01/09/08 11:51am

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfS9gffQoxY 400 330]

What’s that slow, steady thump booming from the corner of Moonlight Dr. and Braesheather in Meyerland?

Why, it’s the sound of a crudely improvised “wrecking ball” fashioned by a frustrated excavator operator, trying to smash the extremely strong foundation of the Carousel House! The foundation refused to break using more conventional techniques.

The Swamplot reader who sent in the video above, taken yesterday, calls it Robert Cohen’s revenge. Cohen designed and built the house for his family in 1964. There are more than 100 piers under that slab. The reader reports that the demolition equipment has apparently broken several times and had to be welded on site or replaced more than once. And so the shovel picks up the “ball,” drops it, then scoops it up again. Demolition is proceeding, uh . . . slowly.

01/03/08 5:59pm

McDonald's Sign at Night

We have an answer to last week’s reader question about the future of the Woodland Heights McDonald’s, at the corner of I-45 and North Main St., which was recently demolished. Miz Anonymous (“from the lovely and talented ‘Brooke Smith’ subdivision”) writes in:

Neighborhood prattle says that one of those new fancy McDonald’s, with earth tones, Wi-Fi and lounge areas, will be put up there. We’re calling it “McStarbucks.” Guess the McD franchise figures the neighborhood is going “up” after all. We hope that the 45-feeder bums will have to get their panhandled-dollar burgers somewhere else.

Another clue the burgers are coming back: the hood on the freeway-visible sign, which remains. If you haven’t visited the Willowbrook McDonald’s, see the prototype photos in this BusinessWeek slideshow.

Photo of McDonald’s sign: Flickr user Michael Schanbacher

12/28/07 7:42am

McDonald’s Sign at Night

A question from our email:

What is happening with the land that was the former McDonald’s on Main St at I45? I have seen no sign or other information that would explain plans for the site.

Got an answer for our reader? Send it in — to the Swamplot tips line. We’ll post the best responses next week.

Photo of McDonald’s sign: Flickr user Michael Schanbacher

12/21/07 4:15pm

Le Maison on Revere

Uptown renters: Were you planning on staying in your apartment for a while?

A sharp-eyed reader notes that ZOM — the developer of the Bel Air on Allen Parkway and the new Katrina Memorial apartments planned for Revere St. near Kirby and Westheimer (pictured above) — is also planning a 250-unit apartment complex somewhere near the Galleria. The company’s going to stick with its strategy of buying existing apartment complexes, demolishing them, building newer apartments in their place, and then selling them off, ZOM’s Trip Stevens tells Globe St.‘s Amy Wolff Sorter:

“It’s the only way to go in that submarket,” Stevens says. But then he adds real news:

Stephens says ZOM will do the same thing to get its third Houston project into the Galleria submarket. He says the closing for the existing apartment complex should occur late in the first quarter. The plan is to start scraping the three-acre site around midyear.

That’s information a few Galleria-area renters who live in three-acre apartment complexes will probably want to know.