01/22/19 2:30pm

Renderings that Houston developer Sluco Realty has released of the new double-decker retail building it’s planning on Shepherd show 2 sides to what it hopes will eventually fill the structure: to the north (above) your typical ground-floor restaurant setup, and to the south (top), something a little more potentially lifesaving. For privacy’s sake, the planned urgent care clinic forgoes the windows that open up the rest of building, dubbed Heights Forum. But the all-caps signage perched atop the awning shown at top should make clear what’s going on inside.

Additional therapeutic offerings like a dance studio and martial arts dojo appear to be planned upstairs. To get there, take the highlighter-green staircase at the front of the building or the side stairwell shown below behind the restaurant:

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Heights Forum
07/10/18 12:15pm

The bandana-clad figure atop the trailer pictured above demonstrates the type of behavior that’s expected from patients at the ReadyPet clinic, parked and open for business in the parking lot on the corner of Stella Link and S. Braeswood Blvd. While the vehicle itself has been there since late 2016, its rooftop topping didn’t arrive until the following year. Among the services offered inside: ear cleanings, blood work, nail trimmings, vaccinations, and other routine veterinary procedures for dogs as well as cats, despite their lack of representation on the exterior.

The clinic’s location puts it just north of the former Preferred Bank branch indicated by the standalone yellow rectangle on the left in the map above. A bit further away is the largest storefront in the Stella Link Shopping Center, home now to the clinic’s affiliate, the Houston Pets Alive animal shelter.

It took over the former Sellers Bros. grocery store — pictured below — that closed down in the strip in 2015:

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Top Dog
05/31/16 2:15pm

2200 Yale St., Heights, Houston, 77008

The latest addition to the street-fronting retail strip planned for the former Alabama Furniture Store site at 2200 Yale St. appears to be a pair of Texas Children’s urgent and less-urgent care facilities. The medical groups are named as tenants in a pair of Braun Enterprises leasing documents filed with the county (which include the 90-degrees-off siteplan above). That’s the planned 3rd non-mobile location of Bernie’s Burger Bus shown on the far right, at the south end of the strip; the other 2 children-themed businesses are shown taking up the remaining 13,112 sq.ft. of leasable space in the center.

A 68-spot parking lot is depicted behind the Yale-facing center, which runs between W. 22nd and W. 23rd streets; the former sites of Fashion Touch Cleaners and Midtown Floors were permitted for destruction about the same time as the now-departed furniture store.

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Assigning Seats on Yale St.
01/14/16 12:45pm

Focus Refined Eye Care, 515 Westheimer Rd., Avondale, Houston, 77006

Focus Refined Eye Care announced this week that the doors are open at 515 Westheimer Rd., at the far eastern end of the strip center also containing Osaka Japanese, BB’s Donuts, Nu Cuts Hair Salon, and e-cigarette shops The Vapor Lair. The storefront, next to the former home of lapsed-vegan Mexican restaurant Radical Eats, previously housed a Chartway Federal Credit Union branch.

A press release says the new shop will “eliminate the sterility of typical doctor’s visits”— the self-described ‘optometry spa’ will offer patrons alcohol in cocktail form as well as of the lens-cleaning variety, and eye-rubs will be thrown in for good measure at the start of each appointment. The spot will offer high-end tailored glasses (the combined product of new German diagnostic equipment and a fashion consultant).

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Wide Open on Westheimer
07/01/15 10:00am

1925 E. T.C. Jester Blvd., Shady Acres, Houston

1925 E. T.C. Jester Blvd., Shady Acres, HoustonA reader notes there’s been some construction activity in and around the entrance and rear drive-thru window of the former Eckerd-turned-CVS Pharmacy along the White Oak Bayou Trail at the corner of T.C. Jester and 18th St., on the west coast of Shady Acres. That’s a notable turn of events: The building has been vacant for about 5 years. The standalone structure’s prospective new tenant appears to be another SignatureCare Emergency Center — last week, a note on the website for the local chain of health clinics had listed 1925 E. T.C. Jester Blvd. as the location of its upcoming “Heights” facility, but the address has since been removed.

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SignatureCare
06/25/15 3:30pm

Signature Care Center, 1007 Westheimer Rd., Montrose, Houston

Signature Care Center, 1007 Westheimer Rd., Montrose, HoustonIf something bad happens to you at the Spec’s Liquor store, 369 Oriental Bistro, Half Price Books, or the Mattress Firm or Mattress Pro stores in the Westmont Shopping Center (known back in its Art Deco days as the Tower Community Center) at the corner of Westheimer and Montrose, you won’t have far to go for medical help. A new 24-hour emergency care center is opening up early next month between the mattress store duo and the Chinese restaurant, in a space that’s been vacant for a while.

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SignatureCare
06/23/15 4:30pm

Demolition of 2499 Ella Blvd., Shady Acres, Houston

Demolition of 2499 Ella Blvd., Shady Acres, Houston

This was the scene over the weekend at 2499 Ella Blvd., at the corner of 25th St. in Shady Acres — as photographed by a Swamplot reader. The vacant former Ella Family Medicine clinic building, known also more recently as the home of the Fulton Pharmacy, is no more.

Photos: Veronica Jones

Weekend Clearance
09/04/13 10:00am

Royce White might never have suited up for the Houston Rockets, spending most of his rookie season toiling in the D-League with the Rio Grande Valley Vipers and — umm, tweeting, but it appears he has found a way to contribute to the city. Last week, White — who suffers from generalized anxiety disorder — announced that his foundation, Anxious Mind’s, which he started when he was playing college ball at Iowa State, will partner with Bee Busy Wellness Clinic to open a free mental health facility on W. Bellfort. The clinic will also provide dental services and primary care and will open this January inside the Rubik’s Cube-like former Frank Neighborhood Library at 6440 W. Bellfort, shown here, just west of Westbury and Meyerland. White played in only 16 games last season; he was caught up in disputes with Rockets management about travel arrangements — he hates to fly — and team doctors. In July, he was traded to the Philadelphia 76ers.

Photo: Allyn West

05/15/13 4:05pm

This is the rendering for Harbor Hospice, what Three Square Design Group and Camden Construction are saying they hope will serve as a kind of template for similar facilities to be built in Texas and Louisiana. The whole 24,000-sq.-ft. thing will have room for 32 beds and a 5,000-sq.-ft. outpatient clinic; Real Estate Bisnow’s Catie Dixon reports that construction could begin as early as this summer. A site plan from Camden shows the hospice going up outside the Loop southeast of Sunnyside, across from the Houston Amateur Sports Park on Mowery Rd. That’s west of Hwy. 288, between Airport Blvd. and W. Orem.

Rendering: Camden Construction

05/08/13 11:00am

NEW PLANNED PARENTHOOD INCITES PROTESTS IN SPRING This 7th Houston-area Planned Parenthood, which signed a 5-year lease and opened last week here at 4747 Louetta Rd. in a Spring shopping center shared by a Chase branch, party supply store, and daycare, doesn’t seem to have received the warmest welcome: Cool Kat Party Supply owner Glenn Mehterian says he moved his main entrance around the corner: “We’ll have more comfort entering our store from the Kroger side,” he tells abc13. And others have been moved to protest the clinic in their own way: Conroe man and Right to Life volunteer Joe Wiegan has come here to pray: “It was a lonesome feeling,” he tells the Montgomery County Courier’s Kimberly Sutton, “but after about half an hour, a man and his young son walked out of the Chase Bank next door and asked if they could join me . . . . He led a beautiful prayer for the unborn and they left with tears in their eyes. . . . .” Then Wiegan was joined by another: “He said he passed by earlier and asked God to please keep me here until he got back by so he could stop and pray with me . . . He was an awesome bear of a man, with a spirit as gentle as a lamb’s.” [abc13; Montgomery County Courier; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Montgomery County Courier

07/18/12 12:39pm

Does the conversion of 2 former Borders Books locations (or at least part of them) into some sort of medical facility constitute a trend? Texas Children’s Pediatric Associates is building a clinic in the former Borders mezzanine space in the not-in-River-Oaks Centre at River Oaks at the corner of West Alabama and Kirby. And Kelsey-Seybold announced yesterday it’ll be turning the former Borders store in Meyerland Plaza — along with the long-vacant Planet Music space above it — into a new medical clinic and pharmacy. Of the 72,000 sq. ft. in the new “Multi-Specialty Care Center,” 27,000 will be used as warehouse space, according to a company press release.

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04/23/12 11:31am

The brand-new home of the Menninger Clinic — tucked behind the Fiesta on South Main south of the Loop, just east of South Post Oak Rd. — has only 15 more beds than the facility it’s been leasing from Metro National at the corner of Gessner and Kempwood in West Houston for the last 9 years. Plans from 5 years ago to build a significantly larger facility closer to the Texas Medical Center with enough space for 24 additional psychiatric patients were scaled back — and the project delayed — because of fundraising difficulties. But among other improvements, the new place should feel a whole lot more open. At 50 acres, the new $65 million campus is 36 acres larger than the current one, and features 650 trees. The buildings, designed by Kirksey Architecture and just completed by Tellepsen Builders, mimic a Frank Lloyd Wright-flavored Prairie style, but apparently without any of those annoying low ceilings.

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12/11/07 10:15am

Collage of Diagrams from fig. Medical Body Shaping Website Showing How Advanced LipoDissolve Is Supposed To Work

Swamplot’s many readers eager to return to Houston-area Fig. Medical Body Shaping clinics for continuing fat-reducing injections will be saddened to learn that the national chain has abruptly shut down and discontinued all operations. A note on the fig.com website indicates the company will likely be seeking bankruptcy protection.

There are three local Fig. clinics: in Sugar Land at 59 and Highway 6, next to Panera Bread; next to Jamba Juice at the Summit Plaza by Lakewood Church; and at the Portofino Shopping Center across I-45 from the Woodlands. (Yes, that’s the same Portofino Shopping Center that was home to the statue-genitalia controversy a few years back — which was ultimately solved with . . . a fig leaf.) All three Houston-area Fig. locations had been open only since April.

Okay, whose inside joke was it to locate all three fat-reduction clinics in shopping centers on feeder roads?

What happened to Fig. that would cause it to shut down so suddenly? (Reader caution: suggestive uh . . . medical detail below.)

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08/30/07 7:42am

New Six-Story Medical Clinic of Houston Tower in Southampton

The construction permit for the Medical Clinic of Houston’s new six-story building on Sunset Blvd. in Southampton has been approved by the city. So up it goes! Behind the new building, facing Rice Blvd., will be a new seven-story, 600-space parking garage.

After the jump, a view of the new garage from the adjacent alley.

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06/04/07 1:04pm

Sure, the canopy of coastal live oak trees along Sunset Boulevard north of Rice is purty and all, but what’s really great about it is that it’s going to block views of a new six-story medical tower going up in Southampton. Well, okay, the fact that car windshields don’t curve all the way up over our heads—that helps too. Just don’t look up while you drive by, okay?

Now if Southampton residents would just shut up about the new Medical Clinic of Houston building long enough to watch this drive-by video produced by the new building’s nice architects—showing the still-leafy drive along tree-lined Sunset Boulevard, they’ll see how silly their complaints are.

After the jump, un-foliated views of the new tower, plus the seven-level parking garage that’s going to face Rice Boulevard.

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