Tag: Notices

Awards
12/09/08 6:29pm

Your Nominations Wanted: Most Grandiose Development

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Notices
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A quick summary of our categories so far: Favorite Houston Design Cliché, Best Project Cancellation or Delay,  Best Teardown, and Best Rebranding Effort. And here’s the fifth category in the Swamplot Awards for Houston Real Estate, now open for your nominations: Most Grandiose Development.

Which Houston-area real-estate project deserves that title this year? A key point: the winner need not be something that actually got — or is going to get — built. Otherwise, a splendid assortment of big and even bigger confections would miss out on their one last shot at glory.

Tell us which project deserves that glory — in a comment below or in a private message. Consult the official award-nomination rules if you need to. Send photos if you’ve got ’em! Which of Houston’s grandiose developments are worthy of our fulsome praise?

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Awards
12/09/08 1:51pm

Playing Dressup: Your Nominations for Best Rebranding Effort?

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Three categories of the Swamplot Awards for Houston Real Estate have been introduced so far: Favorite Houston Design Cliché, Best Project Cancellation or Delay, and — earlier today — Best Teardown. The next call for nominations is for the Best Rebranding Effort of 2008.

A new name, a new identity package — maybe even a new address — can do wonders for a property on the down-and-outs. Apartment complexes are perhaps the most obvious targets of complete and partial makeovers in Houston, but rebranding also works its magic on homes, office buildings, shopping centers, neighborhoods, furniture, and careers. A little paint, a little staging, a little extruded polystyrene, a little Yurpean flair, and voilà! Something new and exciting for you!

Which Houston property, place, thing, or person deserves this award for the rebranding efforts visited upon it in the last year? Can you tell us why? Your nominations, again, are requested in the comments section below, or in Swamplot’s inbox. The nomination rules aren’t going anywhere — they’re still here. Whaddya say?

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Awards
12/09/08 11:32am

Your Nominations for Best Teardown of the Year

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Yesterday we introduced the first 2 nominating categories in the first-ever Swamplot Awards for Houston Real Estate. Nominations will remain open until the crack of dawn next Monday for both awards: Favorite Houston Design Cliché and Best Project Cancellation or Delay.

Today, we have 3 more award categories to introduce. The first of these? Best Teardown of 2008. What property would you nominate for this singular honor — and why?

Sure, a teardown has its raw, physical aspects, but there are emotional, historical, cultural, artistic, sonic, and ecological angles to mull over too. Your well-considered and well-argued nominations for this coveted award belong in the comments section below or in a private message sent to Swamplot HQ. For a more complete description of the nominating process, see these instructions.

You’ve been waiting for this category . . . let ’em rip!

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Awards
12/08/08 5:50pm

Nominations Now Open: Best Project Cancellation or Delay

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Earlier today, we introduced the first category in the Swamplot Awards for Houston Real Estate, covering the year’s best and most. And now nominations are open in a second category: Best Project Cancellation or Delay of 2008.

Putting a project “on hold” is tough. Giving up on a project is tougher. Allowing future plans to remain future plans indefinitely? Unaccountably difficult. The handling of any such maneuver requires considerable skill and finesse. Which Houston development deserves this kind of recognition for the efforts of its promoters over the last year?

You can help your nominee win this award by introducing your choice well. If you’d like to make a nomination, we suggest reading the brief instructions summarized here. The comments (and the Swamplot tip line) are now open for your nominations in this category.

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Awards
12/08/08 8:02am

Your Nominations Please: Favorite Houston Design Cliché

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All this week, we’ll be introducing the nominating categories for the first-ever Swamplot Awards for Houston Real Estate. The awards cover the best and most of Houston Real Estate in 2008, surely a landmark year in the ever-expanding story of Houston’s ever-expanding landscape. To make these awards the best they can be, we need your input!

The first category: Favorite Houston Design Cliché of 2008. Which oft-repeated feature or element of Houston buildings, shopping centers, streetscapes, homes, interiors, home decor, neighborhoods, or yards has achieved the singular status of Houston cliché? Which is most deserving of special recognition this year? Your suggestions may be inspired from stories covered by Swamplot or from your own observations.

Nominations for this category are now open! Enter your nomination in a comment to this post only or — more privately — to the Swamplot tip line, with the subject line “Nomination: Favorite Houston Design Cliche.” Nominations will be accepted for one week, after which the best-presented choices will be opened for voting.

You may submit as many nominations as you like in each category, but your choices will have a better chance of succeeding if you use your nomination to make your point in a clever and convincing way. When the actual awards are open for voting next week, each selected nomination will be introduced with some edited bastardization of the arguments readers have made in the nomination — so be eloquent and persuasive! Submitting photos in support of your nomination is encouraged — illustrations will likely help make your case to voters. Send them to the Swamplot tip line; be sure to identify them and indicate what they’re for.

Please keep in mind that the comments to this post will be counted as nominations only. Nominations may be seconded, expanded, or improved, but simple “me too” posts won’t be counted as votes for the winner. The actual voting in this category will begin next week. Stay tuned!

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Awards
12/05/08 1:34pm

Announcing the First Annual Swamplot Awards for Houston Real Estate

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In Houston real estate, so much brilliant effort goes unsung, unheralded, unsold. Sure, there’s the big bucks to be made popping up strip centers in Pearland, the occasional weekend flip, the foreclosure kerfuffle. But after the money’s spent and gone: Where is the glory? Where are the prizes?

Starting next week, Swamplot will announce the categories for the first annual Swamplot Awards for Houston Real Estate — celebrating the developments, designs, personalities, and dreams that have helped make Houston real estate the kind of venture only Houstonians (or outside investors) would dare undertake — and only in Houston, too.

Once the categories are announced, we’ll need your help to come up with the right slate of nominees for each. What was notable in 2008? What stood out? What fell down? What valiant efforts have gone unrecognized?

All nominations and votes for these awards will come from Swamplot readers. We want you to participate. Because you get to live with it all.

Update: Nomination categories are now here!

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Notices
11/25/08 5:53pm

A Very Special Thanksgiving from Swamplot

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Swamplot’s regular Neighborhood Guessing Game will not be played this week, so that we may bring you this special presentation: A Thanksgiving holiday free of the temptation to hit the refresh button repeatedly, just to see if the contest winner has been posted yet. (Swamplot will be off Thursday and Friday.)

Feel the urge to pore obsessively through listing photos anyway? Why not scour available properties for a good Guessing Game candidate yourself? If you find a good one, send it in — we just might run with it. Or take some time to shuffle through our thick archive of historic NGG matches — to hone your sleuthing skills, to relive your triumphs, or just to grumble softly about the guesses you should have made — and that neighborhood that got away.

Got an even better idea for how NGG addicts might spend a holiday week? Please add your suggestions below.

Notices
11/17/08 9:33am

A Little Redecorating

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Frequent visitors to this site will notice that Swamplot looks slightly different today. The layout’s been rejiggered a bit — to make things easier to read on tiny handheld screens, and to open up better opportunities for advertisers. The Swamplot logo’s been polished up, so we can all see through those odd letter-shaped windows a little more clearly. We’ve also made some minor adjustments to page navigation and how the information that surrounds each post is organized.

If something about the new layout doesn’t look like it’s working quite right on your screen, please let us know. There are so many different versions of different browsers running on different operating systems on different screen sizes — it’s impossible to test them all without your help. You may see more adjustments in the next few days, as we try to steam out the wrinkles.

As with any rearrangement of furniture, what’s most exciting about the new design is what it sets up: a better place to hang out. And more room, to add new features, as Swamplot grows.

Notices
10/23/08 11:54pm

Swamplot Is Back on the Intertubes

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What happened to this site on Thursday? A strange glitch knocked Swamplot off the web for a few hours — and then replaced it for much of the afternoon and evening with . . . an exercise forum!?

For a time, we suspected the site might have been hacked and then hijacked by operatives from the Mayor’s Wellness Council. Over at HAIF, a few readers speculated about other possible culprits.

Thank you for all your emails and telegrams! Swamplot, it turns out, was neither hacked nor hijacked. There were some problems with the nameservers at the site’s hosting provider, and they’ve been resolved. In the meantime, we’ve learned a lot of useful information about exercise bikes.

It’s good to be back! Those of you jonesing for the Neighborhood Guessing Game reveal: You’ll get the answer on Friday.

Notices
10/22/08 12:42pm

Swamplot Advertisers Rock

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Advertising is what makes it possible for Swamplot to bring you all the exciting news reports and stories you read here. A big thank you goes to our direct advertisers for supporting this site. We hope our readers will thank them too!

Here’s Swamplot’s latest advertising honor roll:

A special thank you also to our newest advertiser:

If you’re interested in helping this site grow — and getting your message out in front of our sizable and real-estate-obsessed readership — please step this way!

Notices
10/08/08 4:28pm

Advertiser Update: Thank Yous

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Swamplot gets its juice from advertising. And our advertisers get . . . your eyeballs! A big thank you to our readers for being such a desirable group, and another big thank you to these longtime advertisers, for recognizing the opportunity:

Please also welcome our latest advertiser:

Thinking of advertising on Swamplot? Start here.

Notices
09/22/08 9:46pm

We Are One

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This past weekend marked Swamplot’s first anniversary online. And what a year it’s been! We wanted to take this opportunity to thank all of our readers, commenters, and tipsters for turning this site into Houston’s fastest-growing real-estate publication.

We have some exciting plans in store for year 2. And as more Houstonians climb back onto the power grid, we’ll be sharing those plans with you here.

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