The owner of the year-and-a-third-old Purple Elephant Gallery tells Cypress Creek Mirror reporter Rebecca Bennett of her plans to turn her stretch of McSwain St. off Kluge Rd. into an artsy “Old Town Cypress.” Already up: her backyard Iron Butterfly Studio and the thatched-roof Street of Dreams Palapa at 12802 McSwain, where hoopdancers attend Houston Spin Stars classes (above). Next, Debra Reese wants to turn a home she owns down the street into a restaurant.
“This has always been my dream, and that’s why I named it the Street of Dreams. You can make your dreams come true. You can even have a pig,†she said.
Jack-in-the-Box-owned Chipotle competitor Qdoba Mexican Grill has opened its first Houston-area location (in a little while, at least) — in a former Hollywood Video location near Home Depot at the end of a strip center at 17400 Spring Cypress Rd. in Cypress, just northwest of Hwy. 290. 
The Bryan farm-lending coop that ended up with 618 acres near Tomball after the collapse of Royce Builders has finally sold the property — to the Caldwell Companies, a land development and investment firm. Royce had planned 1,261 home lots in Cypress Lake Crossing, which is northeast of the intersection of Telge Rd. and Boudreaux and only a couple miles north of the sprawling Cypress home of former Royce president John Speer. (Speer’s Royce-built compound off Telge Rd., pictured above, now serves as the home address of one of his new ventures, Vestalia Homes.) “Bill Heavin, a land broker at Grubb & Ellis Co., says Royce Homes had completed quite a bit of development work on the tract, such as soil and water testing and the establishment of Harris County Municipal Utility District #416.
