02/17/11 11:12am

Apple fans, don’t be distracted — as Swamplot was earlier this week — by the construction being set up on the west side of the newish Highland Village Shopping Center building that houses Sprinkles Cupcakes at 4012-4018 Westheimer. Unless, of course, you’re wanting to know where the new Restoration Hardware will go once it relocates from across the street. The newly expanded housewares store will take up all of the space on the Galleria side of Paper Source.

Meanwhile, here are your verified coordinates for Houston’s first non-mall Apple Store: After a little bit of demo work, it’ll go on the east side of the same building (shown above), at the Drexel driveway. Across the street, there appears to be less urgency now that Tootsies has fled to West Ave, but the shopping center’s management still plans to tear down the stylish but now-vacant building the women’s clothing boutique occupied at 4045 Westheimer:

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY

02/14/11 12:12pm

Apple signed a lease last month on a storefront in the Highland Village Shopping Center, a source tells Swamplot. Houston’s first-ever not-in-a-mall Apple Store is heading for the street-front retail block that houses Paper Source and Sprinkles Cupcakes, across Westheimer from the old Tootsies, in a location that formerly housed the Gap. But which side of that building? There’s evidence of construction activity on the west end of the block (shown in the foreground above), but rumors dating from last summer — as well as the “partial” exterior demo permit for the space that appeared in this morning’s list of demolitions — point to the east side of the structure, adjacent to the shopping center’s Drexel St. driveway. That’s where this older map from Gary Allen’s Apple retail fan website had placed it:

CONTINUE READING THIS STORY