COMMENT OF THE DAY: NEW NEIGHBORHOOD NAMES STICK 
“I came from DC and we saw this time and again . . . what I learned is the pro-namers almost always win. Turns out it is fairly easy to name an unnamed area. Of course, in DC (and SF, and LA), the names are almost always douche-y NYC-wannabe abbreviations. The naysayers should just be glad they aren’t calling it TriNoMa (Triangle North of Main).” [CAHBF, commenting on Tampico Heights Rises Again, This Time in a Bumper Sticker Campaign] Illustration: Lulu
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Tag: Names
TAMPICO HEIGHTS RISES AGAIN, THIS TIME IN A BUMPER STICKER CAMPAIGN 
In a setback for the upstart movement to rename Brooke Smith and portions of East Sunset Heights east of N. Main St. and west of I-45, the appearance of the name “Tampico Heights” on Google Maps got shut down late last month by a couple of eagle-eyed citizen editors who noted that the name was “being used by a small group of residents to try and encourage the adoption of the name for this neighborhood, much to a larger group’s displeasure.” The newfangled designation has now been removed. But pro-Tampico campaigners have taken to the streets — or at least the shopping-center parking lots: A reader sends Swamplot this photo of a Tampico Heights bumper sticker spotted on a Chevy TrailBlazer parked in front of “Party” Kroger on Studemont St. over the weekend. [previously on Swamplot] Photo: Mel
COMMENT OF THE DAY: GOODBYE TO WOODCREST 
“. . . I contend that Rice Military has eaten up Woodcrest whatever the original boundaries were. I have lived about a mile from that Knox Street house for five years, riding my bike through there several times a week, and have never seen any evidence of the Woodcrest brand. (Though the pic of the sign in the TC Jester esplanade on the crickets-empty Woodcrest Neighborhood Association website looks vaguely familiar. It’s in black and white so no telling how old it is.) Rice Military, Crestwood/Glen Cove and Cottage Grove all have Wikipedia pages. Woodcrest does not. 999 out of 1000 Houstonians would not have a clue where Woodcrest was, but lots more know Rice Military. Its original identity has been erased in the last ten or 15 years and it’s now a Condo Canyon like Rice Military so let’s just let that boring Woodcrest name go, especially since there’s a Crestwood right down the street.” [John Nova Lomax, commenting on Hearsay Doubling Up Downtown; Touring the Inner Loop’s Second-Cheapest Rent House] Illustration: Lulu
‘TAMPICO HEIGHTS’ IS NOW A THING ON GOOGLE MAPS 
Near Northside residents who didn’t want their neighborhood to be called Tampico Heights have been successful in their campaign to keep the new name out. But it looks like Tampico Heights may be settling in as a new neighbor. A reader reports — and a quick online search confirms (see screen capture at left) — that Google Maps has now begun applying the new name Tampico Heights to area maps. Northside Village has been spared the Heights creep: The Tampico Heights name appears to have been applied to inner-loop neighborhoods Brooke Smith, East Sunset Heights, and portions of Sunset Heights west of I-45 and east of North Main, and not to Northside Village or the Near Northside, which lie east of I-45. That’s a more reasonable spot for a Tampico Heights to land anyway, since it incorporates the Tampico Refresqueria at 4520 N. Main St. and Tampico Seafood & Cocina Mexicana, at 2115 Airline Dr. [Previously on Swamplot]
A dust-up begun in the comments section of a Houstonia magazine article has blossomed into a mini-campaign to squash a recently coined neighborhood nickname. Two websites have now been created to document the curious internet history surrounding the recent appearance of the name Tampico Heights, and to demonstrate residents’ steadfast opposition to Heights name creep.
“From talking to dozens of Northsiders, it is not a name that anyone has heard used for the neighborhood,” a reader tells Swamplot. So the reader (lightheartedly signing emails as the Tampico Heights Redevelopment Authority) created a timeline site, documenting usage of the term “Tampico Heights” — in a manner that might make the founders of the OED proud — “in hopes that people who write about our neighborhood, or any neighborhood, make a practice of talking to residents, and not inventing things from google searches.”
Battling ‘Heights’ Creep
NEW NORTH MONTROSE APARTMENTS LEAVE HANOVER, MOVE TO RIVER OAKS 
Residents of the recently opened Hanover West Gray apartments at 1340 West Gray got an unexpected notice in their mailboxes this month: Their new homes at the corner of West Gray and Waugh (replacing the Tavern on Gray and some neighboring structures) now feature a River Oaks address. Hanover sold the 275-unit structures effective March 13 to AMLI. And the new owner is calling the complex AMLI River Oaks, after the tony no-apartments-please neighborhood whose eastern border is three-quarters of a mile to the west. [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Hanover Company
In what appears to be a bid to get more people to pronounce Houston’s major industry in a stilted quasi-drawl, the parent company of Reliant Energy has decided to rebrand Reliant Stadium and Reliant Park. The Houston Chronicle‘s Kiah Collier reports that henceforth (or after a vote by county commissioners at least) they shall be known as NRG Stadium and NRG Park. Collier’s sources don’t seem to have mentioned whether the name-change will result in similar switches for the other structures in the sports-and-convention complex, labeled the Reliant Center, Reliant Arena, and Reliant Astrodome since 2002.
The New Old Home of the Texans, Etc.
Houstonia’s John Nova Lomax, incessant chronicler of things-far-gone in the city, has put together a handy guide to the boundaries of a dozen-and-a-half retired Houston placenames, though a number of them (Astrodomain and Freedman’s Town, for example) aren’t so distant from regular use. But if you always wanted to know the way to Frenchtown, Chaneyville, or El Alacran — or the distance between Catfish Reef and Pearl Harbor — here’s your go-to map.
- Catfish Reef, Happy Hollow, and Vinegar Hill [Houstonia]
Map: John Nova Lomax
Local Extinctions
Hey, it worked for the River Oaks Cleaners and CityCentre! The latest, perhaps only half-unwitting entry into the ongoing Houston name-sprawl competition is “Heights at Park Row,” an apartment complex announced yesterday by an Atlanta developer but apparently already under construction in advance of an announced October opening date. The 342-unit rental compound, a mere 14 freeway miles west of the similarly named Houston neighborhood not known (yet) for its apartments, will hang back a tad from the southern freeway exposure of Wolff Companies’ this-and-that-use Central Park development, wedged ’twixt I-10 and a planned the recent extension of the Terry Hershey Park Bike Trail.
Central Park will, in fact, be entirely central to its own location, along Houston’s central concrete ribbon but only a little east of Hwy. 6:
Name Creep
Sadly, her report doesn’t include renderings of this little detail, but Real Estate Bisnow’s Catie Dixon notes that the Schreer Partnership’s planned redo (depicted at left) of the 152,000-sq.-ft. Kingwood Shopping Center at the northeast corner of Kingwood Dr. and Chestnut Ridge Rd. it just bought will add gates — “to give the center an exclusive feeling and to mirror the gated community of Kingwood.” Also coming, behind those wrought instigators of shopping security: a kiddie playground and outdoor dining area. The new owners tell Dixon they’re envisioning a “town center” concept (perhaps inspired by the 600,000 “first of its kind” Kingwood Parc town center complex announced last summer and planned for a couple blocks west, directly adjacent to the Eastex Fwy.). The new owners will add only one “e” with their gates, however: the shopping center shall henceforth be known as the Shoppes at Kingsgate.
- Goodbye, Kingwood Shopping Center [Real Estate Bisnow]
Rendering: Schreer Partnership Interests
Stein Mart Will Stay
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHAT DO YOU CALL THE TRANSFORMED INDUSTRIAL DISTRICT SOUTH OF THE HEIGHTS? 
“I think the stretch of land North of Washington but South of I-10, where all the big-box retailers are going in, should be called Katyville.” [el duderino, commenting on Grocers Supply Sale Will Supply 15 Acres for Apartments, Shops Across from Studemont Kroger] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: DOES THE NAME STICK? 
“I believe the name of the neighborhood is actually Uptown. The Galleria is a mall.” [Jonathan Hansen, commenting on Houston’s Most Recognizable Neighborhood: The Official 2013 Ballot] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE DOWNTOWN TURNAROUND 
“I’ve always thought it was a little strange that the entire country has adopted a geographic reference specific to Manhattan to refer to the place in a city where the tall buildings are. Elsewhere in the Anglophone world, the terms ‘city center’ or CBD (central business district) are used, which makes a lot more sense.
In Houston we’ve gone a step further: we refer to a place 5 miles WEST of ‘downtown’ as ‘uptown,’ and the place immediately SOUTH (ok, southwest) of ‘downtown’ as ‘midtown.’” [Angostura, commenting on Comment of the Day: Downtown Is on the Edge] Illustration: Lulu
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOW HOUSTON NEIGHBORHOODS CAN RISE ABOVE THE FLOODWATERS “Sawyer Heights . . . Upper Kirby . . . Washington Heights . . . I guess when you have a city with no hills they add ‘Heights’ or ‘Upper’ to the northern portions of an area. Coming soon?: Montrose north of W. Gray, will all the new construction, will be Montrose Heights, and Clinton Dr. will be Upper EaDo.” [Dana-X, commenting on Headlines: Eating Steak at CityCentre; Watching SkyHouse Rise]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE RING ROAD NAME INFLATION CHALLENGE “Only problem is that with a huge name like Grand Parkway, what will we call the next, even bigger loop?” [Frank, commenting on Three More Links in the Grand Parkway Are Now Ready To Roll]