COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE SIGHTS OF MONTROSE 
“Look at those pictures! The cityscape in Houston is so beautiful that I sometimes want to cry. I love the setbacks, the crumbling streets, the large signs, the little bit of grass, and oh man oh man those two lonely palm trees. This is the part the Houston that I want to show off to my friends. After a nice dinner at Uchi, I love to take everyone on a stroll around my beautiful city!” [Duston, commenting on What’s Arriving Now at the Sleepy Corner of Westheimer and Montrose]
Sign up for the Newsletter
Tag: Montrose
The formerly bedding-starved heart of Montrose can now rest easy: Mattress Firm has arrived. The nation’s largest mattress retailer has snagged a new location in the former Blockbuster Video spot at 1002 Westheimer Rd. in the Westmont Shopping Center — right at the prominent corner of Montrose and Westheimer. With a mere 98 locations in the greater Houston area, and only 14 in the Inner Loop, Mattress Firm was certainly fortunate to be able to find this prominent spot. Now customers in the dead center of Montrose daunted by the long journey necessary to reach the company’s other outlets — at the corner of West Gray and Montrose (three-quarters of a mile to the north), at the corner of Westheimer and Shepherd (1.2 miles west), or at 2625 Louisiana St. (a mile to the east) will have a place they can travel to more easily — and, of course, rest a bit when they get there.
Mattress Firm Scores Again
The asphalt and branches were flying this morning at the storied former South Beach parking lot off Montrose between California St. and Missouri (more recently home to cars whose owners are visiting the nearby Aladdin restaurant). Pelican Builders has begun clearing the 28,709-sq.-ft. collection of lots — which have separate frontages on Missouri St., Grant St., and California St. — for its 24-townhome California Square project. A few properties from the gated complex of 2-bedroom townhomes have been listed on MLS — for just shy of $500K. Here’s the site plan:
California Square
If you’re wondering what horticultural death incident inspired the recent orange graffiti defacing the sign heralding Carnegie Custom Homes‘ townhome project at 1705 Waugh Dr. in Hyde Park (shown in the pic at top), an earlier photo of the site sent to Swamplot (below it) shows the estimated 120-plus-year-old oak tree whose removal sparked a yellow-ribbon-festooning and protest by neighbors back on Pearl Harbor Day. The tree, which stood at the corner of Waugh and Peden, in front of the former Waugh Dr. Baptist Church, was chopped down on December 9th.
Kensington at River Oaks
Somewhere behind this leafy garden wall, which rises 14 ft. high along Mason and Pacific streets, a 1910 home in Montrose’s Avondale area has been holding on to another era — and another city, maybe. From the garden gate at curbside (top), glimpses inward, toward the brick-paved courtyards and patios (middle), appear to be a bit more challenging than the views outward from the pier-and-beam property. Its neighborhood watch vantage point is located south of Fairview Ave. on a corner east of Taft. St., borders 21st century townhomes, and features a mid-century commercial space across the street that’s brewery bound. Listed a week ago, the self-secluded spread has a $875K asking price.
Horror Vacui
OUTLASTING THE HOUSE OF SATAN DOWN THE STREET 
When you live in the same house at the corner of Welch and Crocker streets for 94 years, you see a lot of Montrose pass by. For example, Nell Stewart tells the Montrose District website, there was the “meticulously restored” Victorian on Welch St. (pictured here) that later became a Church of Satan: “‘How do I know?’ she asks. ‘It said so on a sign in the yard.’ Though raised a proper churchgoer, Stewart nevertheless was intrigued by her new neighbor. ‘He did nude weddings,‘ she says. “And he trained his children well. They went to Wharton Elementary and they would threaten the other kids if they wouldn’t give them their lunch money. They said they would turn them into black cats.’ Along the wraparound front porch, the Satanist installed a collection of outsized nude photos. The Satanist had moved in prior to her mother’s passing, and though Stewart would have liked to take a look at the nudes, when she went out walking with her elderly mother she was always steered in the opposite direction. ‘She refused to walk there,’ Stewart says. ‘I would have been interested. I just had the sense, this is not my world here.’†Though it later turned somewhat dilapidated, the house was recently renovated: “Today, when Stewart looks across the street, the house appears much as it did when she was a little girl almost a hundred years ago.” [Montrose District; Part 1] Photo of 903 Welch St. (before renovation): NuHabitat
- 1612 Vermont St. [HAR]
NEW MONTROSE APARTMENT LISTING SERVICE ON A LEASH 
Interested in seeing what kind of only-a-sign-in-the-yard rentals are available in Montrose, but don’t have time to walk the neighborhood with your dog to find them all and scoop up the phone numbers? No problem! Montrose Corgi Lady is doing it for you, and posting all the yard-and-sign pics she comes across (“Rentals I find while I’m out walking my dog”) on her new Tumblr. [Walkabout Rentals, via Reddit] Photo of 2501 Whitney St.: Montrose Corgi Lady
The community garden at 803 Kipling St. in Audubon Place listed for sale earlier at the end of last month is set to be purchased by the City of Houston and turned into a neighborhood park, according to its owner. William Winkler tells Swamplot he and the city have settled on a price and he’s signed off on a letter of intent; he says he’s now waiting for a formal purchase contract. The 8,400-sq.-ft. lot at the southwest corner of Kipling and Stanford, known as Greenleaf Gardens since Winkler first built raised beds and leased them out in 2012, was previously the site of a 2-story home that burned in 2008. It’s still listed on MLS for $630,000.
Greenleaf Gardens
AND NOW, AN INCREASINGLY ABSTRACT VIEW OF WHAT IT’S LIKE TO WORK AT THE ROTHKO CHAPEL Alberto Sosa’s latest animated video interview of a starting-level employee in the Houston art world features visitor services and volunteer coordinator Yma Luis — and thousands of drawings. [Glasstire] Video: Alberto Sosa
Last week a for-sale sign went up at the 8,400-sq.-ft. vacant lot at the corner of Kipling and Stanford that’s been used for the past several years as an Audubon Place community garden. And there it was on MLS, available for $630K: the former homesite William Winkler had bought in 2012 and parceled out for neighborhood veggie-growing efforts, now offered as “the only lot in the Audubon Place Historic District that’s available to build a new construction home.”
Greenleaf Gardens began operating on the site in May 2012, after Winkler purchasing the lot for $300,000. Subscribers rented out 4-ft.-by-20-ft. raised-bed plots on the property.
Winkler considers the garden operation a success; he says he’s selling only because of a change in his personal financial situation. Several users of the garden have indicated they’d be willing to pay significantly higher annual subscription fees. Earlier this week, Winkler sent out an email indicating he’s open to another option: selling the property to a nonprofit that would keep the garden running.
Greenleaf Gardens
A reader sends in this photo of the former Touch of Red salon at 412 Westheimer Rd. (just west of Taft St.), future home of a bar scored by Eater Houston earlier this month as number 21 of the season’s 33 “most anticipated openings” of Houston food-and-drink establishments. (Well, sort of: The list is alphabetical.) Passersby have been anticipating the Limehouse, to be operated by the Montrose Revival Group (aka Free Press Houston’s Omar Afra and Moon Tower Inn‘s Brandon Young), since mid-September, when a TABC application was first spotted on the front door. The building is connected to its neighbor at 408 Westheimer, a former bed & breakfast.
- Houston’s Most Anticipated Openings of Winter 2015 [Eater Houston]
Photo: Swamplot inbox
Lower Westheimer
The back third of the Menil-owned Richmont Square Apartments has now been cleared away. Left to dispose of: a below-grade swimming pool in the middle of the lot, plus a garage apartment behind the DaCamera building at 1427 Branard St., next door to the Menil’s Cy Twombly gallery. Swamplot reader and artist Bob Russell takes a break from creating his own satellite-imagery-inspired drawings to send in the above quick ground-level panorama of the sketchy spot where Johnston Marklee’s low-slung $40 million Menil Drawing Institute will be mapped out and filled in.
Johnston Marklee Going Here
The former Hollywood Vietnamese and Chinese restaurant building just north of Westheimer at 2409 Montrose Blvd. has been turned into a dog adoption facility run by K-9 Angels Rescue. The restaurant closed down in that space last Thanksgiving after developer Jonathan Farb purchased the property and the surrounding parking lots for a new apartment complex on the block, which is bounded by Hyde Park Blvd., Grant St., and Fairview. This isn’t the first last-occupant stint for the K-9 Angels; the nonprofit organization had been operating out of the former Cat Clinic building at 2100 W. Alabama St., before that building was torn down for a new CVS siding up to S. Shepherd Dr. one block south of the Alabama Theater Shopping Center.
Farb donated use of the space to the K-9 Angels temporarily — until he starts construction on the midrise, currently planned for “late spring or early summer.”
Pre-Apartment Adoption Center
ANOTHER CHELSEA GETS AWAY 
Good morning! It’s 2015, oil is already checking out the territory south of $50 a barrel, and Swamplot is ready to begin its coverage of cancellation and delay announcements from real estate developers. We’ll start this one gently, with an Inside the Loop project you probably hadn’t even heard of — though its name certainly sounds familiar: The developers of Chelsea Museum District, a proposed apartment complex atop a podium garage with a bit of retail thrown in planned for the north side of Blodgett St. between Crawford and La Branch, tell the HBJ‘s Paul Takahashi they are “contemplating holding [the] project to see how the multifamily market fares amid low oil prices.” But don’t confuse Trans Unity Investment’s Chelsea Museum District with another project less than a mile to the west at 4 Chelsea Blvd. that used to be called Chelsea Montrose, but has since been renamed The Carter (no, not kidding), and which developer StreetLights Residential has already begun building (see construction photo above from just before Christmas). [Houston Business Journal] Photo: Marc Longoria
