- 26A Shady Ln. [HAR]
Sign up for the Newsletter
Tag: 77063
Word comes from Westheimer Rd. and Stoney Brook Dr. that the corner outpost of Alvarez United Transmission has now fallen beneath the canine-themed banner of Texas Direct Auto’s expansion. The shop is slated to be repurposed as a Sell Us Your Car! center, adding to the collection of Direct Auto facilites now guarding nearly all major highway ingresses to the city along with the Mars-themed Downtown locale. A rep for the company says the shop should be converted and ready to open later this fall; other United locations will retain their current allegiance and continue to operate.
County records pin the building at 7730 Westheimer to 1965, though signage at the site claims the business itself has been in operation since 1960:
Transmission Transition
A reader sends a few fresh shots showing the state of the new apartment complex going up on Dunvale, flanked by the sprawl of the Walmart and AMC 30 parking lots to the north and south. After a few-year-stint as a Garden Ridge, the former Sam’s Club (and its short-lived Business Center experiment) got knocked out of the way last fall to make room for a 387-unit complex that developer Embrey appears to be calling Everly (though the entity that bought the land last May before the demolition was called The Domain on Dunvale).  Here’s a rendered taste of what the buildings may look like, once the structures grow out of that awkward Tyvek phase:
Between 2 Parking Lots
The 4-story apartment complex going up on the northeast corner of Westheimer and Fondren roads (where Prosperity Bank and Landry’s Seafood Restaurant were torn down in a mildly apocalyptic display back in 2014) is now pushing leases and offering would-be tenants a chance to scope the place out. The place has also gotten a name tweak since the project was first announced: the former Crest at Fondren is going by West & Fondren these days.
The complex has sprung up just south of the late-seventies garden-style Victoria Place apartments (which appear to have been bought 2 summers ago by an entity controlled by developer Michael Novelli). The Fondren-side entrance of the 4-story building is clearly labeled as such:
Briargrove Revival
- 18 E. Shady Ln. [HAR]
- 1 Maggie Ln. [HAR]
New signage is up already at the former home of the Fish & the Knife restaurant at 7801 Westheimer. The 13,000-sq.-ft. sushi nightclub at the corner of Stoney Brook opened last February after 4 years of preparation, then closed after only 9 months of operations — with promises of a reopening after a “rebranding.” But it appears that a restaurant touting itself as “Lubbock’s Finest Dining Experience” is now preparing to open a Houston branch in the space instead. “The restaurant is already hiring a full retinue of staff,” notes Houstonia‘s Katharine Shillcut of the new Churrasca Brazilian Steakhouse, “but construction and cleaning appears to be underway and could take a while.”
Churrasca Brazilian Steakhouse
- 7516 Del Monte Dr. [HAR]
The old Vargo’s Restaurant, a lakeside steak house and wedding venue nestled between Piney Point Village and the Westheimer strip for 47 years, was torn down in May of 2013. Its replacement at 2411 Fondren Rd., a 5-story apartment complex, keeps the name (minus the apostrophe) and the lake, and maybe a peacock or 2 by the pool for photo ops. After 17 months of construction, Vargos on the Lake is ready for a grand opening shindig next Thursday followed by open houses the next couple of days.
Here’s a site plan of the revamped grounds, showing how the 276-unit apartment building (of 1- and 2- bedroom units) and 13 townhomes (all 3-bedrooms) have been arrayed around the lake:
Apartment Openings
Can a Mod in Piney Point Estates eke out a new life, or is there a dozer in its future? And if it’s getting torn down, will 1 or 2 homes rise on the lot? This nearly intact 1960 home on 1.37 acres could go either way, its listing, posted yesterday, says. Priced at $999K, the slightly shaggy property has had some recent updates, such as a new roof and zoned HVAC. It’s located east of Gessner Rd. and north of Westheimer Rd.
Ground Cover
THE FUTURE OF HOUSTON IS ON HILLCROFT NOW 
Armed with a few stats, Monica Rhor takes a look at Hillcroft Ave, ground zero for the Great Houston Influx: “More than 1 million immigrants — one of every four residents — call Harris County home, and the percentage holds true across 10 surrounding counties. From 2000 to 2010, Houston gained 400,000 foreign-born residents, more than any other U.S. city except New York. Last year, the county received 4,818 refugees from 40 different countries, the most of any county in Texas. The newcomers have done more than shift our demographics. They have created a metropolis where one-third of business owners are foreign-born, where the number of Buddhists, Muslims and Hindus has tripled in the last three decades, where more than 100 languages are spoken by students attending Houston public schools.” Hillcroft, of course is only the area of greatest concentration: “Immigrant communities are dispersed across Harris County — from the southwest side to The Woodlands, from Spring to Pasadena. Over the last two decades, even as the number of foreign-born residents has increased, segregation levels have decreased. Two out of every five people speak a language other than English.” [Houston Chronicle] Map: John D. Harden
Are we once again entering the “mightaswell” stage in the Houston real estate lifecycle? You know — the season for architecture firms near and far who’ve given up most hope that that bold, sorta-hush-hush, but definitively conceived-in-boom design they’ve been slaving over for the last several months will ever actually get built to come to terms with the idea that putting the pretty renderings on display for fans to gawk over what might have been isn’t such a bad consolation prize?
If so, these drawings of a 33-story residential tower on San Felipe — just west of Voss Rd., commenters on the HAIF message board figure — appear to be right on queue. They now appear in some of the new marketing materials of Dallas architects Humphreys & Partners, with no mention of a client. But a few details do come with:
Going Somewhere?
Tweaks to a 1977 Briarmeadow home have left it looking rather peachy inside, thanks to a dream-state color wash. The heavy-roofed French-ish property last sold in 2013, for $291,040, and has appeared in an assortment of listings and relistings ever since. Updated in that interim, the westward-facing home is now  attempting a flip at $409,000. Previous listings sought a high of $489K in July 2013, with reductions to $459K in September 2013, $449K in April 2014 (which snagged a contract but not a closing), and $429K in July 2014 — before taking a breather from the market in August. Renovations picked the bones clean and added new ingredients . . .
Continuity
SAYONARA FOR FISH & THE KNIFE? 
Eater Houston’s Jakeisha Wilmore is reporting that Fish & the Knife will close at the end of this month. Wilmore is basing her report on an interview with a Yelp reviewer who said that management at the Briarmeadow sushi house canceled her upcoming holiday event and told her that the restaurant was about to shut down. Wilmore could not reach management for confirmation, but should this really be the end for the 9-month-old restaurant, it would prove an abrupt final act to a bizarre and dramatic saga. The not-designed-by-Tony-Chi restaurant finally opened this February after a roller-coaster ride of a buildout that dragged on for 3 years. Wilmore’s Yelp source told her that the Fish & the Knife’s manager told her “financial challenges” were the cause of the possibly imminent shuttering. The restaurant’s demise might not be lamented in all quarters: On weekends Fish & the Knife transformed into a nightclub, and residents of nearby neighborhoods had become disgruntled with partiers parking along their streets and leaving trash behind. Update, 2:15 pm: Fish & the Knife management tells CultureMap’s Eric Sandler that the restaurant’s closing will be temporary and that the Fish & the Knife will reopen after a rebranding, while the weekend nightclub activities would continue in the meantime. Sandler also reports that opening chef, former Iron Chef America contestant Bob Iacovone, has returned to his hometown of New Orleans. [Eater Houston; Click2Houston; CultureMap; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Swamplot inbox
Built in 1977, a sprawling, stucco and partially stone-faced contemporary home in the Piney Point Village neighborhood called Windermere endured a big update in 2010 — as well as some sort of 1997 rebuild. Last week, the property’s re-listing flipped a couple of digits in its asking price: It’s now $1.56 million, down from the $1.65 million initial tag from a 2013 listing. (A later reduction had fallen as far as $1.595 million before timing out earlier this month.) Served by a circular driveway, the corner pocket lot on lasso-shaped Windermere Ln. backs up to the Fondren Rd. dogleg north of Westheimer.
Slides on the Sides
