This photo of the strip center just west of the Lower Westheimer restaurant row shows the recently closed Tejas Custom Boots and Hollywood Food & Cigars. A Swamplot reader says that a sign posted in the window here at Helen and 208 Westheimer says that the alligator- and ostrich-unfriendly bootmakers will be moving the stretching and stitching operations farther west to the 400 block of Westheimer. As of Friday morning, calls to Tejas Custom Boots for comment about the relocation and reopening haven’t been returned. City records show that the 4,100-sq.-ft. 1960 building and 11,322-sq.-ft. property are owned by a single family.
Photo: Swamplot inbox
Read more about: 77006, Avondale, Lower Westheimer, Montrose, Openings and Closings, Retail, Strip Centers
And it looks like the Alamo is standing on its own again: Previously demolished, Alamo Tamales re-appeared last summer as nothing but leaning walls and steel rods, but it re-opened with a stalwart uprightness on Berry Rd. on Friday. Architect Tim Cisneros of Cisneros Design Studio sends the photo of the restaurant’s finished facade sandwiched between a dessert bar and cantina in the 21,000-sq.-ft. Northside strip center west of Irvington Blvd.
Photos: Cisneros Design Studio
Read more about: 77022, Northside, Openings and Closings, Restaurants, Strip Centers, Theming
February 20, 2013 – 4:15 pm
Note: Story has been updated.
Houston Business Journal reports that Office Max and Office Depot are combining into one global office force to be reckoned with. The $1.17-billion, all-stock deal between the two big-box paper pushers is expected to create a single company — with less overhead and less overlap, too, you’d think — that’s worth $18 billion. Also, the Houston Chronicle‘s Nancy Sarnoff reports that developer Ed Wulfe says that “9 or 10 of the 40 Office Depots and 19 Office Maxes in greater Houston are close enough to each other that one will have to close.” One of those, pictured here, is located in the strip center at Richmond and Kirby. [Houston Business Journal; Prime Property] Photo: Panoramio user Wolfgang Houston
Read more about: Buying and Selling, Commercial Real Estate, Franchises and Chain Stores, Quicklink, Retail, Strip Centers
February 8, 2013 – 11:35 am
Sharing Benignus Plaza with Jason’s Deli, Texas State Optical, and a salon, this 2,500-sq.-ft. suite at 10321 Katy Freeway will be the first Club Champion store in Texas. The Chicago-based company sells custom golf clubs built to fit, and it provides a demo space for practice. Sitting just east of Town & Country Village, the Benignus Plaza store will be almost directly across I-10 from Hicks Ventures’ proposed Block 10 West Office Park.
Photos: Swamplot inbox
Read more about: 77024, I-10, Openings and Closings, Renovations, Retail, Strip Centers, Town and Country Village
December 10, 2012 – 2:06 pm
The proto-strip center that houses Yale St. Grill in the Heights went up for sale earlier this month, but Barbara Guidry, who’s been the vintage-y diner’s manager for 30 years, doesn’t expect any changes: “[The building's] been sold before,” she tells Swamplot, “but this is like an institution.” The 1952 building has been listed at just under $3.2 million. The restaurant shares the 18,000-sq.-ft. structure — located a couple blocks north of the 19th St. shopping district — with Heights Antiques and Dr. Ullman, an optometrist. All 3 are long-term tenants on triple-net leases. Guidry says, “No, this place is a gold mine.”
Photo: Flickr user jgeo
Read more about: 77008, Buildings for Sale, Houston Heights, Restaurants, Strip Centers
October 19, 2012 – 3:19 pm
The conquest of a long strip of land between Travis and Main known as the Midtown Superblock was completed last month, Shaina Zucker reports in today’s Houston Business Journal. The strip center at the corner of Travis and Anita once known as Liberty Square, and more recently for tenants Escobar and the Thien An sandwich shop, was sold to the Midtown Redevelopment Authority in September. Escobar, Thien An, and a second nightclub in the building will have until the end of the year to scram. The TIRZ plans to swap the land under the strip center with Camden Property Trust, in return for a couple of properties at the northern end of the same superblock.
That’ll give the Midtown authority a tiny bit less than 3 acres of land facing McGowen St., leaving Camden with the superblock’s slightly larger southern portion. The organization plans to build a park on its end — but one that includes 8,500 sq. ft. of retail space and 250 underground parking spaces, according to Zucker:
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Read more about: 77006, Apartments, Buying and Selling, Midtown, Openings and Closings, Parks, Proposed Developments, Strip Centers, TIRZs
October 5, 2012 – 3:01 pm
Saddled with a “terrible” location — a lonely strip center on Barker Cypress Rd., halfway between Katy and Cypress, year-old Ranch Bakery is taking to Kickstarter to raise funds to — break its lease? No — start up a food truck, explains owner John Homrighausen. It’ll be a souped-up delivery truck with “a giant pair of longhorns for the front & a horn that plays ‘The Eyes Of Texas,’” he promises. The spot at 5431 Barker Cypress is good for his catering company, Homrighausen explains, “but an unfortunate one for a retail store.” He hopes to lure fans of kolaches and Big John’s King Kong Ding Dongs to donate a total of $19,965 towards the effort by the end of the month. [Kickstarter, via Eater Houston] Photo: Ranch Bakery
Read more about: 77084, Cypress, Financing, Food Trucks, Mobile Food Vendors, Retail, Strip Centers
September 19, 2012 – 1:34 pm
There’s a changing of the guard at the strip-center endcap at 10705 Westheimer in Westchase. Workers have been taking down the signs; the Smashburger in that location closed for good on Monday. A reader claims that the burger joint, on a small strip directly adjacent to the McDonald’s at the corner of Wallingford Rd., was the chain’s worst-performing store. And: that the location has already been reserved for Dunkin’ Donuts. A franchise group plans to open 16 new Dunkin’ Donuts stores in Houston over the next 6 years.
Photos: Swamplot inbox
Read more about: 77042, Fast Food, Openings and Closings, Restaurants, Strip Centers, Westchase
August 13, 2012 – 11:55 am
Strip-center mainstay GameStop has a new strategy to keep itself from going the way of video-game cartridges: changing its business in the direction of another strip-center mainstay: the mobile phone store. The company began a program of buying used iPhones last fall; it’s now ready to remake itself as a leading reseller of used Apple gadgets. Company employees are working on coming up to speed on repairing Android devices as well. Seventy-one of the Texas chain’s 6,600 locations are in the greater Houston area. Sixty stores around the country have already begun selling prepaid wireless plans; an analyst suggests selling phone plans to go with used phones could become a big new business for the chain. [SF Chronicle] Photo of GameStop Outlet at Westheimer and Hwy. 6: Dr. Mario Kart
Read more about: Chain-Stores, Retail, Strip Centers
The Alamo reinforcements have arrived! Okay, they’re just temporary steel props, but they’re now holding the tilt-up concrete facade out of the mud around the tamale-themed strip center Warwick Construction is putting up on Houston’s Northside. The 23,000-sq.-ft. Alamo Tamale Company development at 809 Berry Rd. just west of Irvington will include a bakery, a reception hall, a restaurant and cantina, a dessert bar, and — yes — an on-site tamale-construction facility. Plus: a drive-thru meant to accommodate about 20 tamale-pickup vehicles.
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Read more about: 77022, New Construction, Nightlife, Northside, Restaurants, Retail, Strip Centers, Theming
The half-empty strip center left over from a series of unfortunate redos of City Hall architect Joseph Finger’s 1937 Tower Community Center (which once served as an art-deco companion piece to the former Tower Theater across the street) is now under contract to a new owner, along with the entire 2.86-acre block at the southwest corner of Westheimer and Montrose. That’s the word from a posting on the property’s listing site noted by Going Up! City, but the listing brokers at HFF aren’t providing any additional information.
Unless someone wants to spill the beans on the purchaser’s identity or any plans for the current home of Half Price Books, Spec’s, Papa John’s, and 3-6-9 China Bistro (along with the standalone Jack-in-the-Box at Montrose and Lovett) before then, you’ll have to wait until the seller issues a press release — which will happen sometime next week, a source tells Swamplot — for additional details. The property went on the market in early March.
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Read more about: 77006, Buying and Selling, Commercial Real Estate, Houston Architects, Houston Landmarks, Lower Westheimer, Montrose, Strip Centers
Houston’s “preeminent BDSM dungeon,” writes the Houston Press‘s Jef with One F, “started out as a simple one-room space in the Galleria area in 2010, but now hosts a multi-room facility that serves as one of the few full-time dungeons in the city.” A FourSquare listing reveals that Maison Noir is lodged inside “erotic fantasy superstore” Bizarre Times, in the crotch of a strip center on Winrock just north of Westheimer, across the street from the Penthouse Club and the Super Clean Carwash. “The facility is outfitted with many pieces of bondage furniture such as a vertical steel cage, a St. Andrews Cross, a CBT chair . . . multiple spanking benches, a vertical rack, and a bondage table.” [Art Attack] Update, 4/20: A couple of dominatrixes have sternly corrected us; Maison Noir moved from its Winrock location earlier this year. Photo: LoopNet
Read more about: 77057, Retail, Strip Centers
The Greater Houston Preservation Alliance’s days as a scrappy preservation organization housed in offices in the historic 1929 Gulf building downtown are over. From now on, it’ll be a scrappy preservation organization housed in offices in a Westheimer Rd. strip center. Okay, it’s that fancy brick-clad River Oaks strip center with the argyle tower across at 3272 Westheimer, across from Lamar High School. And it’s name is gonna change too. The GHPA shall now be known as Preservation Houston. [GHPA Preservation Houston; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Jim Parsons/Preservation Houston
Read more about: 77098, Historic Preservation, Moving, Office Space, River Oaks, Strip Centers
The real-estate fund that’s owned the half-vacant strip center at the southwest corner of Westheimer and Montrose for the last 4 years has put the entire 2.86-acre block up for sale. On the site now: Half Price Books, Spec’s Liquors, Papa John’s Pizza, and the 3-6-9 China Bistro in a stuccoed-over 41,838-sq.-ft. building once known as the Tower Community Center (to match the Tower Theater, now home to El Real Tex-Mex, across the street). Also included: the standalone Jack-in-the-Box on the corner of Montrose and Lovett. No list price, but broker HFF is indicating “price guidance” of $10 million or higher.
The Art Deco building still lurking beneath was designed by architect Joseph Finger in 1937, 2 years before he completed work for Houston’s city hall. Here’s how the shopping center looked then-ish, with a Walgreens on the corner of Yoakum St.:
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Read more about: 77006, Buildings for Sale, Commercial Real Estate, Houston Architects, Houston History, Land for Sale, Montrose, Strip Centers
Comment of the Day: The Strip Center Mandate
“Wait, so there’s no nail salon now? Is that legal? I thought that municipal laws required all strip centers of a certain size to have tax prep, a dry cleaner, a nail salon, and a coffee shop/ice cream parlor/yogurt bar.” [Sihaya, commenting on Telephone Road’s New Sweet and Sweat Shops]