05/10/16 1:00pm

3501 W. Alabama, Greenway,

The walls came down last week at the southwest corner of Edloe and W. Alabama streets, in the wake of a demo permit issued the week before. A few readers had eyes and lenses on the spot, which is currently listed for lease on LoopNet as 3000 Alabama Ct. but goes by 3501 W. Alabama in other county records. The walled complex (shown mid-teardown at the start of last week) was sold to St. Luke’s in 2009 by Metsun Senior Living, though it’s rumored to have been a former residence of deceased Greenway Plaza mastermind Kenneth Schnitzer.

St. Luke’s, whose main land holding sits catty-corner to the Alabama Ct. property, also owns the office park across Edloe, visible to the east of the freshly-emptied lot in this shot below from later last week:

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Alabama Ct.
04/26/16 10:30am

Former Houston Chronicle Building, 801 Texas Ave., Downtown, Houston, 77002

The company developing the block across Prairie St. from the Houston Chronicle‘s downtown ex-headquarters filed a lawsuit last week over the impending demolition of the paper’s former haunt at 801 Texas Ave. Theater Square, an entity connected to Linbeck, claimed in a Wednesday night filing that the upcoming demo interferes with its plans to build a tunnel through the former newspaper building’s basement to connect its across-the-street property into the broader downtown tunnel network.

The ex-Chronicle building (actually a collection of buildings later wrapped together behind a single facade) currently sits above a tunnel segment connecting the 717 Texas Ave. building (the office building formerly known as Calpine Center) sharing a block with the Lancaster Hotel and its new parking lots) to the Chase tower (south across Texas Ave., between Milam and Travis). Theater Square’s filing alleges that news corporation Hearst agreed back in 2007 to give the company permanent access to some underground easements for the purpose of building a new tunnel segment leading to the property across Prairie (currently a surface parking lot previously slated for the International Tower project). Theater Square also claims that the easement access agreements transferred to the next owner when Hines bought up the property last year.

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Downtown Tunnel Tussle
04/07/16 10:45am

Former Houston Chronicle Building, 801 Texas Ave., Downtown, Houston, 77002

A line of orange plastic barricades is now artfully wrapped around the base of the former Houston Chronicle headquarters at 801 Texas Ave., as is some construction fencing. Hines purchased the property last fall and is preparing to demolish the structure, which is actually an amalgamation of several slightly misaligned buildings wrapped up behind a single 1960s-or-so facade. The shot above looks down Texas Ave. from the corner with Travis St., with Calpine Center looming in the background between Milam and Louisiana.

Hines hasn’t said what it plans to do with the land in the long run, yet, and the company has other projects in progress at the moment — a block away on Main St., Hines’s 48-story 609 Main office tower is still under construction.

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Making Newspaper Building History
04/06/16 12:15pm

Proposed Blossom Hotel on Lehall St. at Bertner Ave., Cecil Street Courts, Houston, 77030

Here’s a preview of the 9-story hotel planned for the stretch of now-mostly-cleared land along Lehall St. at Bertner Ave. south of the Texas Medical Center. The land slated to hold the Blossom Hotel Houston is right across Bertner from where the TMC wants to build a double helix park and collaborative campus; Zhejiang Blossom Tourism Group has been buying up lots on the east and northeast of the block, which have held a mixture of homes, a commercial building, and nothing over the last few decades.

Not shown in the rendering:  the lone house still standing right on at the corner of Lehall St. and Bertner Ave.:

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Last One Standing
04/06/16 10:45am

Yale St. Bridge over White Oak Bayou, Houston Heights, Houston, 77007

Yale St. Bridge over White Oak Bayou, Houston Heights, Houston, 77007 An orange and black construction marquee is now advertising the upcoming closure of the Yale St. bridge over White Oak Bayou just south of I-10, starting the Monday after next and running until the New Year’s Eve after next. The 1931 bridge, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is slated for replacement after years of asking crossers to please watch their weight (with 10,000 pounds per axle being the most recent upper limit). The per-axle limit was at 8,000 pounds prior to a 2012 drop to 3,000 (which disqualified some SUVs and minivans). The addition of carbon strips to the structure caused TxDOT’s weight limit to yo-yo back up to 10,000.

The plans for the new bridge floated by TxDOT in 2014 included wider outside vehicle lanes and slightly narrower sidewalks (down to 5 feet from 6). But summary and followup notes from the public meeting held at the end of July 2014 say the design has been updated to include 8-foot-wide shared bike and pedestrian pathways on either side of the bridge, in response to the public comments on the project.

The TxDOT meeting summary notes also documents the agency’s attempt to sell the bridge in the Houston Chronicle:

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Coming Back a New Bridge
03/25/16 10:30am

Lamar Tunnel Walkthrough, Downtown, Houston, 77002

Lamar Tunnel Walkthrough, Downtown, Houston, 77002

Here’s a fresh dispatch from Swamplot’s regular anonymous tunnel correspondent, who sends this photo-heavy update on the state of the Lamar Tunnel beneath the site of the former downtown Foley’s-turned-Macy’s building:

“The old tunnel to Macy’s from 1000 Main is now back open again. Despite what the sign says, it no longer leads to a department store — instead, you round a corner into the lower level of 1111 Travis, Hilcorp’s new (future?) headquarters: CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

News from the Underground
03/17/16 1:45pm

COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHAT IS AND ISN’T RISING IN THE MEYERLAND FLOODPLAIN McMansions and McMoat“Last night I rode my bike over to an area of Meyerland that I kept seeing listed in the Daily Demolition Report (this is the pocket just south of S. Braeswood, west of S. Post Oak). It was worse than I imagined. Many houses have been removed. Many others are still standing but vacant. A few have been rebuilt or are in the process of being rebuilt — these are all 2-story ‘McMansions’ and elevated. Visually, it’s a weird looking place. The new houses stick out because of their scale to start with, and putting them up on pedestals next to empty lots exaggerates the effect. When the floods come again, they will be surrounded by a giant McMoat.” [Memebag, commenting on Comment of the Day: Where Houston Stayed Underwater After the Memorial Day Flood] Illustration: Lulu

03/15/16 11:15am

2200 Yale St., Heights, Houston, 77008

Alabama Furniture & Accessories’ 2-decade locale is getting cleared out for its planned redo, a neighbor notes. The building at 2200 Yale St. got a demo permit yesterday and started coming down later in the day. The site at the corner with 22nd St. is being cleared for another Braun Enterprises project: a third non-mobile Bernie’s Burger Bus location, as confirmed in October. The furniture store (named for its original 1992 location on Alabama St.) cleared out of its Yale home by the start of March, and has flown even further north to 4900 N. Shepherd Dr. between W. 43rd St. and Tidwell Rd.

Photo of demo at 2200 Yale St.: Mosaic Clinic team

Migrating North
03/11/16 1:00pm

March 11th Mural at former Heights Finance Station Post Office, 1050 Yale St., Houston Heights

Update, 5 pm: Work on the wall is finished; this article has been updated with additional photos.

A reader catches more than a dozen folks in the act of dolling up the former post office at 11th St. with some giant hearts and numbers this morning. The building, which was recently given a Valentine’s-themed makeover on the opposite side by some likely-taller members of the Houston mural scene, has been getting romantic attention while waiting for MFT Development to go forward with plans to demolish the structure to build a lowrise retail and office complex.

In the interrim, MFT says they’ve set the art students of Hogg Middle School on the Heights Blvd. side of the building. Here’s another shot of the action, looking closer to 11th:

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Love All Around
03/08/16 10:00am

TREE PROFESSIONALS: PECAN AT 509 LOUISIANA ST. WOULD HAVE JUST DIED ANYWAY Pecan Tree formerly at 509 Louisiana St., Downtown, Houston, 77002The pecan tree formerly behind the former Longhorn Cafe on Louisiana St. is down at last, following the 100-plus-year-old buildings at 509 and 517 Louisiana into that Great Big Preservation District in the Sky. Nancy Sarnoff of the Houston Chronicle reports that 2 arborists were called in to examine the tree, and pronounced it dead-or-close-enough: Lauren Lusk Willis, a member of the family that owns the next-door Lancaster Hotel, told the Chronicle that a lightning strike had damaged the tree, and that its core was rotting. Willis said that the pecan “would not likely have survived the leveling of the lot for any construction,” and that “ultimately, it wouldn’t have survived regardless.” The tree, haunted by a both-Sam-and-city-of Houston ghost story, was long visible only to those who entered 509 Louisiana’s hidden courtyard, until the pecan’s 2001 outing by the demo of the Rice Rittenhouse parking garage; it went back into hiding by the end of 2003 with the help of 33-story Calpine Center. [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo of the pecan tree, following demolition of 509 Louisiana St.: KineticD

02/29/16 4:45pm

223 Westheimer Rd., Avondale, Houston, 77006

The pale yellow former house at 223 Westheimer is now sitting quietly behind bars and in several piles. The 1910 Avondale home was sold last March to a corporate entity tied to down-the-road upscale tex-mex restaurant El Tiempo, and a demolition warrant was issued back in July.  A reader notes that the bulldozers finally caught up to the 6-bedroom 5-bathroom structure last week, and the house was rearranged into a few ready-to-remove mounds at the last sighting.

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Green Fields of Avondale
02/29/16 3:00pm

Mural at former Heights Finance Station Post Office, 1050 Yale St., Houston Heights

The recently dumped Heights Finance Station post office at Yale and 11th streets was treated to a makeover this month, as demolition looms on the horizon. If all goes as planned, the building will eventually be brushed aside to make way for the younger-and-likely-prettier Heights Central Station mixed-use shopping center headed for the site; until then, it’s playing canvas for some Houston graffiti artists, including Wiley Robertson (one of the usual suspects behind giant love notes spotted around town).

A reader sends a fresh batch of lunchtime snapshots of the mural, which seems to have been wrapped up in the last few days:

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Love Is In The Aerosol
02/22/16 10:30am

Houston Bakery & Cafe, 1035 Quitman St., Northside, Houston, 77009

The past caught up with Houston Cafe & Bakery’s former location at the corner of Tackaberry and Quitman streets last week. The Mexican cafe and panaderia departed to a more northern, more strip-center location at 2435 Fulton St. back in 2015, when Houston ISD bought the Quitman property. A demo permit for the site was issued last Thursday, and by Friday the scene above was already playing out.

Across Tackaberry, soon-t0-be-renamed Jefferson Davis High School is in the early stages of a redo that will upgrade its 1926 building and add some new facilities for the school’s culinary arts and hotel management specialization. Finalized designs from Bay-IBI aren’t out yet, but a community meeting is planned for Thursday of this week, and demo work on some nearby houses has already been going on to make room for expansion.

Here’s a peek at a preliminary site plan from back in 2014, which shows the campus expanding across Tackaberry all the way to Fulton St.:

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Tackaberry Takeout
02/10/16 11:30am

Demolition of St. Nicholas School, 10420 Mullins Dr., Willowbend, Houston, 77096

An early morning post-deconstruction photo of the Mullins Dr. campus of the Medical Center Charter School (originally the St. Nicholas School, when the campus was private), just north of the Centerpoint transmission easement paralleling Willowbend Blvd. half a block to the south, was snapped by a reader yesterday. A representative of the school tells Swamplot that the 4-ish-acre property has been sold, and that townhomes are apparently in the works for the land.

Demolition permits were issued in two parts this week — here’s a shot of more cleanup going on this morning:

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Clearing the Board in Willowbend
02/01/16 2:45pm

THE REST OF RICHMONT SQUARE PREPARES TO GET LEVELED Richmont Square Apartments, 1400 Richmond Ave., HoustonResidents of the Richmont Square apartments learned today that they have until May 1 to get out of the way of the bulldozers, writes Erin Mulvaney of the Houston Chronicle. The apartments, which are owned by the Menil Foundation, will be brushed away to make room for upcoming phases of the Menil’s unfolding master plan, announced back in 2009. The back third of the 1960s complex facing Richmond Ave was demolished at the start of 2015  to free up space for an extension of W. Main St.; the Menil’s new Drawing Institute is currently being penciled in to the north of the remaining apartments. Richmont Square’s leasing office began to offer only month-to-month contracts by early January, though a set date for the eventual teardown had not been made public at the time. [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo: John Ronald via Flickr