Tag: Downtown

09/23/11 9:47am

Peeking in on Georgia’s Downtown

Nightlife, Restaurants, Retail

3 Comments

Twitter correspondent Emily Hurst sends this from-the-train-window view of the shuttered Byrd’s Market space at 420 Main St., at the corner of Prairie, as seen this morning. The owners of Georgia’s Farm to Market — the outsize buffet venue and natural-foods grocery store in that former Kmart space on the I-10 feeder near Dairy Ashford, formerly known as Sandy’s Market — are planning to open a second location here in November. Georgia’s Downtown will include a restaurant, a small grocery store (featuring many of the same products Georgia and Rick Bost pull from their farm and ranch in Waller, their own meat-processing plant in Bellville, and other local sources), and a beer and wine bar in the building’s basement, called “The Cellar.” They’ll also be renting out the basement for events. Behind the craft paper and signs on the windows, the interior is ready for its remodel — designed by Ziegler Cooper Architects.

From farm to downtown [Prime Property]
Georgia’s Farm to Market has downtown on its mind with Main Street location [Culturemap]
Georgia’s Farm to Market and Georgia’s Downtown

Photo: Emily J. Hurst

77002, Bars, Downtown, Grocery Stores, Openings and Closings, Restaurants, Retail

09/22/11 1:08pm

Your New Downtown Parking Handicap

Parking, Quicklink

21 Comments

YOUR NEW DOWNTOWN PARKING HANDICAP That borrowed disabled parking placard trick you’ve been using to get free parking all day in metered spaces Downtown? It won’t work for much longer, Mayor Parker announced today, calling the abuse of the hanging tags an “epidemic.” That’s right: After October 8th you’ll only be able to park free with a placard for about 2 hours, or whatever the posted limit is. After that, you’ll have to feed the meter, or face a $30 fine. Downtown has 4,200 metered spaces; parking officials say as many as 500 of them are occupied for most of the day by vehicles displaying the disabled placards. [Houston Politics]

77002, Downtown, Mayor Parker, Parking

Buying and Selling

09/13/11 1:49pm

Skanska Helping Houston Club to Early Exit

Downtown, Office Buildings, Quicklink

4 Comments

SKANSKA HELPING HOUSTON CLUB TO EARLY EXIT A year after Downtown’s Houston Club Building fell into foreclosure, the U.S. division of Swedish construction firm Skanksa has at last bought the 63-year-old building at 811 Rusk. But the new owner isnâ€™t saying yet whether it plans to tear down the 18-story property. A company representative tells Nancy Sarnoff, though, that it will be â€œvery difficultâ€ to update and repair the structure. In any case, Skanska is letting tenantsâ€™ leases expire, and is helping the Houston Club itself relocate to “another downtown buildingâ€ in February 2013, 2 years before its lease is up. [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo : Silberman Properties

77002, Buying and Selling, Downtown, Office Buildings

08/24/11 6:03pm

Inside Downtown’s Brand-New 1910 Courthouse

Public Buildings, Renovations

14 Comments

Judges and their staff from the 1st and 14th state courts of appeals won’t move in until next month, but a restored and rejiggered version of the 1910 Harris County Courthouse at 301 Fannin St. downtown was opened yesterday for a rededication ceremony after 5 years of construction. PGAL and Vaughn Construction directed a $65 million renovation that undid all sorts of alterations to the building begun in 1953. The original building was designed by an architect from Dallas, Charles Erwin Barglebaugh, on the site of 4 previous county courthouses. Swamplot photographer Candace Garcia brings back this photo tour:

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Courthouses, Downtown, Public Buildings, Renovations

08/11/11 12:16pm

That Theater Space in the New Houston Ballet Building Really Chaps My Ass

Interiors, Quicklink, Theater District

3 Comments

THAT THEATER SPACE IN THE NEW HOUSTON BALLET BUILDING REALLY CHAPS MY ASS “I have been going to the theater for nearly four decades, which means at the very least that Iâ€™ve encountered every possible sort of venue. Iâ€™ve sprawled on dirty gymnasium floors while watching modern dance, perched in rickety folding chairs during community Shakespeare productions, and squeezed into wooden fold-downs from the 19th century for long Mahler symphonies. Iâ€™ve languished in some of the oldest opera houses of Europe, where the seats are notoriously awful. I am sorry to say that even paint-chipped baseball bleachers are more comfortable than the seven rows of upholstered benches in the Margaret Alkek Williams Dance Lab at Houston Balletâ€™s new Center for Dance. . . . The seats are exactly one foot deep, with “backrests” only one foot high. Place two rulers in an â€œLâ€ shape on your backside and youâ€™ll get the idea: no support at all. You might be thinking that I should just lose some weight, and I wonâ€™t argue the point. However, a female friend told me recently that I have ‘no ass,’ so I donâ€™t think itâ€™s merely a matter of my size. I looked around and noticed everyone else shifting as well. There were several large people in the audience, and they looked positively miserable.” — Theodore Bale, reviewing a pair of Woody Allen plays put on by the Back Porch Players. [Culturemap; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Michael Coppens [license]

77002, Downtown, Interiors, Theater District, Theaters

Bankruptcies

08/04/11 1:54pm

Digging Out from Heaven on Earth

Downtown, Hotels, Proposed Developments, Quicklink

14 Comments

DIGGING OUT FROM HEAVEN ON EARTH Updated task list for the investor group that bought the dilapidated and long-vacant Heaven on Earth Plaza Hotel at 801 St. Joseph Pkwy. at Travis St. Downtown 3 years ago: 1) Pay off $4.2 million mortgage on property; 2) work way out of bankruptcy (declared just last week, to avoid foreclosure); 3) close on $22 million construction loan to redevelop the 31-story former Holiday Inn (and later Days Inn) into an “as economy class as possible” hotel. Meanwhile, New Era Hospitality — the group that bought the property in 2008 from a fund connected to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi — recently spent around $30,000 to secure the building, after receiving a stream of municipal citations for “dangerous building parts, visual blight, unsecured entrances, and signs of urine and bodily fluids.” The project’s general contractor tells Purva Patel that plans to turn the gutted property into an “upscale” hotel have been scaled back. [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo: arch-ive.org

77002, Bankruptcies, Downtown, Foreclosures, Hotels, Proposed Developments, Vacant Buildings

Chinatown

08/01/11 4:18pm

The 5 Places in Houston Where You’re Most Likely To Run Into Pedestrians

Downtown, Freeways and Toll Roads, Galleria, Hazards, Quicklink, Traffic, Transportation

14 Comments

THE 5 PLACES IN HOUSTON WHERE YOU’RE MOST LIKELY TO RUN INTO PEDESTRIANS The intersections of Milam and Dallas, Milam and Prairie, and San Jacinto and Congress St. Downtown; Westheimer and McCue near the Galleria; and Bellaire and Corporate Dr. just inside Beltway 8 in Asiatown rank as the top locations for auto-pedestrian accidents, according to a Chronicle review of city records. A grand total of 2,204 collisions involving cars and people traveling on foot have taken place in Houston since 2008, resulting in a total of 174 pedestrian deaths. The deaths were concentrated differently, “along the U.S. Highway 59 corridor near West Park and along Interstate 45 North and I-10 East,” with 43 percent of them taking place on freeways or major highways. [Houston Chronicle]

Asiatown, Chinatown, Downtown, Freeways and Toll Roads, Galleria, Hazards, Pedestrians, Traffic

Cancellations and Delays

07/27/11 3:32pm

Downtown Brewery Can’t Get the Taps Flowing

Downtown, Quicklink, Restaurants

7 Comments

DOWNTOWN BREWERY CAN’T GET THE TAPS FLOWING San Antonio’s Freetail Brewing Co. has announced an “indefinite suspension” of its plans to build a 3-story, 20,000-sq.-ft. brewery, store, and restaurant in an unidentified existing building near the corner of Main and Prairie St. The problem: plenty of hops, not enough yeast: “I began to run into an increasing level of resistance in capital markets,” brewery owner Scott Metzger politely explains in a press release. He tells beer blogger Ronnie Crocker he wasn’t willing to scale back the $4.2 million project, and will keep fiddling with the company’s San Antonio operation instead. [Beer, TX; previously on Swamplot]

77002, Breweries, Cancellations and Delays, Downtown, Restaurants

Hotels

07/22/11 11:39am

Whoosh!! What the Bootsie’s Crew Has Been Cooking Up

Museum District, Openings and Closings, Restaurants

1 Comment

Ever wonder what happens when a vat of liquid nitrogen wielded by a restaurant crew from Tomball is poured into the swimming pool of a Downtown Houston hotel? Your curiosity will be rewarded in the short video above from last March’s poolside Houston Star Chefs event at the Four Seasons Hotel, where Bootsie’s Heritage Cafe chef Randy Rucker and pastry chef Chris Leung both received Rising Star awards. The large-scale chemistry demo from Bootsie’s took place at the end of the evening. (According to Houston Press food critic Katharine Shillcutt, there were a few delayed reactions too: The hotel was left with a fair amount of cleanup afterward as a result, including completely draining the pool and fixing the chemical balance of the water.) The Bootsie’s crew’s latest project: A new restaurant in a well-vegetated just-purchased 1930 Museum District home most recently used as a doctor’s office, directly behind Yoshio Taniguchi’s Asia House at 5219 Caroline St.:

77004, 77375, Downtown, Hotels, Museum District, Openings and Closings, Restaurants, Tomball

David Crockett

07/14/11 6:06pm

Openings and Closings: New Hubcap Grill, Funeral Bars, Downtown Phoenicia Delay

Downtown, Galleria, Nightlife, Openings and Closings, Retail, Shady Acres, Upper Kirby

5 Comments

The almost here, the already here, and the soon-to-be-departed:

Opening Soon: City inspection issues having been conquered, Hubcap Grill‘s new Heights-ish outpost in Shady Acres is now aiming for an opening “mid/late” next week, tweets burger-slinger Ricky Craig. The converted drive-up at 1133 W. 19th St. is just around the corner from Cedar Creek. Plenty more patio seating in back.
Already Open: So sorry you missed the christenings, but the nightclub, restaurant-bar, and wading pool carved out of the former Settegast Kopf funeral home at 3320 Kirby, have been open and holding events for a week or 2 already. That place wearing its paneling on the outside is Hendricks Pub and Eatery. Roak is the nightclub; the atrium pool has its own name: Rush. The bars and their neighbors in the David Crockett subdivision immediately to the west will have plenty of time to become acquainted with each other before their court date next May. Some local residents have filed suit against the bars’ owners, claiming the clubs are in violation of local deed restrictions:

77008, 77010, 77056, 77098, Bars and Clubs, David Crockett, Deed Restrictions, Downtown, Galleria, Grocery Stores, Lawsuits, Neighborhood Disputes, Nightlife, Openings and Closings, Restaurants, Retail, Shady-Acres, Upper Kirby

Buying and Selling

06/30/11 5:51pm

Sold! Astrodome’s Air Conditioners Buy AstroWorld Model, Will Donate to Downtown Library

Downtown, Houston History

10 Comments

A local engineering firm is buying the original 1967 model of AstroWorld listed for sale recently on Craigslist — and plans to donate it to the Houston Public Library’s Metropolitan Research Center, so that it can be put on display in the newly expanded Julia Ideson Building. I.A. Naman + Associates president and “very regular” Swamplot reader Thomas G. Barrow says he learned about the model from our post yesterday: “My accountant happened to be walking by my office and I asked if I could have some money. He looked at the piece and said ‘Thatâ€™s cool!’ and a few minutes later we did the deal.” Barrow says he’s already spoken with library officials about the installation, and that they’ve already begun looking for an interim home for the model before it goes on display to the public. Naman was the mechanical and electrical design engineer for AstroWorld, the Astrodome, and several related facilities.

About Us [IAN+A]
Domed Stadium Air-Conditioning Design (PDF) [IAN+A]
Previously on Swamplot: Now on Craigslist: Original AstroWorld Model, For Sale: Early Model AstroWorld

Photos: Bill Davenport

77002, AstroWorld, Buying and Selling, Downtown, Houston History

06/24/11 11:49pm

Swamplot Street Sleuths: Whiff!

Galleria, Melrose Place, New Construction, Restaurants

8 Comments

Got a question about something going on in your neighborhood youâ€™d like Swamplot to answer? Sorry, we canâ€™t help you. But if you ask real nice and include a photo or 2 with your request, maybe the Swamplot Street Sleuths can! Who are they? Other readers, just like you, ready to demonstrate their mad skillz in hunting down stuff like this:

Are we batting only .500 here?

Midtown: There’s more new to the Houston House Apartments than just that exterior paint job. Catching an elevator has been a bit tough and there’s the occasional burst pipe or AC interruption, but otherwise the ongoing renovation is looking good so far, a resident reports: “The new carpet on the residential floors is a geometric pattern with a good mix of cool and bold colors. The units are looking much improved with new finishes and appliances. The appliances are pretty low end but definitely an improvement. The lobby’s looking great. The color-scheme there is a brown and orange and white palette. I’m not a huge fan of the two accent walls of orange dots but the new lettering and signage in the lobby is a great addition. I haven’t been up to the renovated 9th floor (lounge, gym and pool) in a while . . . but when I last saw it it was looking fantastic with a cleaned-up, opened-up, and really bright feel.“
Melrose Place: Next act for the former Monarch Cleaners building at 2815 South Shepherd, known more recently as the Fox Diner, Cafe Serranos Cantina, Crome, and then Pravada, as several readers pointed out: former Textile chef Ryan Hildebrand‘s new triple threat, Triniti. MCÂ²‘s design for the currently gutted restaurant will include a garden and — judging from some recent construction photos — some colorful applications of perforated metal panels:

77002, 77003, 77027, 77098, Apartments, Downtown, Galleria, Melrose Place, New Construction, Odors, Office Space, Renovations, Restaurants

Art

06/23/11 3:55pm

That’s What They All Say: The Kinds of Things You’ll Be Hearing at the New Permit Office

Downtown, Openings and Closings, Public Art, Public Buildings, Renovations

11 Comments

Installed yesterday morning on the 3rd floor of the city’s new permit HQ and Green Resource Center at 1002 Washington Ave., which features dozens of other artworks: a text wall by Mary Margaret Hansen, the project’s lead artist. “Last spring, I filled entire yellow legal pads with transcriptions of real conversations, then got it all on a lengthy word document and finally edited it to phrases and expressions that best exemplify what happens when the city takes a look at a set of plans,” she writes. “Too wet! Mud in the beams. Call back when it dries up.” Also: “What about the fees?” and “I have lingering doubts.” Your favorites are all here. Or at least some of them:

77002, Downtown, Openings and Closings, Public Art, Public Buildings, Renovations, Washington Ave.

06/21/11 5:47pm

Pods Appear on Downtown Building, Grab Solar Panels with Wrench and Garden Hose

Green Design and Development, Houston Architects, Openings and Closings, Public Buildings, Utilities

7 Comments

Hanging out on the roof of Houston’s new Central Permitting and Green Resource Center at 1002 Washington Ave.: Solar panels, anchored by the first-ever commercial installation of Metalab Studio’s new PV-Pod. The local architecture firm developed the hollow high-density polyethylene pods with support from a UH Green Building Components grant. There’s one pod for each panel, and each is filled up with just enough water to resist required wind forces. This kind of assembly is much simpler to install than a typical photovoltaic-panel rack system with concrete ballast blocks, claims Metalab’s Andrew Vrana. It also allows for a more flexible layout. The new permit building opened for business yesterday.