PERUSING THE WOODLANDS 
This is the only one of the homes to be featured in this Saturday’s AIA walking tour in the Woodlands that’s active on the market. With a view of Lake Woodlands at 34 East Shore Dr., the 6-bedroom, 8,400-sq.-ft., never-lived-in house designed by Bobby McAlpine is going for $5.2 million. The listing indicates that 5 open houses are scheduled for May and June — with the first this Sunday. The place also features a staircase that might induce a feeling of déjà vu. [AIA Houston; HAR; previously on Swamplot] Photo: HAR
Sign up for the Newsletter
Tag: The Woodlands
- 34 East Shore Dr. [HAR]
One more of each, thank you: Creekside Park Village Center, rendered above, will be the Woodlands’ 7th and will be anchored by its 4th H-E-B, the master-planned community says. The shopping center will serve Creekside Park, a 100-acre community planned to go in up there west of Lake Paloma. It appears that the center will herd its shoppers inward toward a 4,300-sq.-ft. glass-walled restaurant, which you can see in the rendering. And there’s gonna be a fire pit in that park-like median-thing. (And a water feature on the other end. You know. Just in case.) In all, 80,000 sq. ft. of retail and office space are proposed for the site on Kuykendahl.
THE NEW MICROSOFT STORE ABOUT TO OPEN IN THE WOODLANDS MALL WILL CLOSE SOON 
Surprise! Microsoft will be opening a new store in The Woodlands Mall this fall “to meet expected demand for new Microsoft-enabled devices.” Meaning: the new Surface tablet computer and the tile-happy Windows 8 operating system. But don’t expect the store to stick around long after customers figure out the new interfaces — or give up on them for something more familiar. The Woodlands location will be one of 32 “pop up” stores around the country being thrown up for the selling season, which will more than double the software company’s retail presence for its big rollout. A schedule for the stores’ openings and closings wasn’t included in the company’s announcement. [Woodlands Online] Photo: Desman Associates
The epic Software Group is now passing around pix of the “creative co-op” building the company painstakingly constructed next to its Woodlands headquarters over the last 18 months — out of 11 recycled shipping containers and a slew of other recycled materials. The 8-ft. x 40-ft. x 9-1/2-ft. containers, explains company president Vic Cherubini, are each 8-9 years old and still rated “sea worthy.” Around that core, the animation, multimedia and web development company production company built an almost-5,000-sq.-ft. building with a large video production studio inside. The assembly sits 50 ft. away from Epic’s own facility at 701 Sawdust Rd., and is now occupied by several creative companies in the area — who pre-leased it before completion.
How’d they put the thing together?
And here’s a second shot she posted from her trip last Friday, with members of the Sassy Feet Dance Studio:
THE WOODLANDS LANDING HUGE NEW PEDESTRIAN COMPLEX 
The Woodlands’ next big mixed-use development will be named after famous aviator, philanthropist, and recluse Howard Hughes. Hughes Landing will sit at the upper east end of Lake Woodlands, west of The Woodlands Mall and north of the East Shore neighborhood. Its 66 acres will eventually be covered with 8 office buildings, a boutique hotel, shops and entertainment venues, and apartments. Plus: a boardwalk and pier jutting into the lake. First to go up in the new development will be another one of those Gensler-designed office buildings, One Hughes Landing, shown above. Construction on it starts this fall; the building is expected to be finished by the end of next year. [Business Wire]
Its brand-new, built-from-scratch store at the Woodlands Crossing Shopping Center near the corner of Woodlands Pkwy. and Kuykendahl Rd. (10868 Kuykendahl if you’re setting coordinates now) looking darn near ready-to-be-shopped-in (above), Trader Joe’s has at last announced an opening date for it: June 15th. Openings of the 2 other announced Houston-area stores — in the former Alabama Theater on S. Shepherd and West Alabama, and in a new building on Voss just north of San Felipe in Memorial — will take place before the end of the year, but haven’t yet been publicly scheduled.
- Trader Joe’s announces opening date of Woodlands store [Community Impact]
- Previously on Swamplot: Latest Pix of the Woodlands’ Trader Joe’s, Opening Soon, The 3 Trader Joe’s Grocery Stores Coming to the Houston Area
Photo: Sweetmocha
Stalking the new Trader Joe’s is apparently a competitive sport in The Woodlands. And here’s the latest score, sent in by yet another Woodlands-area Swamplot reader who’s marking construction progress at the Woodlands Crossing Shopping Center at 10868 Kuykendahl, just south of Woodlands Pkwy. and across the street from H-E-B. Yes, the very first TJ’s in the Houston area looks for all the world like just another steel-frame-and-stucco building at the butt-end of a parking lot. Except, of course, this one’s got the Trader Joe’s sign attached to the facade’s high forehead:
Trader Joe’s has at last confirmed the second and third of the 3 stores that’ll constitute the idiosyncratic grocer’s Houston invasion. If you’ve been following Swamplot, you already know about these locations: In addition to the already announced shopping-center add-on in The Woodlands (recent construction photo at top), there’s another to be constructed in suburban-style big-corniced splendor (midde photo, above) on Voss just north of San Felipe. And yes — the company is now ready to admit — one in the just-decimated hollows of the once-grand Alabama Theater, last known as the Alabama Bookstop bookstore (bottom photo above).
A LONG GOODBYE FOR THE WOODLANDS MALL SEARS 
The Woodlands Mall location is among the 11 anchor stores around the country Sears announced it will sell to mall operator General Growth Properties. All of the stores will remain open until 2013; a closing date will be announced within the next several months. [Retail Traffic] Photo: City-Data
Turns out this “mysterious construction” going up on the corner of Technology Forest Blvd. and Research Forest Dr. in The Woodlands isn’t meant to house some company’s secret R&D project — instead, it’ll house investigations of a more familiar technology. No name has been announced, but the operator of 2 Sakekawa Japanese Steak House & Sushi Bars (there’s another one Indian Springs Village already) bought the 1.21-acre pad site last year. These photos came from a Swamplot reader who was curious about the unidentified project — but then answered her own question by uncovering the secret sushi plot for us:
One of several Trader Joe’s stalkers in The Woodlands sends us this pic of the shopping center site at 10868 Kuykendahl Rd. near Woodlands Pkwy., “looking more and more like a store!” The photo was taken Sunday; no opening date is listed on the Trader Joe’s website, but it’s expected to be sometime this spring.
- Previously on Swamplot: Trader Joe’s Braces Itself for a Woodlands Shopping Center Landing, Your Early Photos of the Trader Joe’s in The Woodlands, Here’s Where the First Trader Joe’s Is Going — in The Woodlands
Photo: Swamplot inbox
Note: Story updated and corrected below.
Anadarko Petroleum announced to its employees last week that the company is ready to begin constructing a second office tower just west of its existing headquarters building in The Woodlands Town Center, a source tells Swamplot. The new building will fit on the corner of Lake Robbins Dr. and Woodloch Forest Dr., just south of The Woodlands Mall, and like the current tower will be visible from miles south on I-45. At the announced 31 stories, the new structure would be one floor shorter taller.
According to the report, parking will account for the building’s first 10 floors, though the renderings included in the announcement (above) appear to show a garage a bit shorter than that. The remaining floors are planned to accommodate company growth. Construction is expected to be complete by the spring of 2014. Anadarko did not announce the building’s contractor or architect.
Update, 1:25 pm: Groundbreaking is expected in a few weeks, our source adds; workers are beginning to clear the lot this week.
Renderings: Swamplot inbox
