Update, 3:30 p.m.: Randall’s president Paul McTavish confirms that this store will be closing. No date was mentioned.
A few readers are reporting that they’ve heard from Randall’s employees here that the store near San Felipe and Voss will shut its doors by the end of the month. One reader even has a date: May 23. County records show that the 56,511-sq.-ft. building sits on 157,149 sq. ft. of pricey Memorial property across Voss from the new Trader Joe’s — the parking lot of which appeared a bit less barren than the Randall’s lot in this photo taken this morning. Attempts to contact Safeway haven’t been returned.
An update comes in from reader Nicole Sherman, who saw this bare facade-to-be and fruity Sprouts Farmers Market sign at the end of last week and snapped these photos: Filling in for the former Sports Authority in the Kirkwood Shopping Center at 11940 Westheimer, this will be the 4th Sprouts in Houston and the farthest in, only 2 miles beyond the Beltway. In October, the green grocer revealed the first 3 locations it would open in Houston this year:
Houston architect Wylie W. Vale passed away early this morning. He was 96. Vale’s career, according to photographer Ben Hill, who has documented his works, spanned from 1939 to 2001. Working in an array of styles, Vale played a substantial role in shaping the looks of River Oaks, Tanglewood, and Memorial. The home pictured above is in Katy.
Trader Joe’s has at last confirmed the second and third of the 3 stores that’ll constitute the idiosyncratic grocer’s Houston invasion. If you’ve been following Swamplot, you already know about these locations: In addition to the already announced shopping-center add-on in The Woodlands (recent construction photo at top), there’s another to be constructed in suburban-style big-corniced splendor (midde photo, above) on Voss just north of San Felipe. And yes — the company is now ready to admit — one in the just-decimated hollows of the once-grandAlabama Theater, last known as the Alabama Bookstop bookstore (bottom photo above).
Is this the right address? As Swamplot noted last week, Trader Joe’s received a sales-tax permit for a Memorial-area location at 1440 S. Voss at the end of last year. But the company hasn’t officially announced the locations for its Houston stores yet. Swamplot photographer Candace Garcia poked around the scene on Voss between San Felipe and Woodway over the weekend, to scope out any preparations going on there for a TJ’s landing. There didn’t appear to be any.
The second Houston-area Trader Joe’s will move in at 1440 S. Voss Rd., just north of San Felipe, according to this little permit report. [Ultimate Memorial]
Fashion designer Tina Knowles put her Houston estate on the market this week — just days after the London Fashion Week launch of her and daughter Beyonce’s House of Deréon International Collection at Selfridges. Coincidence? Yeah, more than likely. The fashion line of women’s clothing and bedding is named after Knowles’s mother and Beyonce’s grandmother, Galveston seamstress Agnèz Deréon (later Agnèz Beyincé). Knowles founded the House of Dereon line with her daughter in 2004 — the same year she bought this property in the gated Memorial-area neighborhood of Farnham Park off San Felipe, west of Voss.
Boasting 5 bedrooms, 5 full and 2 half baths, and the sort of charming, quasi-institutional exterior that could only have sprung from the 1970s, the home is listed at a dollar under $3.5 million. Inside, it’s been done up this way:
Tucked into the Memorial townhome ghetto in the upper left armpit of the West Loop and I-10, you’ll find this 1970 number designed by Preston Bolton. Bolton, who believed in tall ceilings way back when they were stuck in last place and nobody thought they had a chance, stuffed 3 courtyards into this 2,616-sq.-ft. single-story townhouse plan, and placed it on a street where everybody knew his name. The home went on the market last week, listed at $325,000. Interested in a brief tour?
Bankrupted weight-loss guru Shaun Kelley, who abruptly shut down his fitness center on Voss near San Felipe last month and announced plans for a new business venture with “a major food company,” is also gone from Donald Trump’s multi-level-marketing scheme, where he had planned to promote “custom pharmaceutical-grade vitamins”: “Kelley says he’s no longer working with the Trump Network, but instead is moving yet another concept. ‘I have a new investor who didn’t want me to have anything to do with the gym anymore and we’re solely focused on the food industry,’ he says. ‘We’re currently in negotiations with Jack in the Box to offer a low fat healthy food for $3 to $7.’” [Houston Business Journal; previously on Swamplot]
On his Facebook page, Shaun Kelley claims to be just “moving my business.” But abc13 is reporting that the Shaun Kelley Weight Control storefront at San Felipe and Voss shut its doors for good yesterday — shortly after the local fitness guru declared bankruptcy.
An unspecified nearby gym will take on Kelley’s trainers and clients, according to the report. Shaun Kelley Weight Loss Center memberships cost $15,000 a year, though shorter memberships were available.
Kelley gained national attention 2 years ago after the FBI interviewed a former employee to determine if Roger Clemens might have obtained steroids or human growth hormone through Kelley or his clinic. The employee claimed Clemens had met with Kelley at that location, but Kelley claimed Clemens was an acquaintance who had never visited the clinic.
Back on the market for what looks to be the first time in a couple of years: This 1959 garage-free number on Westminster Dr. in Memorial, just a couple doors down from Chimney Rock. The house was designed by Houston architects Wilson, Morris, Crain, and Anderson — just a few years before the company drew up plans for the Astrodome.
What? No giant west-facing windows in front? And what’s behind door number 1, anyway?
Swamplot covers real estate, home design and renovation, architecture, and the landscape of Houston, Texas. Swamplot did not flood during Allison — or Ike! Honest! Read more
Note: Story updated with new photos.
Comment of the Day: Inside The Knowles Family’s Walmart Home for the Holidays
“That sitting area by the fireplace looks familiar — is that where they filmed the commercial with the band members/family opening up all their gifts from Wal-Mart?” [Hellsing, commenting on Is This the House Behind the House of Deréon? Beyonce’s Mom Tina Knowles Selling Farnham Park Mansion]