON CAN NOW FLUSH IN GOOD CONSCIENCE When last we (and the aircraft supplying aerial images to NOAA) left the West District wastewater treatment plant along Buffalo Bayou just outside Beltway 8 at the flooded southeast corner of Memorial Glen, it looked like this: shut down and surrounded by muddy floodwaters sorely in need of its services. That was September 3rd. As of this morning, the city’s Office of Emergency Management reports, both this plant and the one on Turkey Creek off Eldridge between Briar Forest Dr. and Memorial have been restored to full operation. This means persons in ZIP Codes 77024, 77041, 77043, 77055, 77077, 77079, 77080 and 77094 who had been following guidelines to limit their water use are once more free to shower, flush, brush, and otherwise send wastewater down their drains without special consideration of the consequences. [Alert Houston; previously on Swamplot] Aerial image of West District plant from September 3: NOAA  

08/15/17 12:15pm

The basic structure of a new bridge crossing from one side of the Conrad Sauer Detention Basin to the other in the northward expansion of Memorial City is now in place, this recent photo (above) from reader Marc Longoria shows. The bridge will be part of Mathewson Ln., which developer and property owner MetroNational is extending from Conrad Sauer Dr. eastward over the detention basin and connecting to Gessner Dr., as shown in this recent construction photo:

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Memorial City Marches North
03/20/17 5:45pm

Blalock Market at I-10 and Blalock Rd., Spring Branch, Houston, 77055former East West Bank at 1027 Blalock Rd. B0A, Spring Branch, Houston, 77055A branch of Taiwanese pastry chain 85˚C Bakery Cafe looks to be headed to the strip center endspot right next to the 99 Ranch Market at the intersection of Blalock Rd. and I-10. A permit to remodel the former East West Bank branch into a bakery was issued in December; Weingarten now has the shop listed in on its own leasing materials for the strip center (marked down for the spot closest to the grocery store, in the siteplan above).

Meanwhile, Eater Houston’s Amy McCarthy made note of a note of a coming soon banner for the chain over somewhere over in Chinatown this morning; the company has also been posting job listings since last fall for Houston-area warehouse positions, so multiple stores could well be in the works.

Images: Weingarten Realty (top); CBRE (bottom)

Spring Branch Branches
03/17/17 3:45pm

7818 Bellwood Dr., Bellewood, Houston, 77055

7818-bellwood-02

The resemblance of the front entryway of 7818 Bellewood Dr. to its angular 2001 visage might only be visible to those who knew the house in its earlier days —  before the 15-year-old home was taken down to the studs, then expanded to just over twice its original square footage.  The stripdown and buildout started after Boutros Construction bought the place and its roomy 0.7-acre lot, around the time it was listed for $1.15 million; the new, 6,041-sq.-ft. version is now listed at a smidgen under $2.5 million, and is decked out in slatey blues and greys (with most of the interior not yet committed to paint colors, if the listing shots are still a current indication).

Other than some rounding down of the turret on the right of the entrance, what else has changed? The porch stairs and main mass above the front door are a little more curvaceous, the widow’s walk has evidently been chopped off the top and sealed up during re-reroofing . . . oh, and there’s that brick chimney stabbed into the front of the new master suite off to the side. A more head-on view of the new look is provided by a rendering of the house, though a few details have been tweaked since the drawing was done:

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Hidden In Plan View
12/12/16 11:15am

Rendering of Heights Market, 7122 Old Katy Rd., Hempstead Industrial, Houston, 77055

7122 Old Katy Rd., Hempstead Industrial, Houston, 77055

Here’s a peek at what the old Delta Fastener warehouse at 7122 Old Katy Rd. might look like once Braun Enterprises gets done with it. The property — located just inside the W. Loop in that wedge of industrial parks hemmed in by I-10 and Hempstead Rd., west of Cottage Grove — was snagged by Braun at the end of November. A handful of renderings from Tipps Architecture (also behind the design for another of Braun’s not-in-its-namesake-neighborhood redevelopments) depict the 57,845-sq.-ft. warehouse done over in brown and bearing the label Heights Market.

The renderings show some new windows, large and small, sliced into exterior of the 1940s warehouse, and an existing loading dock redone as a cafeteria space:

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Changes for Delta
11/29/16 1:45pm

7710 Long Point Rd., Spring Branch, Houston, 77055

7710 Long Point Rd., Spring Branch, Houston, 77055The new lessees of 7710 Long Point Rd. — formerly home to all-Mex-no-Tex Otilia’s Mexican Restaurantannounced last week that they’ll be filling the spot with a craft beer bar and restaurant called The Branch. The folks in charge appear to be former Hay Merchant-slash-Underbelly catering head Madeline Cabezut, current Hay Merchant bar manager Kyle Pierson (though Hay Merchant itself is not involved in the project), and former Miller/Coors spokesmodel Amanda Mixon. An entity linked to serial redeveloper Braun Enterprises bought the place last year, after Otilia’s 2014 for-real-this-time shutdown. The trio formally leased the space around the end of September, and plan to have the place open early next year.

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Branching Out to Long Point Rd.