Just in time for Thursday’s Aldi opening in a former strip center in Robindell, a reader sends photos of the newly de-limbed oaks along the edge of the grocery store’s new parking lot (looking along Bissonnet St. northeast from the intersection with Beechnut). Area residents on NextDoor claim the hacking occurred early Sunday morning, noting also that some fresh baby trees have been planted along the same stretch of road. Here’s another view down the same sidewalk, catching both the saplings and the stumps:
The footage above captures Ed Nelson’s high-water trek last Monday through an overflowing detention basin at the corner of Bob White Dr. and Reamer St. just north of Brays Bayou. Nelson narrates his soggy expedition through the basin (which sits at the south end of the Robindell and Braes Timbers neighborhoods, between Hillcroft Ave. and Fondren Rd.) as he attempts to document different flows of water into and out of the pond; he ultimately claims that water is flowing into the detention pond from Brays, and moving from there into the floodway easement running behind nearby houses on Reamer.
Nelson and other neighbors claim that the surrounding area did not flood prior to the detention basin’s completion in 2008, and that the detention pond was intended to collect water from the surrounding neighborhood and prevent it from flowing too quickly into Brays bayou  — whereas during the Tax Day and Memorial Day floods, the basin purportedly collected water from the bayou and channeled it into the neighborhood, causing houses to flood that neighbors believe might not have otherwise.
New parking lot has been spread out around the under-construction Aldi grocery store in Robindell, as seen in this fresh dispatch from behind the Baskin Robbins on the corner of Bissonnet and Beechnut streets. The Germany-rooted grocery store, which is replacing the 1956 strip of shops previously arrayed from 6711 to 6755 Bissonnet St., has settled on 6751 for its new street number, according to county records. Signage is now up on the newly constructed structure itself, though the old marquee along Beechnut St. (far right) still lists the full roster of the departed.
Can’t get enough of thatold-shopping-center-knock-down action? Here, courtesy of the Brays Oaks management district, is a view of the carnage currently in progress at the Robindell Shopping Center, where the empty hulls of a slew of colorfully named businesses arrayed from 6711 to 6755 Bissonnet St. are meeting dusty ends. Hello to a new Aldi and company. But before that, a goodbye to Bigwick Liquor, Libreria Cristiana El Resplendor, Ana’s Multi Services, La Sultana Pupuseria, Delta X-Ray, Cute-Cut Salon $5, Eyebrow Threading Salon, and Trudi’s Birria de Chivo. Your ice cream at neighboring Baskin-Robbins will be spared.
For Trudi’s Birria de Chivo and other now-shuttered mainstays of the east corner of Bissonnet and Beechnut in Robindell, just down the road from Bayland Park, it’s all over except the asbestos-clearing and smashing. Going up in place of the 1956 Robindell Shopping Center, according to Sharpstown Civic Association, will be a new Aldi grocery store.
The site plan below for the center at 6751 Bissonnet St. predates the Aldi announcement, but shows a possible arrangement of freefloating buildings to replace the about-to-be-demolished retail row now backing up to Albacore Dr.:
“For the price of a mid-priced Lexus,” notes a reader, “you too can have your very own possibly William Floyd designed MCM in Robindell, Swamplot’s 2009 Most Under Appreciated Neighborhood.” That would be this 3-bedroom, 1-bath, but . . . uh, high-mileage foreclosure on the corner of Bob White and Grape St., which just came onto the market earlier this week. Really, did William Floyd design this place? “It seems like a reasonable guess,” says our informant, who notes the 1960 house “only kinda looks like a 1/4 scale model of McNamara Elementary School around the corner.” Sure, all those modern buildings look alike:
