WHEN THE CAR’S JUST TOO NICE FOR THE GARAGE “It takes a little bit of maneuvering,” explains Nick, the proud owner of a blue-and-orange McLaren Senna and the reworked 1954 William Floyd bayou-side home just north of Woodway Dr. whose living room he parks it in. “I usually leave 2 cars in here. I usually have to come in,” he explains to globetrotting carhound Alex Hirschi, “drive one into the kitchen and then bring in the other one. If you would have came here last night you would have found there was a purple Porsche sitting right here and the McLaren was pulled in there — because it was raining.” Video: Supercar Blondie via KHOU 11
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Tag: 77056
- 5510 Tupper Lake Dr. [HAR]
Jim McIngvale, more widely known as Mattress Mack, told radio host Michael Berry this morning on KTRH that Gallery Furniture’s 30,000-sq.-ft. store at 2411 Post Oak Blvd., shown above, will close following the end of its lease in a year. “The traffic went down by half because they tore up the road,” said Mack, referring to the construction on the new Uptown BRT that now has the street peppered with blaze orange cones and barricades. Gallery Furniture opened the Uptown location in 2009 inside what used to be a Pier One at the Post Oak Shopping Center. The closure will bring the chain down to 2 branches: the one in Richmond off the Grand Pkwy. and its original spot on I-45.
- January 17, 2019 [The Michael Berry Show]
Photo: Isiah Carey
Mattress Pad Available
- 5370 Lynbrook Dr. [HAR]
HOW POST OAK’S NEW ROOFTOP MOVIE SCREEN PLANS TO GET TEXANS BEHIND IT 
Tickets sales start today at noon for the first movie to hit the new Rooftop Cinema Club screen atop the Whole Foods BLVD Place garage on October 3: Dirty Dancing. Following a few more blockbusters like Coming to America, Back to the Future, and Footloose the London-born chain will begin courting Texans with a home-grown lineup including Rushmore, Reality Bites, Dazed and Confused, Selena, and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (with a showing of Black Panther thrown in there on October 16 just because). At the end of its second week, the theater takes a hard turn out of state with Mel Brooks’ Mike Nicholls’ South Beach feature The Birdcage, only to come back in a big way with Texas Chainsaw Massacre the day before Halloween. [KHOU; previously on Swamplot] Photo of Whole Foods at 1700 Post Oak Blvd.: Dung L.
The latest generically named Houston co-working space is on its way to the BBVA Compass Plaza office building at 2200 Post Oak. Despite the corporate moniker, the brand isn’t all business. Its existing locations offer a few options for blowing off steam, like workout and shower facilities in the Austin Firmspace, as well as weekly catered lunches and “after hours events” both there and in Denver. (There’s even a private Firmspace social network that allows you to take your office relationships digital.) Topping things off are the picturesque views; the Austin location overlooks Lady Bird Lake, and Denver: the Rockies.
Setting the scene outside the planned Houston location: the Galleria. It’s just a block away from BBVA Compass Plaza, buffered from the tower by the Centre at Post Oak shopping center. Since going up in 2013 on the site of the former 15-stories-shorter Compass Bank building, the 22-floor tower shown above has changed hands once — in 2015 for what veteran real estate reporter Ralph Bivins then termed Houston’s new per-sq.-ft. record high price: $524.
Nice Coworking if You Can Get It
MATTRESS1ONE HAS SHUTTERED IN THE PLAZA ON RICHMOND, ACROSS FROM THE OTHER MATTRESS1ONE 
The closed location at 5132 Richmond Ave is the younger one: it opened up in 2016 on the north side of the street, opposite the 5129 location that’d already been in business for 2 years. On deck for the empty 6,555-sq.-ft. Plaza On Richmond box indicated above: Amazing Lash Studio. The cosmetic chain has roughly a dozen outer-Loop Houston locations. Map of The Plaza On Richmond: Greenwich Management
A POST OAK PARKING GARAGE SOLUTION TO THE DEMAND FOR DRIVE-IN THEATERS The head of the company now bringing a movie theater to the top of the BLVD Place garage at Post Oak and San Felipe tells the Chronicle’s Ileana Najarro that he “hopes to offer a social experience for those nostalgic for drive-in theaters.” What better place to do it than in Houston, where people drive in and out of buildings all the time? The catch: you’ll have to get out of your car and amble up to the garage’s top floor above Whole Foods and other retail, where it might get noisy — especially with that bus lane construction happening now on Post Oak. But there’s a solution: wireless headphones for each audience member — which Rooftop Cinema Club’s head says will “replicate the intimate setting of one’s car,” just like the old days. [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo of Whole Foods at 1700 Post Oak Blvd.: Dung L.
Post-oak removal, the sidewalk outside The Wynden wedding venue and adjacent properties south of it on S. Post Oak Ln. are looking stumpier than they have in previous memory. About 15 trees total went down within the span of just an hour last Friday, reports a Swamplot reader. They’re now laying low between Tilbury Dr. and S. Wynden Ln., along a roadside stretch home to buried utility cables and some recently-planted flag markers — indications that work may be planned for the underground infrastructure.
Some trees, like the ones pictured below, managed to stay standing — but not by much:
Stumped
Pacific Poke is the latest newcomer to Houston’s booming raw fish restaurant scene, and it’s taking over the empty 1,802-sq.-ft. spot on Richmond once occupied by Starbucks, next to what’s now Roostar Vietnamese Grill. The Starbucks location — shown above —Â closed down shortly before a brand-new Starbucks showed up across the street from it, just east of Chimney Rock in early 2016.
That left the building briefly vacant before Roostar arrived the following year in the spot next door to the abandoned coffee shop — now slated for a redo. Its Vietnamese restaurant space is shown below, done up with the 2-location chain’s abstract poultry-like logo:
Raw Seafood Chaser
- 5143 Green Tree Rd. [HAR]
The first stretch of concrete is down along a northern portion of the dedicated bus route that’s set to run up the middle of Post Oak Blvd. between Westpark Dr. and the West Loop. The photo at top looks north to show the freshly-paved southbound lane lying in the middle of the existing roadway, where it’s now making a stop at San Felipe St.
Its next drop-off point: Ambassador Wy., as indicated in the map below:
Trailblazing
The 2 new METRO bus lanes — linking a proposed Bellaire transit center to the new middle-of-the-road path up Post Oak Blvd. — won’t run over the actual building at Chick-fil-A’s Richmond Ave location, but they will cut through the property. Last month, the fast-food company agreed to vacate its spot at 5005 Richmond after the State of Texas initiated an eminent domain proceeding against it — and the location subsequently closed. (The 4 strip tenants in Weingarten Realty’s surrounding Richmond Square Shopping Center — BestBuy, Mattress1One, Cost Plus World Market, and Luggage & Leather — are also targeted in the proceeding.)
Adding the new transit route (shown in the map below as a vertical orange line partly covered-over with yellowish-gray) is part of a whole tangle of changes TxDOT has planned for the 610-59 interchange:
Eminent Domain
- 5531 Cedar Creek Dr. [HAR]
