Here’s more development in East Downtown: These townhouses are under construction on the corner of Live Oak and Lamar, just 2 blocks from the Columbia Tap bike trail that leads to BBVA Compass Stadium. Eventually, according to a site plan on the InTown Homes website, 22 of these 3- and 4-bedroom townhouses will stand on the block bound by Lamar, Live Oak, St. Charles, and McKinney. They’re starting at $364,900.
Here are the renderings of the apartments that Mill Creek wants to build right across the street from the gameday roar and glare and incessant rhythmic drumming that goes on at BBVA Compass Stadium. Dubbed EaDo Station, the 5-story, 315-unit complex will sit at the corner of Dowling and Texas. Mill Creek tells the Houston Chronicle that the goal is to have these apartments ready to go to coincide with the running of the light rail, still under construction itself, next August.
Construction should begin by the end of October to transform a chopped-up industrial street in East Downtown into something like the pedestrian promenade rendered here. Anton Sinkewich, the director of the East Downtown Management District, explains that 5 blocks of Bastrop St., between Bell and McKinney, running near the Houston Food Truck Park and leading toward BBVA Compass Stadium on Walker, will be regraded. A pedestrian-only crushed granite path will be installed and dozens of trees planted. This first part of the project is modest, says Sinkewich, though there are plans in place to include more amenities if and when the ’hood continues to grow.
COULD THE X GAMES BE COMING TO HOUSTON? 
Even if the Astrodome’s still around and Houston’s bid to host the 2016 Super Bowl falls through, an important international competition might still be staged here: “ESPN said in January [that] Houston was one of 13 contenders it was considering as a host” for the 2014-2016 X Games, reports the Houston Business Journal’s Bayan Raji. The Lee and Joe Jamail Skatepark on Sabine St. (shown here) is at the center of the Harris County-Houston Sports Authority bid to put on the tricksters’ event that’s been in L.A. the past 9 years, writes Raji, along with Reliant Stadium and the Dynamo’s BBVA Compass Stadium. Whether the skatepark going up in Greenspoint, billed in January as the largest in the U.S., also figures in the bid Raji doesn’t say; ESPN will announce which of the 13 cities are finalists this spring. [Houston Business Journal; previously on Swamplot] Photo: David Fross
THE EAST DOWNTOWN ENRON MILLS MALL THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN 
Long before he sold the land where the brand-new BBVA Compass Stadium for the Houston Dynamo soccer team now sits to the city, former council member and longtime land speculator Louis Macey had a deal ready to go that would have turned the vacant land into some sort of close-to-Downtown entertainment venue, Catie Dixon reports: “He ended up with six blocks around Bastrop and Texas, which attracted the attention of Katy Mills and Enron. They agreed to buy the site if he could get 12 blocks and an exit ramp off the highway. (He convinced TxDOT to put in the Polk Street exit.) The deal fell through at the last minute . . .” Macey began buying up the properties in 1997. [Real Estate Bisnow; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Real Estate Bisnow
Here’s the fly-over (and -through) tour of the new BBVA Compass Stadium for the Houston Dynamo you’ve been waiting for — that is, if you were left hungry for more by the flyover tour of the stadium under construction captured by Brent Hall’s drone videocamera last summer. The big difference between that tour and this one, of course, is that the structure is now complete. The stadium’s first game takes place this Thursday, ahead of the Dynamo season opener over the weekend.
How do you make videos like this? With this sort of thing.
Video: Accent Aerial Photography
From the Austin company that sends those little camera-wielding drones into the East Downtown sky, here are the latest views of construction progress on what you’re now supposed to call BBVA Compass Stadium. Expected completion date: sometime next May.
The scene captured last Saturday by that drone videocamera flight, showing excavation on the site of the East Downtown stadium at Texas and Dowling, plus a high-end view of Downtown’s back side . . . and a very round earth. Like a more steady ride? Here’s a still:
What’s to look at once it’s up there? Just this panoramic view of construction so far.
Video: Accent Aerial Photography
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE DYNAMO DOME “I like the shrink-wrapped look. Kinda looks like the remnants of a geodesic dome that got reworked by a hurricane…” [DanaX, commenting on Your First Official Look at Houston’s New Soccer Stadium]
It’s not as if drawings showing the industrial look of the new Dynamo Stadium hadn’t been floating around for a little while, but today marks the day the folks at Populous, the building’s designers, officially “unveiled” the design for the East Downtown soccer venue. Hiding behind that veil, of course, is . . . a giant veil: a meshy, irregular metal skin wrapping the structure, lifted up at corner entrances to reveal a glowing orange polycarbonate surface behind. Kinda like the approach to that big reception desk at the new Downtown Y — just a whole lot more, y’know, grand.
When you’ve already designed Minute Maid Park, Reliant Stadium, and the Toyota Center, what’s left in Houston for these guys to do? Will they get to push the button for the Astrodome demo too?
The big East Downtown orangish blob that will be Dynamo Stadium takes on a more definite shape in these new drawings. That’s a giant steel mesh wrapping the 22,000-seat soccer and football venue. Inside: 34 luxury suites, 1,000 “club” seats, and a stadium club. Separate canopies connected to the exterior mesh hang over both sidelines and a stage on the south end. The Houston Business Journal‘s Allison Wollam reports that orange lights will shine on the stadium at night — but the tower lighting shown in earlier renderings is gone from the latest images. Maybe, as a Dynamo fan on HAIF suggests, the place is just gonna glow from within.
DYNAMO STADIUM DESIGN NO LONGER SKETCHY 
AEG president Tim Leiweke says the design for the new Dynamo Stadium just east of Downtown is “100 percent complete,” and that at least 2 local companies have expressed interest in naming rights, which he’s eager to sell. “We are pricing the construction out now. We have a pretty good handle on the budget. The project will probably come in including the land at $110 million and the fact that we are sitting here talking about a ground-breaking by the end of the year and playing soccer and football for TSU by June of 2012 is amazing. It has come together quickly in the last few months.†[Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Rendering of stadium “conceptual” version: Populous
COMMENT OF THE DAY: YE OLDE DYNAMO WAREHOUSE SOCCER STADIUM AND EMPORIUM, NIXED “. . . we met with the architects Wednesday before the game. Received assurances that the design will be modern and eye-catching. Someone suggested the possibility of sticking with the red-brick warehouse motif, and that was summarily dismissed. Not gonna happen.” [Nord, commenting on Dynamo Stadium Is Just a Sketch]
DYNAMO STADIUM IS JUST A SKETCH A contract to design the new Dynamo Stadium near Hutchins and Walker streets in East Downtown hasn’t been signed yet, but the firm most likely to be chosen for the job is Populous, what the same Kansas City-based architecture firm that designed Minute Maid Park, the Toyota Center, and Reliant Stadium is now called after last year’s management buyout:
“As of now, there are no blueprints for the project. Any drawings of the stadium are conceptual.
‘The only work that has been done to date is to make sure the stadium property, the six city blocks, are adequate,’ [Dynamo general manager Oliver] Luck said. ‘We didn’t start serious architectural design work. This piece of property is adequate for a 20,000- to 21,000-seat stadium with suites.’ . . .
The playing field is expected to be 13 feet below grade, and the lower bowl will be cast in place concrete. The upper bowl will extend above grade.
Also, like nearby Toyota Center and Minute Maid Park, the major concourse will be at grade. As Astros fans do when they show up for a home game, Dynamo fans will enter the stadium through the main concourse on ground level.
The Dynamo plan to have a roof canopy on the east and west sidelines to protect fans against the sun and rain.” [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Rendering: Populous
