Tag: Construction

Featured Posts
03/07/17 1:15pm

Nett St. Bungalow Bar-To-Be Drops Athletic Club Claims

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Washingto Corridor, West End
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4504 Nett St., Washington Corridor, Houston, 77007

4504 Nett St., Washington Corridor, Houston, 77007The little house on the angular 10,000-sq.-ft. lot along Patterson St. (wedged between Nett St. and the railroad tracks that run along scattered segments of Allen St.) is looking more like a bar these days, now that a tentacled tree logo has been applied to the side of the building. That logo doesn’t match the name originally picked for the spot on its TABC application — Mission Athletic Club and Drinkery — but a few other aspects of the plan have likely changed since 2015 as well, given the handful of revisions to the house-to-bar conversion plans on file with the city (the most recent of which dates to January).

Some digging around has been going on in the property’s yard of late:

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Digging In off Washington Ave.
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Featured Posts
03/03/17 5:00pm

Workers Smoothing Things Over around Westridge’s New Gas Station

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Westridge
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Gas Station at 1st Food Stop, Durhill St. and Buffalo Spdwy., Knollwood Village, Houston, 77025

A contemplative moment for the end of the week: the large excavator above was spotted bowing its head at the corner of Durhill St. and Buffalo Spdwy. as cement poured down from the sky next to the 1st Stop Food Mart, currently undergoing what appears to be Valero conversion. The portraitist notes that new glass and some signage structures have gone up at the site since the Saturday visit during which the scene above was captured; workers also appeared to have made progress on flattening out the new pavement on the Durhill side of the property, which was first crunched up late last fall:

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Tank Now In Hiding
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Featured Posts
01/31/17 11:30am

The Case of the Missing Dot Coffee Shop Dot, Where the Gulf Freeway Meets the South Loop

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Gulfgate, Restaurants
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7006 I-45 South at Woodridge, Gulfgate, Houston, 77087

7006 I-45 South at Woodridge, Gulfgate, Houston, 77087 Vintage roadside attraction photographer Molly Block sends in the fresh shot above of the empty triple post that previously held up the neon beacon of Gulfgate all-night diner Dot Coffee Shop (along with a previous portrait of the sign itself, circa 2013). Block snapped the picture of the bare poles over the weekend; an employee tells Swamplot this morning that both the Dot sign and the sign for also-Pappas-owned Pappas Bar-B-Q next door had to be temporarily taken down out of the way of that planned reworking of the I-45-Loop-610 intersection. The project will add another pair of direct connectors between the 2 highways, and retool the southbound I-45 frontage road, which runs along the edge of the restaurants’ parking lots (as shown in the TxDOT schematics below):

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Gulfgate Rearrangements
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Uncategorized
01/19/17 11:30am

ESPN Moves Super Bowl Shows from Midtown Park to Downtown Parking Lot Next to Salvation Army HQ

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Midtown Superblock Construction, January 2017, Main, McGowen, Travis, Anita streets, Midtown, Houston, 77003

A spokesperson from ESPN confirms to Swamplot that the network will not be using underground-parking-garaged Midtown Park as the main set for its Super Bowl week teevee shows after all, contrary to that October announcement. Workers were on the scene on Monday (as shown here), and the main pavilion structure appears to have been undergoing glow tests in the last few weeks by the same lighting design company that designed the new US59 bridge LEDs. The scaffolding-covered Camden apartments structure, however, appears to be missing some more significant finishing touches:

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Super Bowl Super Blocks
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Meanwhile
11/30/16 5:30pm

License Suspension Recommended over Fatal Californian Balcony Collapse

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Quicklink
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LICENSE SUSPENSION RECOMMENDED OVER FATAL CALIFORNIAN BALCONY COLLAPSE Meanwhile, in Berkeley: The California Contractors State License Board filed a formal complaint yesterday against the company that worked on the Liberty Gardens Apartments — where a cantilevered balcony in unit 405 collapsed last year, killing 6 of the 13 people standing on it. The board says that Segue Construction (which hired contractors to frame the faulty balcony) deviated from the specified building plan for the balcony, including swapping the plywood called for in the design for multiple sheets of specifically-not-OK oriented strand board. The agency also says the balcony collapsed when it did because of water-intrusion-related dry rot, potentially related to the balcony’s questionable waterproofing — not done in the way the design called for, and completed on “unknown dates” between May 2005 and August 2006 by another contractor. No charges are being filed by the Alameda County district attorney’s office, but the regulatory board is asking that Segue’s license be suspended or revoked. [California Contractors State License Board via KCBS]

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Near Northside
10/20/16 9:45am

City Red Tags White Oak Music Hall for Illegal Outdoor Stage Construction

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New Construction, Quicklink
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CITY RED TAGS WHITE OAK MUSIC HALL FOR ILLEGAL OUTDOOR STAGE CONSTRUCTION Rendering of White Oak Music Hall, 2915 N. Main, Houston, 77009A city inspector issued a red tag to White Oak Music Hall on Tuesday to stop what appears to have been unpermitted construction work on a permanent outdoor stage, Zach Despart reports this morning. The venue’s permit for the long-term temporary stage it had been using for outdoor shows expired on October 5th, a few weeks after mayor Turner publicly nixed the organizers’ just-take-it-down-real-quick renewal plans; this week a real estate agent who lives in the area handed out photos to city council ostensibly showing that crews were already at work to put up a new structure, despite the plans for the stage still not having passed the city’s permitting review process. Despart also notes that a show previously billed on the outdoor stage for this Saturday is now marked on its ticket purchase page as planned for one of the venue’s indoor performance spaces. [Houston Press; previously on Swamplot] Original renderings of White Oak Music Hall with planned outdoor stage:  Schaum /Shieh

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Downtown
08/26/16 3:30pm

Esperson, Pennzoil, 712 Main Tunnels To Reopen Next Thursday Around Stalled Sprout of Capitol Tower

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Quicklink
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ESPERSON, PENNZOIL, 712 MAIN TUNNELS TO REOPEN NEXT THURSDAY AROUND STALLED SPROUT OF CAPITOL TOWER Capitol Tower Tunnel ReopeningFrom the depths of the Esperson building, a reader sends a fresh shot of a sign announcing that tunnel connections from the building to nearby 712 Main and Pennzoil Place will be open again late next week. The phrasing implies that the connections beneath the site of Skanska’s planned-for-maybe-later Capitol Tower may not all be open by that time, but the Chase Tower (which itself connects to the lawsuit-embroiled former Houston Chronicle spot) will at least be accessible via a 712 Main detour. The tunnels beneath the former home of the previously-blown-away Houston Club building have been closed since 2014 as Skanska poured a tower foundation and built a parking garage; the company said earlier this year that it won’t be moving forward with the rest of the Capitol Tower until the market looks perkier. [Previously on Swamplot] Photo: ThaChadwick

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Downtown
07/27/16 4:30pm

Market Square Tower Crane Now Taking Itself Apart as Construction Wraps Up

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Market Square Tower construction, 777 Preston St., Downtown, Houston, 77002Market Square Tower construction, 777 Preston St., Downtown, Houston, 77002

The spindly yellow crane that has been dangling over the top of Woodbranch Investment’s Market Square Tower is coming down in pieces this afternoon, notes a downtown reader. The shot above shows the scene from the corner of Prairie and Travis streets, with the top edge of the still-standing-by-court-order former Houston Chronicle building sticking in from the left.

The 463-unit tower has been leasing spaces since April, with plans to open this fall. There’s still work to do on the building before then, though the support for the glass-bottom cantilevered rooftop pool that will hang some 500 feet above Preston looks to be in place. Here’s Jackson & Ryan’s rendering of what the space will look like once the water has been added:

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Coming Down Downtown
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Featured Posts
07/06/16 11:30am

Reshaped Guadalupe Plaza Park Preps To Reopen in Second Ward

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Second Ward
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Guadalupe Park Plaza Redo, 2311 Runnels St., Second Ward, Houston, 77003

The forest of columns behind the newly planted trees above are most of what’s left of the original central plaza structure in Second Ward’s Guadalupe Plaza Park, which the Greater East End Management District says will reopen on July 30th as several years of de- and re-construction work are wrapped up. The 1980s park now caps the western end of the previously redone Navigation Blvd. esplanade, and a landscaped sidewalk now connects the park to Buffalo Bayou at the crossing of Jensen Rd. (right across from the 136-acre KBR campus recently purchased by mixed-use developer Midway).

Here’s the view looking south along the walkway toward the main square from alongside cultural center Talento Bilingue, which the management district says won’t be knocked down until funding is in place to rebuild it: 

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Plaza Placement
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Featured Posts
04/28/16 10:15am

Cleburne Cafeteria Now Being Rebuilt on Bissonnet After Second Destruction by Fire

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Restaurants, West University
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3606 Bissonnet St., Greenway/Upper Kirby, Houston, 77005

Construction fencing is already up around the Cleburne Cafeteria, which burned down for the second time at 3606 Bissonnet St. earlier this week. The 75-year-old cafeteria business was bought by Nick and Pat Mickelis in 1952 at its original location on Cleburne and Fannin streets (which was recently occupied by DiverseWorks for a brief pre-MATCH stint, and currently houses the Zoya Tommy art gallery). The cafeteria moved to the Bissonnet spot in 1969; shortly after Nick Mickelis’s death in 1989, the building burned down for the first time.

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Restaurant Re-Reconstruction
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Featured Posts
04/18/16 10:45am

Wrapping Up Hanover’s 30-Story Montrose Tower

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WAMM
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3400 Montrose, WAMM, Houston, 77006

Windows are in on the Montrose side of Hanover’s 30-ft. Kroger-facing residential highrise at the corner with Hawthorne St. Those 2 rows of empty spots in the grid just below the former elevation of Skybar have been left intentionally blank and belong to the complex’s garage-topping pool deck, which looks to have its north-facing balcony already hanging out over Hawthorne.

The development’s leasing website lists August 1st as the planned date for the first round of move-ins, which leaves 3 and a half months to wrap up the majority of construction. The parking garage has yet to get its full modesty covering, per previous renderings from the Montrose side:

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High on Hawthorne St.
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Featured Posts
04/12/16 5:15pm

City Wants Your Comments on the Road Work Planned South of the Halted Road Work in Freedmen’s Town

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Fourth Ward
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Proposed street work, Fourth Ward, Houston, 77006

The presentation slides from last week’s meeting about the street and infrastructure work planned for Fourth Ward between W. Gray and Welch streets are now online — you have until May 6th to email the city about it, if you feel like doing so. The green lines show areas where 50-ft.-plus cross-sections are planned, with anywhere from 7 to 22 ft. of pedestrian space (mostly running 12-to-17 ft., in the not-to-scale drawings). Streets marked in light blue would range from 33 to 36 ft. wide, including only 1 sidewalk and a 2-ft. easement on the opposite side; areas marked in dark purple would also get 1 sidewalk, but both vehicle and pedestrian lanes would be several feet narrower (27 to 30 ft. in total).

The work skirts the southern edge of the not-quite-rectangular Freedmen’s Town National Historic District, which runs north-to-south roughly from W. Gray to W. Dallas St., and east-to-west from Gennessee St. as far west as Arthur St. in some places. Planned street and infrastructure work in that area is currently on hold due to the ongoing court case over preserving the remnants of brick roadways in the district, along parts of Wilson and Andrews streets. 

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Hitting the Streets
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Featured Posts
03/31/16 4:00pm

Dallas St. Redo Winds Down Before Final Four Clocks Start Running

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Dallas St. Improvements complete, Downtown, Houston, 77002

Beating the basketball crowds headed to Houston this weekend, the Downtown section of Dallas St. that’s been getting done over looks to be pretty much finished and ready for action. A reader took some shots looking both ways in front of the south entrance to the Four Seasons between Caroline and Austin streets — up top is the eastern view down Dallas, gazing toward the George R. Brown Convention Center and the catty-corner staredown between Hilton Americas and Embassy Suites from either side of Crawford. The new trees seem to line up with the spacing plans shown in the previously released project plans, which included knocking out a driving lane on the north side and turning it into parking (as the vehicles above are politely demonstrating).

Here’s the Four Seasons again from other direction — this time looking west toward Houston Center, with the First City Tower rising out of the frame on the right:

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Traveling Downtown
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Featured Posts
03/31/16 12:00pm

Tremont Tower Tarp Returns After Brief Hiatus

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WAMM
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Tremont Tower Condos, 3311 Yupon St., WAMM, Houston, 77006

A reader peers up the Westheimer-facing side of the Tremont Tower condo building, noting that the longterm resident tarp has recently settled back onto its habitual spot atop the dome behind Austin export Doc’s Bar & Grill (between Graustark and Yupon streets). The photographer previously caught the tarp neglecting its station about a month ago (shortly after that late-Feburary windy spell), giving the lemon-yellow dome its day (or few weeks) in the sun after at least a year under cover:

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Under Cover on Westheimer Rd.
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