A MICROSOFT STORE FOR SUGAR LAND? 
Chron tech guy Dwight Silverman zooms in on Microsoft COO Kevin Turner’s map showing the 75 new retail stores the software company plans to open in the next 2 to 3 years. And yes, that sure looks like a tiny Windows flag flying somewhere Sugar Land-ish. (The flag over the red dot indicates the store Microsoft opened last month in the Galleria, the company’s first Texas location.) A Microsoft spokesperson hedges on the map, saying it’s only “representative of the types” of locations that might be considered. But Silverman doesn’t buy it: “Given that Turner offered a very specific number in his speech, and the locations on the map seem to be specific as well, I suspect this is more than just a case of the ‘mights.'” [TechBlog; previously on Swamplot] Image: Microsoft
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Tag: Sugar-Land
The next landing site for Chindian food in Sugar Land? A 4,000-sq.-ft. space wedged between Busybody Home Fitness and the Stomping Grounds kiddie playland, in the First Colony Commons shopping center at 59 and Williams Trace, just a few doors down from the Home Depot. The new Hakka Chinese joint there should have its soft opening around the end of next week — presuming all goes well with the inspections scheduled for Monday. A grand opening is scheduled for the middle of March. “In India, Hakka cuisine is like Tex-Mex in Texas — kind of. It’s a very popular cuisine,” Irfan Motiwala tells Swamplot. But it’ll be all new for Sugar Land. Fortunately, Motiwala explains, the Hakka people are used to adjusting flavors to meet local tastes. That’s how the whole Chindian food thing came about, after all: in the 1950s, once large numbers of the already nomadic people fleeing Mao’s revolution settled in India, they started incorporating local spices like coriander and tandoori masala into their cooking, giving it a little more zing. Motiwala’s wife, Hsiaolin, and her brother-in-law, Gary Yan, both of whom will be running things in the kitchen, expect a little bit of the same process to take place at the 15425 Southwest Freeway location of Aling’s Hakka Chinese Cuisine. “If I find the people of Sugar Land eat more spicy than normal, i will adjust it,” Yan says.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE SOUND OF SUGAR SHAKING OUT OF SUGAR LAND “I’m going to assume that the building is no longer since at 7:01am [on Sunday] I heard a rather low but loud boom followed by my desk shaking a little. I’m about 10 miles away as well.” [geequeue, commenting on Sugar Land Sugar Box Implosions Back on for This Sunday]
It took several tries and a bit of a scare to take down the second building from the former Imperial Sugar factory and refinery off Highway 90A in Sugar Land Sunday. As shown in more than a dozen YouTube videos, the metal bin building collapsed after the first blasts of dynamite shortly after 7 am, as planned. But the metal furnace house, directly adjacent to the brick char house, didn’t budge; getting it out of there turned out to be a little trickier. A second series of blasts (shown in the video above), set around 7:45, produced . . . well, not much. Then, maybe 40 minutes later, after most of the crowds had left and workers had gone inside the building to try to figure out what was wrong, and when the remaining onlookers least expected it, there was this frightening scene:
The controlled demolitions of 2 metal buildings once part of the Imperial Sugar Refinery off Highway 90A in Sugar Land, originally scheduled for December 12th, have been rescheduled for this weekend. If all goes according to plan, after the dynamite blasts on Sunday morning the furnace house and bin building will fall away from the brick char house, which Johnson Development Corp. plans to save and use as a centerpiece for the new 700-acre historic-themed development it plans to build on the site, celebrating the rich but recently decimated history of the local sugar-refining business. The company plans to call the development “Imperial.” With or without the implosion, the demolition of Sugar Land’s iconic buildings has already been nominated this year for a Swamplot Award for Houston Real Estate, in the Best Teardown category.
The viewing area will be east of Main St. and north of Hwy. 90A — which will be closed down. There will be parking available at Lakeview Elementary, 314 Lakeview Dr., and Sugar Land Middle School, 321 Seventh St. Demo time is scheduled for 7 am.
- The Blast is Back On at Imperial: Two Buildings To Be Imploded Dec. 19 [Fort Bend Now]
- Previously on Swamplot: The New Sugar Land: More Land, Less Sugar
Photo: Flickr user mscottk
Late Update, 12/16: The implosions are back on, scheduled for December 19th.
Update, 12/8 3:30 pm: FortBendNow is reporting that this weekend’s implosion has been canceled and will be rescheduled later.
Fort Bend County fans of large building implosions won’t have to drive all the way into Downtown Houston to watch the next big boom. It’s gonna be taking place right in the heart of Sugar Land, this weekend! Johnson Development Corp. will be knocking down an old furnace house and a bin building — 2 metal structures from the former Imperial Sugar Refinery — this Sunday morning at 7. The ongoing demolition project is necessary so the company — part of a public-private partnership with the Texas General Land Office and the City of Sugar Land, run by private equity firm Cherokee — can create a giant historic-themed development on the surrounding industrial acreage, celebrating the area’s rich history of refinement. The Imperial Sugar Company, no stranger to refinery explosions itself, shut down the plant in 2003.
CAN’T BEAT THAT TOUR OF ITALY “It’s getting more competitive out here, and the better restaurants are continuing to perform well and the lesser ones are being replaced,†— Planned Community Developers’ Steve Eubanks, comparing the success of the recently opened Olive Garden in the area to the recent fate of Amici Ristorante in PCD’s own Sugar Land Town Center. Amici, which is closing its doors after two years of operation, was developed by Bruce McMillian and Jeff Vallone, son of famed Houston restaurateur Tony Vallone. Eubanks describes the Olive Garden off the 59 Freeway at Sweetwater Blvd. in Sugar Land as already “one of the top-performing restaurants in the chain.” [Houston Business Journal]
WILL THEY EVER GET TO PLAY THE HOUSTON FLOOD? 
In a rare and surprising victory for regional realism, prospective fans have chosen to name Sugar Land’s new minor-league baseball team the Skeeters, the Atlantic League team’s management announced yesterday. Defeated at the baseball ballot box: also-rans the King Canes and Lizard Kings. Fans should be able to watch the Skeeters and swat mosquitoes from $8 seats in Sugar Land’s new strip-mall-inspired open-air stadium on the banks of Oyster Creek by the 2012 season. While one rendition of the new team’s logo pictures a mosquito piercing a baseball with its proboscis, an animated version (featured at the top left of every page on the team’s new website) depicts it angrily and repeatedly stabbing into Fort Bend County on a map of Texas. (See also less-charitable responses to the name from Around the Loop and Deadspin.) [Skeeters News; previously on Swamplot]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: BUILD IT AND THEY WILL DRIVE UP “Why couldn’t they just carve it out of a field of corn…?” [Mies, commenting on New Sugar Land Minor League Stadium Easily Assembled from Standardized Suburban Parts]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: SUGAR LAND SHOPPING OUTINGS, BETWEEN INNINGS “Maybe this is a new suburban form of mixed use development. Who says you can’t pick up your prescriptions, grab a venti latte and watch a ball game all at the same place?” [Matt, commenting on New Sugar Land Minor League Stadium Easily Assembled from Standardized Suburban Parts]
Building a baseball stadium can be a complicated job. But the latest drawings released by PGAL, the architecture firm that’s been doing design work for Sugar Land’s new minor league ballpark, make it look like the project’s designers are doing their best to break down the process into some easily understood components, which should make the task simpler to comprehend for whichever design-build contractor is selected. Can you build some bleachers? Great! How about a brickface strip center, or maybe one of those drive-up apartment complexes? Knew you could! Now just wrap it around the outside from 1st to 3rd base, and you’ve pretty much got it.
What galls jailed billionaire Allen Stanford even more than having to sit through the court-ordered sell-off of his entire hard-earned real estate portfolio? It’s that it’s all happening in a down market! Stanford’s lawyers have been arguing in court that liquidating the accused huckster’s properties while real-estate prices are depressed isn’t such a smart idea. A good $9 million of the $12.2 million the folks behind the Black Forest Cafe are paying to buy the clunkily ornate former Stanford Financial Group headquarters building at 5050 Westheimer across from the Galleria, for example, will go to pay off the property’s mortgage and back interest. What’s the guy gonna have left to live on once he’s acquitted of all those ridiculous Ponzi scheme charges? But an attorney for the receiver managing the sales says he’s just trying to save money for the estate. Next Stanford property on the block: The former Stanford Aviation hangar (above) at 100 Jim Davidson Dr. near Sugar Land Regional Airport, at an auction this week.
- Selling a ‘Fraud’ Portfolio [WSJ]
- Allen Stanford coverage [Swamplot]
- Also previously on Swamplot: The Black Forest Mix
Photo: Loopnet
Just what is it that gives this Sweetwater chateau that authentic French je ne sais quoi? Could it be the multipurpose wine room? The big-enough-for-giant-pancakes breakfast area? The Vince Young seal of approval? No telling if any actual chateaus were harmed in the making of this grand home, but that’s all likely ancient history anyway — this place dates from the last century!
Listed earlier this week for just under $3.5 million, this little cul-de-sac palace backs up to the grounds of the Sweetwater Country Club and packs in 4 full bedrooms and 3 full and 3 half baths — all in just 7,744 sq. ft. Many delights await you in this photo tour:
