99 Cents Only Stores’ 5-year Texas experiment is over, says the company. It’ll be closing down all 20 stores in Houston, and 28 more in other parts of the state.
Photo of 99 Cents Only Store on State Highway 249: C.A. Walker Construction
Sandwich franchise Pita Pit has a store tucked inside a Greenway Plaza office building. Two more locations debuted recently: one at Highway 6 and Williams Trace in Sugar Land (opened in May) and another in the tunnel beneath McKinney St. Downtown (opened in July). A new store in a strip center at Westheimer and Fountainview is listed as “coming soon” on the company website.
Now a source reports that a total of 10 Pita Pit franchises are planned for the Houston area — including one in the shopping center at 3939 Montrose Blvd., just north of the Hurricane-Ike-swept Diedrich’s Coffee, near Marble Slab.
Photo of Sugar Land Pita Pit: Pita Pit
The Penthouse Club at 2618 Winrock has been closed by court order — the first such action stemming from Houston’s 11-year-old sexually oriented business ordinance: “State District Judge Mark Davidson issued a temporary injunction Tuesday afternoon and ordered the club to shut down immediately. A trial in which the city will argue for permanent closure is set for Oct. 27. Davidson’s order is a major victory for the city, which has spent more than $1.2 million defending the ordinance against challenges by adult-oriented businesses, said attorney Patrick Zummo, hired by the city to help it enforce the law. ‘It means that this ordinance that we fought so hard to pass and prove constitutional, that it will actually work,’ Zummo said. ‘We’re not through. We’re looking at other locations around The Penthouse.’” [Houston Chronicle]
Beaver’s barkeeps Bobby Heugel and Kevin Floyd will be opening their own place in the former Daiquiri Factory on the Westheimer Curve: “Our new bar, Anvil, located at 1424 Westheimer, will be opening in mid-November. Beneath the decades of former bar structure and traffic, lies a beautiful building with priceless windows, historic brick, and exciting features that are certain to make Anvil a site to see.”
A tipster has provided Swamplot with the actual address of the Houston office of Obra Homes, a homebuilder that’s been making itself rather scarce these days:
They are located at 9186 Katy Freeway on the 2nd floor of the Flagstone Lending Group building. As soon as you walk up the stairs, the door in front of you is their office.
Is this office location really that much of a secret? The street address, at least, is mentioned on at least one easily Googled website.
On the other hand, the huge Obra Homes showroom on 290 has closed forever, and the homebuilder appears to have vanished from the the office building on 290 that bears its name. An attorney representing the company told Fox 26 reporter Randy Wallace late last month that Obra has a phone number, but no location.
You can’t even get into the company’s website without a password. But . . . thanks to the Internet Wayback Machine, the “Our Commitment” statement proudly displayed on the Obra Homes site as recently as last year is still available:
A reader notes that a sign offering “13,000 sq feet of restaurant/retail for lease” is up at the Alabama Bookstop, and asks if plans for the location have been announced. Bookstop owner Barnes & Noble is building a new store on West Gray, on the former site of the River Oaks Shopping Center’s north curve.
That 13,000 sq. ft. figure makes it clear the sign isn’t referring to a different space in the Alabama Theater Shopping Center. According to leasing info on the Weingarten website, that’s the approximate size of the Bookstop’s space.
Photo of Bookstop at Alabama Theater Shopping Center: Debra Jane Seltzer
United Title of Texas, a subsidiary of Mercury Companies, has shut down. “The local offices are in Clear Lake, Pearland, Cinco Ranch, Cypresswood, The Woodlands and on Richmond Avenue. . . . United Title is an independent agency that relied on national title companies to underwrite its policies.” [Houston Chronicle]
No word yet about the diner next door, but the West U. Examiner reports that the Avalon Drug Store on Westheimer just east of Kirby will be calling it quits in 2 weeks:
Pharmacist Bill Morris, who has run the independent pharmacy for 36 years, said “a confluence of events” prompted his recent decision.
Morris is 67 years old — for one thing — and insurance “has made it harder” on independent pharmacy operations, which have low profit margins.
He also pointed to leasing rates that are rising due to the plethora of new construction in the Upper Kirby area.
Update: As owner Coy Ramsey notes in the comments, Avalon Diner is not going anywhere. More from the River Oaks Examiner and Houstonist.
Photo: Flickr user Houstonian [license]
A few months after abruptly shutting down operations in the Rio Grande Valley, McAllen-based homebuilder Obra Homes appears to have quietly abandoned its Houston-area business as well, leaving one Rosenberg subdivision littered with empty slabs.
So where the heck is Obra Homes anyway? A model home here at this subdivision is empty and closed, and the company’s attorney tells us no more Obra homes will be built here at the Trails at Seabourne Park subdivision. . . .
The company’s huge showroom on 290 looks like a ghost town. And according to a sign on the window, Obra Homes was locked out for failing to pay rent.
This office building on 290 says “Obra Homes” in big letters. but go inside and there’s no mention of the company.
The homebuilder’s attorney tells Fox 26 reporter Randy Wallace that there is no Obra Homes office. But there is a phone number!
Photo of 5010 Cottage Creek Ln., The Trails at Seabourne Park, Rosenberg: HAR
City officials posted signs at the Gables of Inwood Apartments near Antoine Forest yesterday notifying residents that they need to vacate the property by Monday. The owner of the 165-unit complex, Collins Ofoegbu of El Sobrante, California, has received notices of more than 240 violations from city inspectors since purchasing the property in 2006.
Some received the news from orange “notice to vacate” signs affixed to their doors. The signs also warned residents that power would be disconnected Monday.
“I need, like, two or three months,” said an agitated Jolanda Hernandez, who waved a recent rent receipt while complaining in Spanish. “I need time so I can move out of here.”
Matt Stiles’s report in the Chronicle indicates there are also problems at a closer-in property with a much larger group of owners: the Park Memorial Condominiums near the corner of Memorial and Detering. Stiles says city inspectors planned to post notices at the condominiums at 5292 Memorial warning residents that the parking garage is unsafe and “may experience catastrophic failure at any time.”
After the jump: More highlights from reporter Matt Stiles’s personal collection of dangerous-apartment photos!
In one fell soup, Bennigan’s has apparently shuttered all of its U.S. locations. And the store is taking its sister restaurant, the ailing Steak & Ale, along with it. The chains’ are filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Both are subsidiaries of Metromedia Restaurant Group, based in Plano.
Over at Houstonist, Katherine Shilcutt Gleave surveys the confusion resulting from the unannounced overnight shutdowns:
Houston is home to at least 20 Bennigan’s restaurants in the city and surrounding metropolitan areas. Calls placed this morning by Houstonist to the locations netted the same result each time: a phone ringing off the hook and no answering service. Only one location answered the phone when we called: the Bennigan’s in Greenspoint off Beltway 8. The befuddled-sounding manager at that location politely told us that they were, in fact, closed. He further confirmed that all other Bennigan’s in Houston were closed as well.
Steak & Ale had 6 Houston-area locations.
Photo: Flickr user alex_user
The drive-thru mall with extras known as Pearland Town Center opens this Wednesday, at the intersection of 288 and FM 518! But it’ll be so much more than just a collection of chain stores arranged neatly in a giant parking lot:
Sixty-two apartments rest on top of retail stores, giving residents a downtown feel without the hassle of daily traffic. Granite countertops complement the kitchen of each unit along with stainless-steel appliances.
The above-retail units will be available for leasing July 30 while another set of 238 freestanding residential units will be accessible in late 2009. One-bedroom apartments will lease for $1,300 per month, and two-bedroom loft apartments will lease for $1,900 per month.
75-percent of the 85-percent-leased mall will be open Wednesday, reports David Kaplan in the Chronicle.
Plan of Pearland Town Center: CBL & Associates
It appears our report earlier this week was a bit premature (although this one was more accurate). Rosenberg will be losing 2 out of its 3 Starbucks locations. And a total of 8 Starbucks stores will be closing in Houston — plus 1 in the Deerbrook Mall, which is technically in Humble.
Thanks to the pioneering work of a last-name-free coffee drinker going by the name Winter, who has been on a 11-year-long “personal mission” to visit and photograph every single Starbucks in the world, we now have a well-illustrated compilation of the 11 Houstonish Starbucks locations the company has decided to close as part of its 600-store nationwide shutdown extravaganza. Ready for the tour?
3821 S. Shepherd at Farnham. On the “other ” Shepherd Curve, across from Amy’s Ice Cream. It’s been hiding there for a while, but did it ever have customers?
More shuttered Starbucks below. See them all!
It took 2 weeks, but someone at last noticed: Montrose wedding-reception capital Bistro Vino has shut down. Scooping a number of popular restaurant-review websites, the Chronicle’s Nancy Sarnoff reports that owner Mohammad Bayegan sold the house-turned-restaurant at 819 W. Alabama (at Roseland) and a small apartment building next door to an unnamed residential developer.
[La Colombe d'Or owner Steve] Zimmerman, who lived in a house behind Bistro Vino in the late 1970s and 1980s, said the area had been a quiet residential neighborhood until the 1990s, when small businesses opened offices on West Alabama.
In a note on the Bistro Vino website, Bayegan bids
farewell to all our loyal customers especially to our hundreds of brides that gave us the honor to be part of the start of a very important journey of their lives.
After the jump: one of those brides, starting a journey!
The home-furniture-for-the-furnitureless nonprofit has opened a new store called the Bargain Bazaar — on the north side of I-45 near Scott, down the street from its new warehouse on Hussion Street — to sell “slightly used” furniture to the public. If all goes well, the Furniture Bank will buy the building someday. [Greater Houston Weekly]
