11/08/17 3:15pm

Coming soon to the complex of light-colored industrial buildings across 34th St. from the Pat H. Foley funeral home and its accompanying embalming services facility, the Hare Krishna Temple and Cultural Center, and the Foster Family YMCA between them just south of Oak Forest: a 17,831 sq.-ft. retail and restaurant center redo. Revive Development’s Stomping Grounds, which will also include 5,000 sq. ft. of upstairs office space, is to be carved out of 4 buildings on a 3-acre site formerly occupied by vehicle-repair and service companies and the Bank Shot pool hall.

Drawings from Cisneros Design Studio show the 2-story metal building at 1229 W. 34th St. (pictured above) formerly occupied by a succession of electrical companies cleaned up, reconfigured, and outfitted with cantilevered balconies and glass curtain walls. A new building modeled after it is shown to the east, with an 8,000 sq.-ft. lawn bordered by patios fitted between.

224 parking spaces will surround the center’s main buildings and garden. Here’s a plan of the entire site:

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Garden Oaks, Oak Forest, or Thereabouts
10/20/17 4:45pm

Without providing too much detail on the scope of the accompanying construction (“a remodel the owner wants to do”), KHOU’s Marcelino Benito yesterday interviewed one of the proprietors of Oak Forest coffee house and occasional goat-yoga venue Slowpokes, who along with several customers and neighbors has been protesting landlord Naushad Momin’s apparent plans to chop down 2 large oak trees on site — to add more paving and parking spaces.

The oak trees sit at the southern end of the strip center at 1203 W. 34th St., which faces Alba St., and shade a lawn (pictured at top) adjacent to the Slowpokes patio deck. Chopping down trees to add more parking might appear to be a landlord’s prerogative, despite tenant opposition. Except possibly not in this case:

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Oak Deforesting
07/14/17 5:30pm

Here’s a view from last week of the former Express Wheel & Tire kiosk in Oak Forest, in the midst of its transformation into a yet-to-be-identified coffee drive-thru along Ella Blvd. at W. 34th St., at the eastern end of the shopping center redo Revive Development is working on at that intersection’s southwest corner. Demo crews are removing the overhang connecting the front canopy to the small building behind it. Renderings of the finished development on the Revive website show the canopy is meant to remain — to shade a few prime parking spaces at the eastern end of the development:

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W. 34th St. and Ella
01/10/17 5:15pm

5405 T.C. Jester Blvd., Oak Forest, Houston, 770

5405 T.C. Jester Blvd., Oak Forest, Houston, 770A strip-mall enthusiast cruising the northern edge of Oak Forest this week sends a few shots from a stop through the 5405 T.C. Jester Center just south of Tidwell Rd. The center, located east across Cole Creek from the Northwest Wastewater Treatment Plant, is home to Frio To Go, part of Houston’s budding tape-the-top frozen cocktail drive-thru scene. The daquiri store has been operating since 2014 under its traffic signal sigil; the shop’s placement also provides a handy opportunity for situational testing for the over-21 students of Prime Time Driving School, located a few doors down:

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GO/OF Detours
10/21/16 11:15am

Yale St. Commons Variance Request, Yale St. at 34th, Independence Heights, Houston, 77018

The name Yale Street Commons is currently sprinkled about the edge of the Pine Forest Business Center northeast of Yale and 34th St. in the form of a few variance request notices (like the one shown above standing by the abandoned strip of rail track running along the 36th St. side of the warehouse park).  That notice is for a request to merge 2 chunks of land within the rectangle made by Yale, 34th, 36th St., and the north-south line where E. 35th St. currently dead ends into the industrial-slash-office park, a few residential doors west of Cortlandt St.  The applicant also appears to be asking for permission not to extend E. 35th St. all the way through the property, which sits near the border between Independence Heights and Garden Oaks.  The 6-acre center, which in recent years has housed a variety of construction contractors, was sold in May to Stonelake Capital — currently at work on the Westheimer Oaks center and that Westheimer-fronting 5-acre make-it-a-park-for-now on either side of Mid Ln.

Photo: Swamplot inbox

Yale Street Commons
03/01/16 4:45pm

Former Roznovsky's Hamburgers, 3401 TC Jester, Garden Oaks/Oak Forest, 77018

The shuttered former site of Roznovsky’s Hamburgers is now dark on the outside as well, as Tacos A Go-Go makes final preparations to dance into the space. A reader sends this shot of the current state of remodeling of the building at 3401 W. T.C. Jester (at the corner with 34th St.). The burger joint shut down last year a few months after proprietor Ron Roznovsky passed away in February.

This will be the third go-round for Tacos A Go-Go, which was previously thought to be headed for the former La Fendée’s spot on Westheimer as an addition to its Midtown and Heights locations — that spot got claimed by Cafe Layal instead, and the current location was announced in June. The strip center behind the once-and-future restaurant may be getting some other new neighbors in the coming year as well; the Leader reported at the end of last year that several spots were open for tenancy between 1 Stop Food Shop and Mirage Cabaret.

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34th at W. T.C. Jester
03/03/15 4:00pm

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While not flashy, tweaks have tidied a 1952 rancher in Oak Forest’s section across from the White Oak Bayou Trail near T.C. Jester Park. Its listing a week ago attached am $450K asking price, up a bit from the $186K paid in 2006, when the property last changed hands. Its perky, red-painted planter full, the property is extra buffed for an open house on Sunday afternoon.

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Ranch Dressing
02/18/15 1:00pm

Proposed Oaks on Shepherd Shopping Center, 4000 N. Shepherd Dr., Independence Heights, Houston

Proposed Oaks on Shepherd Shopping Center, 4000 N. Shepherd Dr., Independence Heights, Houston

Update, 2/19: Weingarten says the brochure was a “vision book” that was released to the public in error.

“The time is right for redevelopment” of the Sears at 4000 N. Shepherd Dr., declares a brochure published online earlier this week by Weingarten Realty. The brochure, which appears to be part of a proposal to Sears, which owns the 11.7-acre western portion of the site, says the REIT plans to partner with the retailer to turn the sleepy department store and the Pine Forest Business Park directly to its east into a “wonderfully connected and designed retail shopping destination for Garden Oaks, Oak Forest and neighborhoods around it,” including a new grocery store and restaurants.

No site plan is included in the presentation, but Weingarten notes that it plans to keep “the 2nd longest operating Houston Sears” open in some form throughout the redevelopment. “Weingarten’s vision is to acquire adjacent land,” then “temporarily relocate Sears into an existing building” — the Family Bingo Center at 641 W. Crosstimbers — before scraping and redoing the whole site.

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Oaks on Shepherd
01/06/15 4:45pm

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Three years ago, this 2011 custom Oak Forest home with porch and pool sold for $460,000. Now? A listing over the weekend of the Craftsman-with-stuck-on-stone property carries a $750,000 price tag. That’s where price reductions from a previous listing by the same agent had landed after an initial ask of $799,500 in November 2014 and pre-holiday drop to $775,000. If the back yard’s oasis doesn’t provide enough of an escape, Oak Forest Park is a (very long) block up the street, which is located east of Rosslyn Rd.

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Cabana Club
10/24/14 1:30pm

OAK FOREST BERRYHILL STILL ON ITS WAY Berryhill Baja Grill Under Construction at 43rd St. and Ella Blvd., Oak Forest, HoustonIn the course of providing an overview of Houston’s commercial permitting process likely to open further the eyes of any wide-eyed I-wanna-open-a-restaurant newbie, Betsy Denson provides a quick sorta-update on the current status of the long-delayed Berryhill Baja Grill on the site of a former gas station at 1201 W. 43rd St., even though franchise owner Park Blair isn’t commenting publicly: “Some conjecture that it was an encroachment issue or something similarly major that has caused the delay at Berryhill on Ella. The restaurant applied for a building permit in 2011 and construction has been sporadic for the last two years. Their last approval for a restaurant addition was in February of 2014 and from the looks of things, they will open in the near future.” [The Leader] Photo: Betsy Denson