09/11/13 11:10am

Just about a mile as the trash floats along Brays Bayou from that sylvan site in Idylwood where the Houston Parks Board is considering building a parking lot, more work of the flood-mitigating Project Brays is underway. Here, near the intersection of Wheeler and Old Spanish Trail, the Harris County Flood Control District is widening the channel to help the bayou along, an act that will necessitate spending about $4.2 million to build a new 2-lane bridge.

According to the HCFCD, the existing bridge on Wheeler — shown in the photo here — isn’t nearly big enough and will need to be demolished. The new bridge, to be built during the next year or so, will extend Lidstone St. up and over the bayou to O.S.T., connecting the Gulfgate and Fonde Park neighborhoods just southeast of the Orange Show. Once the bridge is complete, more hike and bike trails will be installed.

You can see a project map and more photos after the jump:

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09/10/13 11:00am

NEXT ALEXAN COMPLEX GOING UP ON LAKE-LOOKING SITE IN SPRING Most of the Alexan-brand apartment complexes that Trammell Crow is building haven’t strayed too far from I-10 — with ones planned for the Heights, Energy Corridor, and Wilchester — but a new one is being built much farther north on I-45 in Spring. Partnering with Prime Property Investors out of Illinois, Trammell Crow has started construction this week on the 346-unit Alexan at Auburn Lakes at W. Rayford and Gosling. And what comes with this new territory? Residents, reports Nancy Sarnoff, will have access to a “private lake” among other attractive amenities — a dog park, business center, shared kitchen, billiards room — and shell out an average rent for the 1- and 2-bedroom units of $1,199 a month. [Prime Property; previously on Swamplot] Rendering: Prime Property Investors

09/05/13 10:00am

Note: Story updated with an additional rendering.

More action from Skanska: Now, the Swedish development and construction company has begun work on West Memorial Place, which for now will comprise a single 12-story, 325,000-sq.-ft. office building on the site of the demolished ARCO building in the Energy Corridor. It’ll be accompanied by a 9-story parking garage. Though the rendering above shows a pair, only one building is going up; the second, a PR rep tells Swamplot, depends on the market. The HOK-designed building will stand on 12 acres at 15375 Memorial Dr., between Westlake Park Blvd. and Southmayde Creek Dr., bumping up against the hike and bike in Terry Hershey Park. Petroleum Geo-Services has already signed on to occupy about 122,000 sq. ft.

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09/04/13 4:30pm

Here’s a look at Houston’s next Trader Joe’s, set to open in Cinco Ranch sometime next year. It’ll be at 2643 Commercial Center Blvd., right in the center of all that commerce just west of the Grand Pkwy. This new 12,500-sq.-ft. store will be the 4th in the area. The last to open was the one on San Felipe and Voss in January, across the street from the Randall’s that has since been torn down to make way for a new Whole Foods.

Rendering: Trader Joe’s

09/04/13 11:00am

It appears that some of that hallowed ground-floor retail space in the funeral-home-exorcising Gables Tanglewood will be given over to Dish Society, a casual farm-to-table joint. No opening date has been set; apparently, the restaurant just started looking for an executive chef. The photo above shows the construction progress of the Ziegler Cooper-designed 8-story, 304-unit apartment complex at the corner of San Felipe and Bering.

Photo: Going Up! City

08/30/13 11:15am

The dirty work continues: Here are some photos of the progress, as of last night, of the Buffalo Bayou Partnership’s big plan to soup up the soupy waterway.

Above, you can see the new view from Eleanor Tinsley Park, where site work is underway for the Bud Light Amphitheater. Picnic tables, a volleyball court, playground equipment, and a few pine trees are all long gone.

After the jump, you can see more photos of dirt. And photos of the newest pedestrian bridge, inserted between the Houston Police Memorial and the rear of Glenwood Cemetery.

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08/27/13 2:00pm

A REAL BIG DATA CENTER COMING TO NORTHWEST HOUSTON Real Estate Bisnow’s Catie Dixon reports that CyrusOne is going to add 2 more buildings early next year to its 45-acre data-dealing-with campus in Westbranch near the Beltway: “The new developments include a 600k SF data center with 100 megawatt capacity and a 200k SF Class-A office” designed by Kirksey and depicted in the rendering shown here. Apparently, adds Dixon, the new data center, which will support primarily the oil and gas industries, will be nothing to sneeze at: “[It] will be one of the largest in the country, and [CyrusOne CEO Kevin Timmons] says it should sate demand in Houston for years to come.” [Real Estate Bisnow] Rendering: Kirksey Architecture

08/27/13 11:00am

This pack of Larry S. Davis-designed townhouses, clad in metal and stucco, is under construction in the Third Ward just a few blocks from TSU. A site plan shows 24 of ’em spanning Wentworth and Blodgett — the sidewalks along which are being repaired and gussied up to include new landscaping, granite benches, decorative pylons, and purty brick inlays. Floor plans show that the 2-bedroom, 2-bath townies range in size from 1,470 sq. ft. to 1,956 sq. ft.; some include a study. All but 3 appear to have been already sold. Those remaining start at $269,900.

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08/27/13 10:00am

This week, Stream Realty will start adding this 6-story building to its all-natural, LEED-aspiring office park in The Woodlands. The spec 154,213-sq.-ft Reserve at Sierra Pines II, to be located at 1585 Sawdust Rd., will join its larger predecessor, the 175,000-sq.-ft. building sold more than a year ago for about $40 million to the REIT CapLease. Houston Business Journal’s Shaina Zucker adds that this new building, a brisk 1.5-mile walk north of the ExxonMobil campus, is planned to include “a jogging trail” and a “heavily landscaped Zen garden.”

Stream has a few other projects in the hopper: There’s that curvaceous 41-story International Tower that Stream (along with Essex) has proposed to build on that block south of Market Square Park, and there’s that more straightforward 25-story office building just off Washington and Waugh.

Rendering: Stream Realty Partners

08/23/13 11:00am

THE NEW HOSPITAL-ADJACENT STEAKHOUSE IN MEMORIAL CITY And far below that lit-up crown that you can’t enter, there will soon be a steakhouse you can: Culturemap reports that construction is coming along at the mixed-use Gateway Memorial City development on Vallone’s, the red-meat-and-red-wine concept from the folks who feed you on a first-name basis at Tony’s. General manager Scott Sulma says that they hope to open here on Gessner Rd. and the Katy Fwy. in October. [Culturemap; previously on Swamplot] Rendering: Vallone’s

08/23/13 10:00am

Kirksey designed both of these 7-story, 175,000-sq.-ft. office buildings for PM Realty, which expects construction to begin on the first of them — dubbed Jacobs Plaza — here at 12140 Wickchester Ln. this month. They’re part of a proposed office park north of the Katy Fwy. and east of N. Dairy Ashford that, as this rendering shows, will comprise a manmade pond and pedestrian paths that lead out to the nearby Addicks Reservoir. Houston Business Journal reports that the primary tenant and namesake for the first building will be Jacobs Engineering.

Rendering: Kirksey Architecture

08/21/13 4:15pm

FEARING THE YOGA DADS THE NEW HEIGHTS HIKE AND BIKE LINK WILL BRING The Houston Chronicle reports that the Bayou Greenways project is paying for a new 1.35-mile section hooking up the existing White Oak Bayou and Heights hike and bike trails. Part of completing this stretch will require replacing the bridge shown here, a burned-out trestle that butts up to the former Eureka Railyard. Psyched about this new link that, when completed in 2014, will get cyclists from Downtown all the way out to Antoine Dr., Houstonia’s John Nova Lomax still seems more than a little ambivalent about losing the blackened thing: “The eastern foot of that bridge has been a meditation zone / power spot of mine for the last few years, my own trash-strewn bayou-pungent pre- and post-work Eden. No more — soon it will teem with with yoga dads and crossfit maniacs and their occasionally ill-behaved pooches.” [Ultimate Heights; Houstonia; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Patrick Feller [license]

08/16/13 10:30am

Now that Cafe Adobe is coming down on the corner of Westheimer and S. Shepherd, Hines says it is going to start building this apartment complex later this month. A Hines rep tells Swamplot that this rendering of the so-called 21 Eleven at — wait for it — 2111 Westheimer is current — though it doesn’t appear to be all that different from the one published back in April that Hines said wasn’t. At any rate, the complex is planned to hold 215 units in 5 stories that will sit atop 2 levels of “podium parking.” And no ground-floor retail.

Rendering: Hines

08/15/13 2:00pm

The old Westheimer Wendy’s has been reduced to a shell of itself, this photo shows, as Doc’s Bar and Grill has come all the way from Austin to build itself up. Located at 1303 Westheimer and Graustark — right beside the overflow parking lot for Royal Oak Bar and Grill, which is right across the street — Doc’s says in a Facebook post that this 3rd location could open in November.

Photo: Swamplot inbox

08/15/13 10:15am

GREENSTREET, GETTING GOING Just 4 short months after that party it threw for itself, GreenStreet might start becoming something more than a new name and a few signs, reports the Houston Business Journal. Though graffiti artists worked in June to enliven some of the former Houston Pavilions infamously inward-facing spaces with murals, it seems real construction — expected to last between 6 and 9 more months — will begin in a few weeks. The thrust of the renovations? Here’s Shaina Zucker: “Changes to the 568,294-square-foot property . . . include removing existing implements to the interior corridor while creating a new linear urban park.” [Art Attack; Houston Business Journal; previously on Swamplot] Rendering: GreenStreet