THE MUSE COMING TO CASTLE COURT 
Dallas developer Behringer Harvard announced today that construction’s underway on The Muse, an apartment complex planned for the 2.9 acres in Castle Court sold last summer where the former Andover Richmond Apartments had stood — until their demolition in November — for 50 years. The Muse, developed by a partnership between Behringer Harvard and Trammell Crow, will have 4 stories with 270 units atop 2 levels of parking, says the press release. Also planned for the site at 1301 Richmond near Graustark? “Common-area amenities will include a cyber cafe, business center, state-of-the-art fitness center, luxury swimming pool and dog-amenity station.” [PR Newswire; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Allyn West
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Tag: Apartments
And here are the apartments designed to replace those mini storage sheds being torn down on the north side of Memorial Dr. at 159 Birdsall St. The demo, says a rep from developer Sunrise Luxury Living, is about 75 percent complete — only 20 sheds remain — and construction on the 5-story Birdsall Memorial Apartments is expected to begin in the next four months. Plans show the new complex squeezing 180 1- and 2-bedroom units onto the property where the 300 storage sheds stood.
Here’s a nifty aerial view of the area:
- 1655 Marshall St. Unit A [HAR]
So the excavator is sneaking up on the old Fiesta. You knew one was coming. And you know there will be more. As of this morning, the low-slung building at the corner of Dunlavy and West Alabama hasn’t yet received a demolition permit, but it’s been on the smashing block since closing in July, not too long after H-E-B opened the Montrose Market across the street. Developer Marvy Finger, who now owns the property here in Lancaster Place, has said he plans to build something Mediterranean — a 6- to 8-story apartment complex that might or might not have some retail, too: “We’re going to try to create something really beautiful,” he’s told the Houston Chronicle’s Nancy Sarnoff.
- Previously on Swamplot: Scenes from the Dunlavy Fiesta Farewell Shopping Experience, Montrose Fiesta on Dunlavy Will Close Forever in Less Than a Month, Montrose Fiesta Building Owners: That Variance Is for Future Generations, The Montrose Fiesta Is Over: Here Comes Lancaster Square, West Ave-Style Apartments and Retail Planned for Dunlavy Fiesta Site?, Dunlavy and West Alabama: The Fiesta Antiques District
Photo: Loves swamplot
APARTMENTS IN OLD HUMBLE OIL BUILDING DOWNTOWN TO GO THE WAY OF ITS HOTEL NEIGHBORS 
Back in 2003, 2 of the 3Â Humble Oil buildings at 1212 Main and Dallas St. were turned into hotels. The oil-to-hospitality transformation will soon be complete, reports the Houston Business Journal’s Shaina Zucker: A Maryland company has acquired the 3 buildings for about $80 million and says it will convert the last of them into another hotel. Presently, that tower at 914 Dallas St. holds 82 apartments. By 2015, reports Zucker, it will become a 166-room SpringHill Suites, joining the 191-room Courtyard and the 171-room Residence Inn — each of which is now dubbed a “Houston Downtown Convention Center” hotel. [Houston Business Journal]Â Photo: Wikimedia Commons
MOVING DAY AT MARYLAND MANOR 
A Swamplot reader sends in this update on the progress at 1717 Bissonnet, where the Maryland Manor apartments are still standing in the way of the Ashby Highrise: “I live around the block . . . and it looks like all the tenants are out. We have noticed fewer and fewer cars in the parking lot, but as of this weekend they are down to only 3-5 cars. We saw multiple moving trucks all weekend and lots of abandoned furniture at the dumpster. So I am guessing the demo is starting soon.” [Swamplot inbox; previously on Swamplot] Photo of Maryland Manor: Candace Garcia
POOP SCIENCE COMES TO FAIRMONT MUSEUM DISTRICT APARTMENTS 
And one of the “amenities” that the doubling-in-size Fairmont Museum District wasn’t ready to announce would seem to be that poop detection service picking up steam in Dallas: Houston Chronicle’s Carol Christian reports that the Richmond and Dunlavy apartment complex that’s right beside Ervan Chew Park has already asked tenants to submit their pets’ DNA to hasten the resolution of these mistakes most foul: “The main reason we decided to try [PooPrints] was because we had a specific issue on one of our floors with accidents,” Fairmont manager Molly Kalish tells Christian. Still, the whodunit service seems to have a few bumps, since it provides no way to sniff out a motive or track a rogue agent: “ . . . DNA testing did not identify any [Fairmont] tenant’s dog as the recent accident-prone culprit,” reports Christian, “suggesting that a visitor might have been responsible.” [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo of Fairmont Museum District: Allyn West
DNA TESTING HELPING TEXAS APARTMENTS DELIVER JUSTICE TO UNSCOOPED DOG POOP 
Up in Dallas, reports Click2Houston, dozens of apartment complexes are requiring tenants to file their dog’s DNA. That way, any poop that’s not cleaned up can be directed to the proper authorities — that’d be PooPrints, which uses as-seen-on-TVÂ crime-fighting technology to test the waste for DNA and finger any owner who’s not minding his dog’s business. PooPrints CEO Cedric Moses says that his company doesn’t have any contracts yet in Houston, but he has a distributor headquartered in League City who has a nose to the ground. [Click2Houston]Â Photo: Houston Pooper Scoopers
COMMENT OF THE DAY: WHAT LUXURY REALLY MEANS “Although the term ‘Luxury’ is being thrown around loosely, it’s shorthand for New Construction with Upper Market Price. The truth is that from a developer’s perspective that’s the only thing that makes financial sense, there’s no money left in low end markets unless its government subsidized. Go big or go home.” [commonsense, commenting on Where Downtown’s New Residential Tower Will Go]
This crumbly parking lot at 1625 Main St. will be where a 24-story, 336-unit residential tower called SkyHouse will begin going up in April. Concrete’s already been poured to improve the sidewalks and make planters for token landscaping to shade the street. A rep from the architecture firm Smallwood, Reynolds, Stewart, and Stewart tells Swamplot that renderings and site plans for the luxury highrise aren’t available; the photo here shows a similar development, SkyHouse Midtown in Atlanta, from the Atlanta-based firm.
LOW-CAL RESTAURANT TO OPEN INSIDE WESTHEIMER’S HIGH STREET REDEVELOPMENT 
The shell shown here was about as high as High Street got before the ambitious mixed-use development was scrapped in 2008. In 2011, the property was sold and the project downsized by Dinerstein and given a timeless, compensatory new name: Millennium High Street. Yesterday, reports the Houston Business Journal, the redevelopment at 4410 Westheimer announced a new tenant: Season 52, a low-calorie restaurant with 2 other Texas locations, will open sometime this April. Besides the restaurant, reports Olivia Pulsinelli, Millennium High Street is expected to include 15,000 square feet of retail and 336 apartments. [Houston Business Journal; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Swamplot inbox
A result of the news yesterday that H-E-B will be moving from its Fountain View and Westheimer store to a new one on San Felipe in 2014 is the impending demolition of Tanglewood Court apartments, which stand on the 18-acre property bound by Fountain View, San Felipe, and Inwood. (The photo shows the apartments from the corner of Fountain View and Inwood.) Lynn Davis of Fidelis, which purchased the site in September 2011, tells Swamplot that notice has been given to residents that they’ll need to move by the end of March or early April. Buses from neighboring complexes, says Davis, have been shuttling them around to help them find a new place to live.
And once they’re gone, what, besides the H-E-B, will go in their place?
This one at Fountain View and Westheimer, H-E-B regional president Scott McClelland tells Swamplot, will be vacated for a brand-new one to be built less than a mile north on Fountain View and San Felipe. Fidelis owns the 17-acre property there, says McClelland, and approached H-E-B to lease part of it. It’s occupied now by Tanglewood Court apartments. (Calls to Fidelis and Tanglewood Court about the apartments haven’t been returned.) What will happen to the current store? McClelland’s not sure, but he guesses it’ll be sold to a non-grocery retailer. Meanwhile, the new store’s already being designed. Expected to open in Fall 2014, it will be a “next generation format” like the Montrose Market on Dunlavy and West Alabama.
Photo: City-Data
Ah, Friday: Why not take a stroll down Binz St. in the Museum District and have a look at what’s going on? Let’s head east from here: the corner of La Branch and Binz, near the Children’s Museum.
Our guide, Swamplot reader David Hollas, provides the photos and the observations:
Renderings aren’t ready to be released, says Assistant Manager Lindsay Fouchee, but under-construction Phase II of the Fairmont Museum District at Richmond and Dunlavy will have more units and more amenities. (The photo directly above shows the excavation of what will be the parking garage.) The 4-story, 210,933-sq.-ft. apartments back up to the dog run and baseball diamond at Ervan Chew Park and U.S. 59. Phase I was completed in 2007; Fouchee expects Phase II to be done within 14 months.
- The Fine Art of City Living [Fairmont Museum District]
Photos: Allyn West
