CRAPE MYRTLE MAIMING SEASON HAS BEGUN 
“I ventured out into the burbs this past weekend (Katy) and witnessed the unthinkable — crape murder!” reports a reader. And here’s a photo, sent in from the scene of the triple-massacre aftermath, near the intersection of Pintail and Spoonbill streets in Hunters Terrace. Just a little off the top, please. [Swamplot inbox] Photo: Swamplot inbox
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A buyer has at last been found for the carefully constructed Forbidden City exhibit at the shuttered Forbidden Gardens attraction in Katy. Well . . . for a portion of it, at least. Ben Cornblath is director of the museum and cultural center that closed under mysterious circumstances in February, then held an open-to-the-public selloff of many of its holdings. He tells Swamplot that a group of people in an “environmental” company associated with the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo has expressed interest in . . . that big shed that’s been standing over the model and protecting it from things like sleet, Hurricane Ike, and the Houston sun. The park is still awaiting the company’s bid. Cornblath says such structures appear to be a rare commodity around the metropolitan area, and this one has a strong track record of sheltering an entire miniature Middle Kingdom city for nearly a decade and a half. But getting the steel structure out of there won’t be easy: The move may require a crane.
What about that thing beneath the sought-after roof, the one-twentieth-scale model of Beijing’s Forbidden City?
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHAT YOU MISSED AT THE GREAT FORBIDDEN GARDENS ONE-THIRD-SCALE QIN DYNASTY SELL-OFF 
“I was there on Sunday, came home w/ 2 soldiers, 1 horse and 3 small figurines. The soldiers are FANTASTIC and I wish I had bought more, but for 100 ea it was a little steep to get a whole army of them. I have a bit of buyer’s remorse about the horse, b/c its in pretty bad shape, and is not long for the world. But it was only 25$. There were many people there, but it was by no means crowded, took 45 minutes to get in the gates.
The woman who rang me up, told me that a salvager was going to come by on Monday (yesterday) so I imagine the remaining men who were [intact] (there were still 100s left at noon on Sunday) will start turning up in thrift shops around.
What else? I am glad I got to see the gardens one time before it was destroyed. It was a lovely ground and I wish I had known about it. (I sort of knew about it, but never went.)
Apparently they were going to sell all the cherry trees as well, so they may still be on the market.” [anon, commenting on The 6,000 Garden Gnomes of Emperor Qin: Let the Great Houston Grave Ransacking Begin] Photo: Candace Garcia
COMMENT OF THE DAY: LOST TOMB OF THE GRAND PARKWAY “The bulldozed-over ones will make for some serious headscratching in the 23rd century when they are dug up and ‘discovered.’ Maybe the Asiatic Proconsul will use it as propaganda/proof [that] Global Manifest Destiny was already in the making in the early 21st century.” [SL, commenting on The 6,000 Garden Gnomes of Emperor Qin: Let the Great Houston Grave Ransacking Begin]
This weekend, while New York crowds flock to a recently opened exhibit of Forbidden City treasures belonging to China’s last emperor at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Houstonians will have a chance for a much more satisfying and interactive experience with the wonders of the ancients: Crowds here will be swarming to plunder a replica of the massive gravesite of China’s first emperor. It has come to this: Forbidden Gardens, the garden-free (and yes, until now open-to-the-public) little 60-acre museum and cultural center on the Katy prairie has found no buyer willing to purchase intact its collection of 6,000 one-third-scale terracotta soldiers from the 2,200-year-old Xi’an tomb of Emperor Qin Shi Huang Di, its one-twentieth scale model of Beijing’s Forbidden City, or its many other handcrafted and made-in-China models of historic Chinese treasures. So everything in the museum will be sold off piece by piece, in one giant 2-day artificial-grave-side blowout liquidation sale.
“CASH ONLY!! ALL SALES ARE FINAL!!” screams a notice posted to the ordinarily staid museum’s website:
What’s it come to that a quirky little roadside attraction in Katy can’t quietly sell off its extensive collections of handcrafted-in-China replica Chinese figurines and miniatures online without getting overwhelmed? In advance of the curious shutdown of Forbidden Gardens, the institution’s stewards had decided to liquidate its entire collection of scale-model attractions, including the more than 6,000 terracotta warriors assembled for a broadly interpreted one-third-scale replica of the partially excavated tomb of China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang Di. And yes, the venue chosen for a good portion of the sales: Craigslist.
(Last month, the venue’s staff announced that Forbidden Gardens, located on Franz Rd. in Katy just off the stub-end of the long-planned Grand Parkway, would be shutting down — to make way for the expansion of the proposed ring road’s Segment E. But plans provided to Swamplot show that the proposed path for the Grand Parkway would only skirt the theme park property, and would perhaps even burnish its credentials as a roadside attraction.)
An ad on the online classifieds site taken out by Forbidden Gardens’ curators over the weekend offered a “variety of terracotta warriors for just $100 each.” Plus: “We are willing to make a deal if you buy in bulk.” Pieces from other exhibits were offered for sale, including 1/20th-scale buildings — and porcelain figurines, for as little as $1 each! Clearly, this was an “everything must go” sort of event: More pieces from Katy’s strange little “museum and cultural center” showed up in other Craigslist postings that featured vases, store furnishings, even those red benches arrayed around the grounds.
By late Wednesday afternoon however, the ads had been taken down. “At this time interest has been so great that it is overwhelming us,” reads a new note on a new Craigslist ad posted by a museum staff member. “There are only 5 of us and we are all part time.” All those goods are still available — it’s just that the staff couldn’t handle the online rush:
If you are interested in seeing the museum one last time we welcome you. If while there you see something that you are interested in and the staff is not overwhelmed, please feel free to make an offer. . . . If you are interested in purchasing an entire exhibit we greatly welcome you to call the main office. For those of you wishing to purchase individual objects we will be having a mass sell off after the museum closes Feb 13. Please check our website where we will post info on this as it becomes available.
Mass sell-off! In other words, the already strange spectacle of Forbidden Gardens has morphed in its final days into something curiouser still: A museum of replicas where visitors can bid on the exhibits and take them home with them.
Segment E of Houston’s new Grand Parkway — more commonly known as the new ring-road highway planned to cut through the Katy Prairie to link the Katy Mills Mall to the Houston Premium Outlets mall in Cypress (and to facilitate cultural exchange programs between those two institutions) — has its first casualty, and it’s not an Attwater prairie chicken. One of Katy’s quirkiest and most beloved attractions, Forbidden Gardens, has announced it will close. The Chinese history and cultural museum’s peculiar but convenient location on a former rice field along Franz Rd. just off the Grand Parkway’s stub end likely wasn’t “just off” enough. Forbidden Gardens’ last day open will be January 30; a note on its website says the closing will “make way for the Grand Parkway expansion.” Forbidden Gardens opened in 1996.
Mod tracker and photographer Ben Hill believes this early-fifties Ranch is the best house Houston architect Wylie W. Vale ever designed in Katy. It’s a little less country — and features more rock — than this Swamplot reader favorite he designed a mile southeast, on Woods Hole Ln.
This 3,345-sq.-ft. single story, which sits on an acre of land near the center of the original town, has been on the market since mid-June, for $375,000. The home was originally built for former mayor Arthur Miller. And it was still in the family when Hill took these photos last year:
“We had gone to many places calling themselves farmers markets but their produce was coming in from California and Florida,†Susan Becker tells the Chronicle‘s Samira Rizvi. The 3,800-sq.-ft. Katy Fresh Produce Market she and her husband opened this week at 5026 East Third St. in Katy calls itself a farmers market; it’ll be open every day except Tuesday and “at least half” of the produce will be from local farmers, reports abc13’s Kevin Quinn, who spots bell peppers from Alvin, green beans from Cat Spring, and peaches from Fairfield (the city, not the subdivision).
- There’s a new farmer’s market in town [Ultimate Katy]
- New farmer’s market opens in Katy [abc13]
Photo: Katy Fresh Produce Market
LITTLE GRAND PARKWAY ON THE PRAIRIE NOT SO SHOVEL-READY AFTER ALL Those pesky federal regulators, ruining all the fun: It’s now looking like the 15-mile-long Upper Katy Prairie paving project known as the Grand Parkway Segment E won’t be getting the bucket of cash Harris County Commissioners Court wanted. County officials will instead request that the $181 million in federal stimulus funds earlier allocated to the way-out-northwest loop road be distributed to other projects: “The recommendation to withdraw the project from the Texas Department of Transportation’s list of stimulus projects was made by Art Storey, who heads Harris County’s Public Infrastructure Department. Storey declined to comment on his recommendation until it is considered at Harris County Commissioner Court’s meeting next Tuesday. ‘Staff and consultants have worked diligently and successfully to be on schedule to meet the deadlines to enable Segment E construction to qualify for and receive the stimulus funding, but the federal permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers cannot be completely processed by the required mid-February date,’ Storey said in a letter to the court. ‘In fact, because of conflicts over environmental impacts and mitigation, that permit might never be issued.’” [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot]
The ravages of the Katy Prairie have taken their toll on the models and unburied treasure at Forbidden Gardens, reports Brittanie Shey:
In 1996, when the museum first opened, it must have been an amazingly detailed sight. But [Forbidden Gardens founder Ira] Poon and his builders didn’t account for the Houston heat and humidity, which ruined a lot of the hand-painted details. Each terra cotta soldier used to hold a wooden weapon in his hand, but reckless children would climb into the display and take the swords to play with. When the soldiers started to break or peel, it was impossible to order more because the molds had been destroyed. [Weekend manager Alicia] Mendez said she and coworkers spend a few hours each summer having at the displays with Gorilla Glue to fix what they can.
FLOODING REPORT FROM THE NORTHWEST HOUSTON PRAIRIE BOWL The worst flooding damage from those late April storms centered around a swath of Highway 6 stretching from the Katy Freeway to 290 in northwest Houston. The heaviest rainfall was centered further west, along the planned path of the Grand Parkway Segment E. “[Jennifer] Bayles said her section of Bear Creek Village wasn’t within the 100-year flood plain when she and her husband bought their house 17 years ago. But it was added to the flood plain in new maps developed after Tropical Storm Allison in 2001, and the couple purchased flood insurance despite the steep premiums. ‘We’re well-insured; we’ll be fine,’ she said, but some neighbors don’t have the coverage they need. And their recovery efforts grew more complicated when they learned that if their homes sustained sufficient damage they would have to elevate when they rebuild. In the past few years, Bayles said, her street has flooded regularly during heavy rains, stranding residents in their homes for hours. But the April thunderstorms were the first time she’s had water in her house, she said.” [Houston Chronicle]
OUT IN DISCOUNT LAND Former Halliburton unit PathFinder Energy Services, now a part of Smith International, is building a new $20-million, 225,000-sq.-ft. tilt-up campus on 25 acres in Katy. “The center will be located near the northwest corner of Colonial Parkway and the Grand Parkway, next to the highly visible, 800,000-square-foot 99 Cents Only warehouse along Interstate 10. PathFinder’s site is across I-10 from where Houston-based KBR Inc. planned to build 900,000 square feet of office space to house most of its 4,500 local employees. The KBR project, which would have extended the Energy Corridor farther west, has been put on hold for economic reasons. PathFinder intends to consolidate hundreds of employees from four buildings it leases in Northwest Houston into the Katy-area site, which was acquired in December 2007 from an Interfin Cos. partnership.” [Houston Business Journal]
GRAND PARKWAY SPRAWL STIMULUS “The road exemplifies an unintended effect of the stimulus law: an administration that opposes suburban sprawl is giving money to states for projects that are almost certain to exacerbate it. A new master-planned community called Bridgeland is rising on the prairie along the proposed site of the road; once completed, the development is expected to have 21,000 new homes on 11,400 acres. Other developers are eagerly awaiting the new road so they can start building on their empty land, too. . . . [Roger H. Hord, the president of the West Houston Association] pointed out that the road would connect two existing highways and said it would ease congestion on some of Houston’s other beltways. He said that an existing leg of the Grand Parkway, just to the south of the proposed leg, would give a sense of what the new stretch of the Grand Parkway might look like when it is done. The existing stretch is lined with strip malls and gas stations and drug stores and a huge 7,600-acre residential development called Cinco Ranch that is popular with families.” [New York Times]
GRAND PARKWAY SEGMENT E: MALL SHOPPER EXPRESS LANES Approvals by the Harris County Commissioners Court this week — along with the timely arrival of $181 million of the state’s stimulus money — means nothing but a new Sierra Club lawsuit now stands in the way of building Segment E of the Grand Parkway toll road. The segment, which will cut through the Katy Prairie between I-10 and 290, will allow shoppers a convenient and direct link from the Katy Mills Mall to the new Houston Premium Outlets mall in Cypress, just west of Fairfield. “Peter Haughton with General Growth Properties said, ‘We need this road to continue the build out of Bridgeland, which we hope will be one of America’s best master planned communities.’” [abc13]