Note: Story updated below.
A reader writes:
I had been told that the architect of the Transco tower secretly incorporates cat figures in to all of his work. I could never see a cat in the Transco until yesterday evening. I found it! Can you? Pretty cool, huh?
What’s new to eat?
More food fun:
“I do always seem to be showing you houses that few of us can really afford,” Houston interior-design blogger Joni Webb admits to her readers:
But the secret truth is, nothing gets me more excited than seeing a house which is NOT expensive yet looks like it was designed by a professional! Nothing is better because it affirms what I fully believe, style is not about money.
So Webb sets out to find a few inside-the-Loop homes dressed to meet her style standards — and priced between $300K and $500K. How long does it take her? Two days, poring through “hundreds, if not thousands” of HAR listings.
What does she find?
Houston radio host and blogger Lance Zierlein snaps photos of the lockout letters on two separate storefronts in the Shops on Sage strip center at 2800 Sage, on the corner of West Alabama. The notices, demanding that delinquent rent be paid before the stores can be reopened, were apparently posted by center managers Hunington Properties last Wednesday.
Who’s locked out? Lebanese restaurant Mint Cafe . . . and a Quiznos, which Zierlein reports on Twitter is already vacant.
But . . . what’s this? Someone from the nearby Subway in the Yorktown Plaza shopping center on W. Alabama has been kind enough to post a menu on the Quiznos door, with this pertinent Subway tagline featured prominently: “At Subway restaurants, we have your fresh interests at heart.” Plus, a handwritten invitation to visit!
Zierlein’s line: “Subway vultures picking over the carcass.”
Photo: Lance Zierlein
A reader sends photos from a recent visit to the Centre at Post Oak shopping center, across Westheimer from the Galleria:
It’s been a while since I’ve been by here, so maybe this is old news, but … are the shopping cneter owners hurting so bad they’ve got to resort to selling ads for overactive bladder medications in the parking lot?
The parking lot sign suggests empathetic readers go to the conveniently named website www.overactivebladder.com. There you can take a brief urination quiz, view bladder illustrations, and read extensive advertorial content from Pfizer, makers of Toviaz — a pill “clinically proven to significantly reduce bothersome symptoms of OAB like strong sudden urges to go, frequent bathroom visits, and accidents.”
The reader continues:
I wonder how many urgent visits from highly suggestible customers this has brought to the stores there. How’s the Mattress Firm holding up?
Is this a view of a planned replacement for the Compass Bank building at 2200 Post Oak — a block north of the Galleria — that was imploded back in March? So claims Reverberation, a participant on the SkyscraperPage forum, who posted the image. Reverberation adds that the Redstone Companies is calling the project The Perennial, and that it’s “supposedly coming 2011.”
The 4-acre site is immediately north of the Centre at Post Oak shopping center. The street on the far left of the rendering appears to be Post Oak; that would put Guilford Ct. on the right. The project appears to include office, residential, and hotel components, along with at least one multi-story parking garage.
As a poster on HAIF points out, the domain name theperennial.com redirects to the Redstone Companies website. Records show the domain name has been registered to Redstone Companies since 2004. Redstone has not officially announced its plans for the website — or the site on Post Oak.
Jerry and Wynonne Hart are scheduled to be sentenced today for “misapplication of fiduciary property” in the operation of their auction business at the Hart Galleries. In return for the couple’s guilty plea, prosecutors dropped charges of theft and money laundering.
11 News reporter Dave Fehling spoke to several former Hart Galleries customers:
The auction house thrived for years. The Harts enjoyed a sterling reputation among the rich and not so rich who all trusted the Harts to sell their valuables. But around 2003, something strange began happening . . .
. . . the Harts auctioned furniture and antiques for John Zielinski and his wife.
They were expecting to get $20,000.
“And I said, ‘where’s our money?’ And they said, ‘we’re having difficulty collecting some of the checks,’†said Zielinski.
The next thing Harts’ customers learned was that the couple was bankrupt.
AUGUSTA DEMO AND STORAGE The new owner of a small Galleria-area office building directly across the street from the parking garage for San Felipe Plaza plans to tear down the 2-story 1977 structure, which suffered a roof collapse and $2.7 million worth of damage from Hurricane Ike. “[Seller Robert] Clay is under the impression that a self-storage facility will be built there. In fact, four parties interested in buying the site wanted to build development storage units there, he says. [Hasad Development’s Sam] Amber, the buyer, has developed several ProGuard Self Storage locations around town. However, a company spokesman in Houston would not comment on future plans for the nearly one-acre site. Based on buyer interest, Clay concludes that, ‘This location is a perfect private mini-storage location.’” [Houston Business Journal]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: SMALL STREET ADDITIONS TO THE GALLERIA AREA 
“The Uptown TIRZ and District are actively working to build a grid in Uptown. Much of it will be funded by existing and new developments by the TIRZ funds and not from the general taxpayer base. . . . [This map shows] their planned addition of grid style layout to uptown. . . . It’ll take existing private access roads and convert some to public streets.” [kjb434, commenting on Uptown Traffic Grid] Map: Uptown Houston District
UPTOWN TRAFFIC GRID “As we all know, traffic is incomparably worse in Uptown than it is in Downtown. Downtown has more of everything: more streets, more freeways, more transit, more pedestrian use. The most important part, though, is that Downtown has the grid, and Uptown does not. Uptown is a lot less dense than Downtown, and yet it’s reaching a breaking point. There are critically few ways in and out, and even though those are mega-roads, they concentrate traffic BY DESIGN rather than diffusing traffic as the grid does. If Uptown had a fine-grained local street grid the traffic there would be a fraction of what it is today, but it’s too late to put in a grid now. The best we can hope for is for benevolent developers to include new connecting streets to break up some of the super-blocks when they come up for redevelopment.” [NeoHouston]
TAKING A BITE OUT OF WHOLE FOODS That new Whole Foods Market coming to Post Oak Blvd. in the Galleria may not end up being quite the giant originally envisioned, says Nancy Sarnoff: “Developer Ed Wulfe, who’s building the BLVD Place mixed-use project where the Whole Foods will go, recently said the parties are working on amending the lease to reduce the size of the store, originally planned for 80,000 square feet. Put in context, the Kirby Whole Foods is about 40,000 square feet and Central Market is about 75,000 square feet. An 80,000-square-foot store would have been on par with the company’s flagship market in Austin, where customers can eat at mini-restaurants, chose from hundreds of varieties of beer, cheeses and a seafood counter that smokes, slices and fries to order. In a related move, Whole Foods recently announced that it was keeping its store on Woodway and Voss open. The plan was to close it when the Post Oak store opened. [Houston Chronicle; previously in Swamplot]
Some fun recent pix from around town!
Above, from this weekend: the Williams Tower just moments before liftoff, as captured by Flickr user Bokeh Down.
Oh yes there’s more:
This weekend’s Galleria-area bank implosion won’t be televised nationally, but you should be able to watch it happen live if you wake up early enough on Sunday. Preparations for the dynamite-fueled takedown of the Compass Bank building at 2200 Post Oak are just about complete.
A notice sent out last month to area businesses by Cherry Demolition says the implosion is scheduled for approximately 7:45 am on March 15th — which happens to be the 2,053rd anniversary, give or take a calendar adjustment, of the Julius Caesar demo. A few details:
Adjacent streets will be closed at approximately 6:00 am and re-open at 9:15 am. Streets to be closed are Guilford and Post Oak Boulevard between Westheimer and Ambassador Way.
So where’s the best vantage point for viewing this cathartic form of timely public theater gonna be?
From the New York Times website this morning:
Shortly after 10 a.m. Central time, about 40 police officers and other law enforcement officials simultaneously entered Stanford Group’s two office buildings in Houston. Many of the law enforcement personnel carried large black briefcases. Stanford group’s headquarters are in two offices in Houston, one within a tower of the Houston Galleria shopping mall, and the other across the street.
Photo of Stanford Financial Group Offices, 5050 Westheimer: Stanford Financial Group
“Ronald McDonald will soon have all of his parking spaces back,” writes Swamplot tipster Michele, who also sends in these photos from yesterday. They show the sales office for Randall Davis’s canceled Titan highrise — which hung out in the McDonald’s parking lot on Post Oak for many months — boarded up and readied for its next location and rebranding assignment.
