The former Starbucks on the southwest corner of the damp intersection of Fountainview Dr. and Westheimer Rd. now appears to be flying the minute flag of advancing Houston chain Minuti Coffee. The green Starbucks siren formerly residing on the west side of the building has been shooed off and replaced by Minuti’s comparatively austere crest, though the Seattle company’s website still lists the store at 5903 Westheimer as operational.
The Houston location of Canyon Cafe in the Galleria area appears to be closed. A reader sends photos from this morning of locked doors and a leasing sign from Weingarten Realty in the shopping center at the northwest corner of Westheimer Rd. and Post Oak Blvd. The location’s phone number seems to be out of service; also out is serving alcohol, as the restaurant made today’s list of the latest TABC permit delinquencies.
Meanwhile just across Post Oak Blvd., Sports Authority is now sporting signs advertising clearance sales ending May 7th, in the wake of yesterday’s announcement that the chain had gone through with bankruptcy filing and that 140 stores would close in the coming 3 months.
FALLEN SPORTS AUTHORITY FILES FOR BANKRUPTCY, PREPARES FOR 140-STORE SHUTDOWN 
Sports Authority filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this morning, after some January lay-offs and a multi-million-dollar missed interest payment. Sports Authority had already announced the planned closure of some 140 underperforming stores; employees at a Dallas branch were told in February that all Texas stores would close, including the 11 in and around Houston. The company now says those closings will occur over the next 3 months; CEO Michael Foss told the Denver Post that the timeline will hopefully give the 3,400 employees anticipated to be let go “plenty of time to find their next opportunity, whether it’s in the company, or wherever else it is.” [Denver Post; previously on Swamplot] Photo of Sports Authority in Portofino Shopping Center: Woodlands Monocle
The shuttered former site of Roznovsky’s Hamburgers is now dark on the outside as well, as Tacos A Go-Go makes final preparations to dance into the space. A reader sends this shot of the current state of remodeling of the building at 3401 W. T.C. Jester (at the corner with 34th St.). The burger joint shut down last year a few months after proprietor Ron Roznovsky passed away in February.
This will be the third go-round for Tacos A Go-Go, which was previously thought to be headed for the former La Fendée’s spot on Westheimer as an addition to its Midtown and Heights locations — that spot got claimed by Cafe Layal instead, and the current location was announced in June. The strip center behind the once-and-future restaurant may be getting some other new neighbors in the coming year as well; the Leader reported at the end of last year that several spots were open for tenancy between 1 Stop Food Shop and Mirage Cabaret.
UNDERMINED SPORTS AUTHORITY TO ABANDON TEXAS AS OTHER BIG BOXES ADVANCE WITH GUNS 
Sports Authority, which in its glory days subsumed East End-based Oshman’s Sporting Goods, is now preparing to pull out of Texas altogether, writes Maria Halkias of the Dallas Morning News. The company laid off 100 employees in January, and was reported to be looking into Chapter 11 after missing a $21-million interest payment on its $643 million debt. Last week the company’s representatives told workers at a store in Dallas that all 25 of the Texas locations would be shuttered, though they didn’t say when. The closures look to include 11 Houston-area shops, part of 140 Sports Authority locations to be culled nationally; Jeff Kittleson of CBRE retail services in Dallas also told the Morning News that there will be “a garden variety of big box users who will want to reposition stores into these locations.†Indoor sporting goods not-quite-theme-park Cabela’s is already slated to open up in League City shortly, and Dick’s Sporting Goods signed leases on spaces at Baybrook, Deerbrook, Willowbrook, First Colony, and The Woodlands malls last year. [Dallas Morning News, HBJ] Photo of Sports Authority at 2131 Post Oak Blvd.: Gil G.
Semi-boutique mattress chain Urban Mattress has jumped into the cluster of mattress retail options at the edge of West University, setting up shop between Einstein Bros. Bagels and Verizon Wireless just south of the sleepy corner of Kirby Dr. and Bissonnet St. Since 2008, the Boulder-grown franchise chain has opened 6 stores in Colorado, 3 in Austin, and a few others in cities including Berkeley, Albuquerque, Dallas, and San Antonio. The company purports to send 2% of its sales price to local charities of the franchise owner’s choice, and offers mattresses (both regular and organic) ranging from about $300 to $30,000.
The new store sits right across Wroxton St. from a few of its all-caps competitors: mattress and ergonomic furniture store Relax the Back is buffered from a Mattress Firm by narrow custom shoe store Foot Solutions:
Defunct 1970’s burger chain Hamburgers By Gourmet appears to be readying for a new takeoff at 1360 NASA 1 Pwky., across the street from the Space Center Houston visitors center parking lot at the junction with King’s Park Ln. A corporate entity connected to a Nassau Bay real estate agent was registered under the Hamburgers By Gourmet name 2 Octobers ago; the new storefront bearing the chain’s old burger-slash-mushroom-reminiscent logo was spotted last week by a keen-eyed user on HAIF.
The newly rebranded building, shown above from the west side, was formerly a Kentucky Fried Chicken prior to its turn-of-the-decade conversion to a Premium Title Lending.
Down in Galveston, seafood-slash-southern-focused Harborside Mercantile is opening up for a preview this evening, after clearing some liquor licensing hurdles that set back the planned December startup. The restaurant, located at 2021 Strand St., is a collaboration between Richard Craig (whose 3-wheeled Hubcap Grill will be getting a 4th location inside IAH) and Joshua Martinez (owner of The Modular foodtruck and the former Chicken Ranch).
The Strand, buoyantly styled as the “Wall Street of the South” in the 19th century, was battered by fires, the Civil War, and numerous destructive hurricanes before sinking out of prominence and settling into life as a warehouse district; historical restorations in the 1960s paved the way for the district’s eventual resurgence as a tourist destination.
Photos: Harborside Mercantile
A NOW OPEN sign is the newest addition to the metal-skinned Rice Village strip center at 2365 Rice Blvd., where Little Liberty’s neon blue label has been glowing atop a muted prison-stripe awning for several months. A reader notes that the banner takes the place of the NOW HIRING sign previously on display in the storefront, which held a branch of Ruggles Cafe & Bakery until its closure “for renovations” last March.
Cypress’s Tin Hall has found a new place to set up shop, according to an announcement posted to the venue’s Facebook page this morning. The 127-year-old dance hall will move its operations and its building to a spot at 16614 Spring Cypress Rd., just over 2 miles from its long-time location off Huffmeister Rd. to the east. The new property is across the street from the Cypress post office, next to Cypress Woods High School.
The venue writes that an auction, to be held this Friday at noon, will help finance the move and the building’s preservation. Tin Hall posted a subject-to-change list of the items up for grabs, including most of its interior decor and equipment, 5 “vintage” urinal troughs, and “all taxidermy, including the buffalo.” (The building, included on the posted flier, is not for sale.)
The business wilted several years ago, but the location of the church-run St. Theresa The Little Flower Thrift Shop at 5334 Washington Ave is getting a new tenant: a branch of Dallas’s Clutch Bar will be moving into the space. An entity associated with the thrift shop bought the property back in 1991, and the store blossomed until the early ’10s, closing by mid-2013.
Clutch Bar’s website touts a Summer 2016 opening; as far as what will be served in the space, the site for the chain shows a large draft beer selection and mentions a weekly special on “adult milkshakes”.
The western corner space at University Blvd. and Kelvin St. in the Rice Village now has a coat of white paint over its brick facade, though the storefronts to either side have yet to follow suit. The space, last occupied by a Sprint store prior to a multi-year vacancy, appears to be setting up as the next link in the Blue Mercury cosmetics-spa chain, while street and utility work progresses at the corner.
The former Village Arcade (now being rebranded as, simply, the Rice Village) consists of the shopping centers on University on either side of Kelvin St.; the buildings were acquired from Weingarten in 2014 by Rice University, which already owned the land beneath the center and employs the same St. Joe brick in many of its campus buildings. Rice also employs development company Trademark to manage the Arcade property; the company released a few renderings of the first phase of the center’s intended makeover last fall, just before work began:
East Coast Korean fried chicken chain Bonchon is planning a new location at 24437 Katy Fwy., between the Grand Parkway and Katy Mills Mall in the strip-center storefront previously occupied by Johnny’s Pizza House, which closed last year. The chain’s previous Dallas location, its first foray into Texas, opened to so much enthusiasm for its double-fried chicken that the location had to shut down for a week to regroup shortly after its December 2013 opening; half a year later, the location closed permanently. Bonchon’s second Texas trial will open next to Fix My Phone and Katy Peridontology and Oral Surgery.
Photo of former Johnny’s Pizza House location: Scott L. via Yelp
The Memorial Branch of Big Tex Tree Nurseries at 10939 Katy Fwy. is closed for good, and its tree-dealings have moved south to the company’s Sugar Land locale for now. The Christmas trees disappeared after the holiday season, and everything else followed suit: “even the port-a-potty,” writes the reader who sent in photos of the now-bare freeway-side lot at Wycliffe and I-10, just outside Beltway 8. A Big Tex employee says the company is planning to open up another Houston location at some point, but for now the other spots in Sugar Land, Conroe, and Spring will have to do.
The lot is shown below post-faux-forest-departure; meanwhile, someone was out marking up the sidewalk with orange paint last week:
The king of big-box retail announced plans this morning to close the Walmart Supercenter at 7075 FM 1960 West, behind Willowbrook Mall at the intersection with Cutten Rd. The Supercenter will close on January 28th after more than 2 decades of operation; a Walmart Neighborhood Market at 2740 Gessner Rd. (south of Kempwood Dr.) will also close on the same day.
The Supercenter (not to be confused with the one 4 miles up FM 1960 at the corner with T.C. Jester) is one of 154 US stores that will close, as the chain works to assure that its “assets [are] aligned with strategy”. Currently, there are 17 Walmart stores on or inside Beltway 8, and 4 Walmart Supercenters along FM 1960 between 249 and Atascocita.
