- 2727 Kirby Dr., 19L [HAR]
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Tag: 77098
The original Shepherd-side location of 59 Diner is now up for lease, with teal-and-bubblegum exterior still intact. The whole 59 chain shut down suddenly at the end of February, amid a tangle of formal and informal disputes regarding employee pay. The listing indicates that the 6,000-sq.-ft. building (officially located at 3801 Farnham St.) can be divided, as long as the future tenant wants at least 2,000 ft.
The ex-diner property is next door to the smaller building now housing The Halal Guys, whose red-and-yellow striped canopy is visible on the right in the east-facing photo above. The former carwash reopened as the New-York-food-cart-gone-international-chain’s first Texas location a few weeks before the 59 closures; hundreds of customers lined up outside the tiny venue during the opening weekend rush, some allegedly filling 59’s parking lot while waiting for hours for gyros and chicken.
- 3801 Farnham St. [LoopNet]
- 59 Diner Owner Showed Up to Pay Employees — and It Got Tense [Houston Press]
- Longtime Houston diner shutters remaining locations [HBJ]
- Previously on Swamplot:Â 59 Shake: You Want Fries with That?
Photo: LoopNet
Upper Kirby
- 2011 Milford St. [HAR]
That’s 2 stories down and 8 left to go for the last holdout in the former Corporate Plaza office park, seen here from the northeast looking across Kirby Dr. toward 59. The freeway-facing and side facades of the once-10-story midrise have been totally removed, and the remaining facade is beginning to look a bit patchy around the top; piles of debris can be seen stretching out to the north of the structure, across the now-barren Upper Kirby plain where the partially demolished Corporate Plaza parking garage nearly demolished part of the demo team back in February.
- Previously on Swamplot: Long Drawn-Out Breakup of Corporate Plaza Nearing Final Stages at Kirby and 59Watch Corporate Plaza Fail to Demolish Its Demo Crew with Surprise Garage Collapse; Shredding of Corporate Plaza’s Parking Garage Now In Progress on Kirby Dr.; Sweeping Up the Crumbs at the Former Home of Miyako, Red Onion, and Madras Pavilion; Demo Crew Now Chewing Through Former Miyako, Red Onion, Madras Pavilion Office Complex on Kirby at Norfolk
Photo: Lulu
Office-Appropriate Cut on Kirby
The last fading rays of setting sun cast a dusty glow over the oak stump in front of 2048 Colquitt St. just east of Shepherd Dr., captured by a reader over the weekend. An employee of Au Petit Paris tells the photographer that the restaurant isn’t behind the removal of the tree, which shaded the French bistro’s front patio; the arboreal departure occurred during the still-ongoing move-in of 2 townhomes across the street at 2051 and 2053 Colquitt (the latter of which is visible above on the left, behind construction fencing). Construction on those structures started last summer after building permits were issued to 2201 Custom Homes in June.
Here’s a close-up of the stump, accompanied by a sprinkling of springtime sprouts:
Bidding Adieu in Dearborn Place
Here’s a peek at the new space of Ruggles Green, back open this week at 2305 W. Alabama St. next door to the restaurant’s original shopping center spot by Persona Medical Spa. Ruggles announced the move out of the westernmost suite of 2311 W. Alabama at the end of 2014, and the doors closed on New Year’s Day. The restaurant has now reopened in the street-facing ground floor retail space at the northeastern corner of the 5-story Gables Upper Kirby apartment midrise, which opened across W. Alabama from the less-dense Gables Waterford Square complex last year.
Sprouting Next Door
The progress on the piece-by-piece disassembly of Corporate Plaza I can be seen in the above overcast shot of the building’s increasingly skeletal profile, here partially obscured by 2 American Red Cross buildings and by a Texas Direct Auto billboard. The 1972 midrise on 59 just west of Kirby Dr. is the last and tallest of the 3 similarly-clad office buildings previously occupying the site; the tower’s facade started to go missing shortly before the way-faster-than-intended teardown of the last of the plaza’s 7-story parking garage, which nearly turned the tables the demo team on its way down last month.
Status Check
A post-departure portrait of greenery along the Hazard St. side of the apartments at 1850 Colquitt St. comes with questions from a reader: what’s planned for the 16-unit complex across from the directionally-rebranded Takara-So complex? The shot above shows the leftover bits of 3 trees cut down at the site at the end of February; the 1948 complex changed hands most recently late last fall. Earlier last year, the building was a good deal greener all around — here’s a shot from its listing days from the corner of Colquitt and Hazard, showing the complex covered in ivy:
Stumped on Hazard
Houstorian James Glassman sends this photo of a shiny new blue tile street sign along a Westheimer Rd. curb just east of Kirby Dr., where months of road and sidewalk construction is wrapping up. The fresh mosaic is in the style of those installed around Houston in the 1920s and into the 1950s before the rise of auto traffic made foot-level street markers less practical than eye-level signage.Â
The new sign doesn’t yet appear on the online map maintained by Joey Sanchez of the Blue Tile Project, which documents the locations of the original tile markers, though Sanchez noted the sign this morning on the project’s Twitter feed:
Westheimer Blues
A reader caught a glimpse of the 1992 Solvay America building taking some more nasty blows from a demo crew out back behind the new 3737 Buffalo Spdwy. office tower south of the corner with Richmond Ave. (That’s the 2727 Kirby condo highrise glancing over at the scene from the right edge of the shot, while the distant Huntingdon tower looks away.) [Previously on Swamplot] Photo: Lufti Rukab
Octa-goner
- 1719 Marshall St. [HAR]
A rainbow sheen hangs at the foot of the Solvay America building as it crumbles back into the 3333 Richmond Ave dust from whence it came. A reader sends the above shot of the newly-stripped structure getting the ol’ hose-and-wrecking-ball treatment just before high noon today. The 1992 office building had its demo permit issued in late December; the building’s garage got one yesterday, just in time to join in on the fun.
The soon-to-be-formerly 8-story building is backed up against the 18-story office tower at 3737 Buffalo Spdwy. which wrapped up construction in November. Solvay has already shifted its offices over into the upper stories of the new tower, making way for construction of that 20-story hotel-slash-apartment highrise that was planned for the demolished building’s spot.
Meanwhile, the grove of oak trees northwest of the new construction seem to have weathered the construction as intended, and now stars prominently in PM Realty Group’s leasing brochure:Â
Breaking News
Yesterday’s unexpected acceleration of the parking garage demolition at Corporate Plaza hasn’t stopped plans to continue the ongoing deconstruction at Kirby Dr. and 59. An office worker across Kirby caught video of the narrow remaining slice of the 7-story structure tipping over and collapsing onto the excavator that had been tugging at a spot on the 5th floor.
The video (which also contains running commentary and a few surprised expletives) shows the other excavator and the rest of the demo team gathering as the dust clears to check on the operator, who emerges from the machine unscathed moments later. A Cherry Companies spokesman told CBS that the demolition work would continue as scheduled despite the office park’s attempt to turn the tables.
Turnabout at 59 and Kirby
A reportedly sober driver crashed into the strip center at the southeast corner of S. Shepherd Dr. and W. Alabama St. in the early hours of Sunday morning, according to KPRC. The unplanned beer run left the Jugs Draft storefront shattered open, and gave the Shepherd branch of Jenni’s Noodle House a new side entrance. Strip center neighbors Burn Smoke Shop, Mega DJ, and Mattress 1 are seemingly undamaged;Â all involved humans are reportedly undamaged as well.
Rare beers, however, were a major casualty of the event: The SUV crunched into Jugs’s bottle coolers, prompting the craft beer shop to liquidate what was salvaged of its chilled inventory in a $2 firesale yesterday. (Jugs is named for its 64-oz. growlers-to-go of draft beer, but also sells bottles and kegs.)
Party Foul
Teardown work started yesterday morning on the parking garage behind the Corporate Plaza II and III buildings (shortly after Blanco’s got hosed down less than a mile away). North and east of the garage (that’s center and left in the above photo), the last crumbs of Miyako, Madras Pavilion, and Red Onion were swept away earlier this month.
A reader with eyes glued to the unfolding carnage sent the above overview shot, which shows the Corporate Plaza I midrise hiding unsuccessfully behind the disappearing parking garage as it awaits its own upcoming erasure. The next-door headquarters of the Houston chapter of the American Red Cross are visible on the right side of the photo, as a West University water tower gives the building bunny ears.
Another reader sends these shot of an excavator gingerly yanking at the bottom of one of the interior support beams of the 7-story structure early yesterday afternoon:
And Then There Was 1
