BRAD MOORE AND FRIENDS SNATCH EMPTY BODY OF INVASION ICE HOUSE 
 Formerly apostrophe-averse Grand Prize co-owner Brad Moore and his business partners have a new bar now up and running in the work-out-the-kinks, wait-for-the-liquor-license phase. The business, operating under the syllable-rich name Lil’ Danny Speedo’s Go Fly a Kite Lounge, has taken over the space in the 1950s building at 823 Dumble St. (shown here as seen early last year in its then-new alien mural skin). Danny Speedo’s is the latest link in a long chain of bars on the property — most recently including Invasion Ice House, which the Ramos family opened last spring before shutting it down at the end of October. Phaedra Cook reports that Lil’ Danny Speedos is limiting the alcohol menu to beer, wine, and frozen shandies until the liquor permit comes through. [Houston Foodfinder; previously on Swamplot] Photo of former Invasion Ice House at 823 Dumble St.: Swamplot inbox
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Tag: East End
COMMENT OF THE DAY: ANY NEW NAMING EPISODES WELCOME AMID THE ENDLESS EAST HOUSTON RERUNS 
“The news calls everything between Downtown and Baytown ‘East Houston’ — so when West U is called ‘Southwest Houston’ for one day, I get a pettiness-fueled satisfaction out of it.” [tempeh, commenting on West U Shelter-In-Place Order Just Lifted Following This Morning’s ‘Southwest Houston’ Shooting] Illustration: Lulu
Bryan Parras snagged some after-shots of Buffalo Bayou’s up-and-down number near Tony Marron Park just east of Hirsch Rd. this week, as the rain let up on Monday afternoon and again yesterday morning. Across the channel on the north bank is the Sims Metal Management’s Proler Southwest recycling facility, whose scrap piles shown above were still soaking their toes beneath the freshly-elevated water line at the time of the Monday photos.
Below is a view of both the park’s trails and the Sims facility, looking east from the Hirsch bridge across the bayou’s confluence with somewhat-redecorated Japhet Creek from the north:
Piled High in Fifth Ward
VILLA ARCOS TACOS’ PERSONALITY SPLIT 
A Sunday post to the Facebook page of Villa Arcos Tacos announced that the East End taco joint would be moving, changing its name, and offering barbecue alongside its familiar Tex-Mex specialties. An emphatic press release issued this morning, however, asserts that “None of these claims are true. In fact, they are completely false.” Villa Arcos operator Dena Gutierres (sister of recently deceased former owner Yolanda Black Navarro) told CultureMap’s Eric Sandler that she had been planning to end her 5-year lease on the space at 3900 Navigation Blvd. long before her sister’s November passing, in light of some $250,000 of modifications needed to comply with City inspectors’ requests. But Black Navarro’s son Christian insists that the restaurant will remain at 3900 Navigation Blvd., where it has operated for the past 38 years, and that he and City inspectors are “working together to determine what corrections are required”. Gutierres plans to open Texas Tacos and Barbecue at 1000 Telephone Rd. in the current home of Oak Leaf Smokehouse after her lease ends on January 31st. [CultureMap] Photo of Villa Arcos Tacos at 3900 Navigation Blvd.: Jamanta F. via Yelp
As the clock ticked over into 2016, Houston Botanic Garden and the Houston Golf Association each had something else to celebrate: both groups met end-of-year 5-million-dollar fundraising goals required by agreements with the City to carry forward their respective plans for 2 east Houston golf courses. The golfers raised enough money to move forward with preservation and renovation of Gus Wortham Golf Course, at 7000 Capitol street (south of the Houston Ship Channel Turning Basin, where Wayside meets Polk). Houston Botanic Garden had initially pushed to add some color to the oldest greens in Texas and redevelop the Brays-Bayou-side space as a public garden.
That garden is now planned instead for above-pictured Glenbrook Golf Course, a semi-maintained set of greens-turned-greenspace along Sims Bayou north of 45 from Hobby Airport (just outside the southeast corner of the Loop).
Teeing Off in East Houston
For the second time in 6 months, the original Ninfa’s at 2704 Navigation has a brand new parking lot surface. The owners hope this one will last a whole lot longer than the sog-prone crushed-limestone install that crews replaced prematurely last week (see photo above). “There were potholes everywhere,” declares a press release put out by the manufacturer of its replacement. Here’s a pic of how it looked before (found-in-place jalapeño included for scale and local flavor):
Replacing a Swamp Lot
There’s a busted pipe hanging under the Gulf Fwy. overpass as it crosses Brays Bayou, just east of Telephone Rd. and south of Idylwood in the East End. The pics shown here were taken late yesterday afternoon, though some sort of liquid had been seen dripping from the break at various points over the weekend.
Grassy remnants of last week’s high water on Brays Bayou can still be seen hanging from various points along the pipe’s length:
Leftovers
The colorful team behind the beer-and-hot-dog hangout Moon Tower Inn has plans to open a much larger and meatier restaurant a couple blocks northeast of its spot on Canal St. in the East End. A new “Proper Texas BBQ and Watering Hole” will go into a warehouse-turned-auto-repair-shop at 3125 Navigation Blvd., a few blocks down the street from Ninfa’s and El Tiempo, sometime in 2016, according to a post on the Moon Tower Inn’s Facebook page. Its name: B.R. Young’s Lost Indian.
Here’s a view of it:
B.R. Young’s Lost Indian
REIGN OF NEW EAST END FARMERS MARKET ON THE NAVIGATION ESPLANADE BEGINS THIS SUNDAY 
Local veggie standouts Finca Tres Robles and the Last Organic Outpost will be among the 35 vendors on hand on April 12th for the inaugural East End farmers’ market on the Navigation Blvd. esplanade (pictured here), across from the original Ninfa’s. The East End Foundation, the event’s nonprofit sponsor, says it’ll be the first farmers market in Houston to accept electronic food stamps. The market will run every Sunday from 10 am to 2 pm at 2800 Navigation; strolling mariachis will kick of this weekend’s grand opening, to be answered by a few sets from Sister Sister y Los Misters. Also available: meats from Texas T Kobe Beef and Al Marcus’s Grateful Bread. Photo: East End Foundation
Here is the lot plan for University Grove, a 39-lot single-family development to go in at the corner of Leeland St. and Cullen Blvd., across the Gulf Freeway from UH, just across the street from Mandola’s Deli, right behind the Polk St. Kroger and hard by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railway line.
Landowner Leeland Baking Company, Inc. is listed as a subsidiary of Flowers Foods Inc., the Thomasville, GA-based mega-bakery behind such brands as Nature’s Own, Whitewheat, Wonder Bread, Cobblestone Mill, and Tastykake.
The Yeast End
Overhauled this year, a 1935 Broadmoor foursquare across the street from a small park is aiming for a sale price of $339,000 — after a purchase in August 2013 for $127,500. What comes with a more-than-$200K bounce? Some of the updates to the property, which is located west of Telephone Rd. and near the neighborhood’s namesake street, include a renovated kitchen and bathrooms, roof, electrical and plumbing systems, and air conditioning. But the home’s interior has kept its 80-year-old proportions, trim, and efficient floor plan:
A Broadmoor Foursquare
GOLFERS APPEAR TO HAVE WON GUS WORTHAM 
It might not have sounded quite so explicit to all onlookers, but the Chronicle‘s Mike Morris declares yesterday’s city council vote a death knell for plans to build a botanical garden on the site of the Gus Wortham Golf Course. The vote was taken in support of city efforts to come to an agreement with the Houston Golf Association for a plan to renovate the 106-year-old course at Lawndale and Wayside in the East End, which the nonprofit would then operate. But, writes Morris: “If the city cannot reach terms with HGA, the mayor said, she will seek proposals from private golf operators rather than hand the site to the botanic garden backers, as previously planned.” The HGA will need to meet designated fundraising targets — likely $5 million of a possible total $15 million renovation cost — for its plan to proceed. Mayor Parker and councilmembers appeared eager to steer the group pushing for a city botanical garden 6 miles southeast, to the Glenbrook Park golf course outside the Loop along Sims Bayou, just east of the Gulf Fwy. [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo: PGA
Two brothers who have opened a new agricultural venture in Houston’s East End are billing it as Houston’s “first private farm inside the 610 Loop.” Amid the gritty industrial wilds of N. Greenwood St. between Navigation and Canal — just a few blocks south of Buffalo Bayou’s Turkey Bend —Finca Tres Robles (spelled out and illustrated helpfully in the photo above) now sprouts on land owned by Electro-Coatings, a plating company. Other less bucolic neighbors, such as Baker Oil Tools and the US Zinc Houston Dust Plant, lurk nearby.
Until its 1996 purchase by Electro-Coatings (along with a warehouse owned by Sara Lee), the 1.2-acre plot now occupied by the farm served as a TxDOT service site. It lay vacant for the last 18 years. Beginning 6 or 7 months ago, the new proprietors jackhammered away the vestigial asphalt; they’ve since composted the lot and commenced agricultural operations.
Here’s the plan:
Finca Tres Robles
Garden trumps garage in this 1930 cottage in the Lawndale neighborhood of Greater Eastwood. The home, renovated in 1990 and updated inside more recently, looks to have lengthened its footprint at some point on the midblock lot. A tad of leftover lawn behind the house (top) extends into a stub of land by the parking area. In the next block, the street dead ends at the railroad tracks that cross Lawndale St. and Telephone Rd. Listed earlier this month, the home bears an asking price of $349,900.
Lawn, but no Dale
Metro has posted the latest designs for the enormous Hughes St. overpass along Harrisburg Blvd. on the far-east segment of the East End rail line. The $27-to-$42-million bridge is meant to carry cars and Green Line passengers over the Union Pacific East Belt freight rail line that runs north-south just west of Hughes St., between the soon-to-open East End line’s between the future Altic and Cesar Chavez stations. The posted design concepts, Metro notes, combine a “garden” wall and a wall noting a few 4-digit numbers important in the history of the neighborhood with a ribbon of white LED lighting above and blue accent lighting underneath and along the columns:
At the End of the Green Line
