THE NEW MICROSOFT STORE ABOUT TO OPEN IN THE WOODLANDS MALL WILL CLOSE SOON 
Surprise! Microsoft will be opening a new store in The Woodlands Mall this fall “to meet expected demand for new Microsoft-enabled devices.” Meaning: the new Surface tablet computer and the tile-happy Windows 8 operating system. But don’t expect the store to stick around long after customers figure out the new interfaces — or give up on them for something more familiar. The Woodlands location will be one of 32 “pop up” stores around the country being thrown up for the selling season, which will more than double the software company’s retail presence for its big rollout. A schedule for the stores’ openings and closings wasn’t included in the company’s announcement. [Woodlands Online] Photo: Desman Associates
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Tag: Openings and Closings
Inspired by a Kyrie O’Connor column last month decrying the absence of any Little Free Libraries in Houston, Heights resident Mag Franzoni and her husband went ahead and created one themselves. At the grand opening of the tiny custom-built bright-red exchange box perched on a couple of 4x4s in front of the home at 736 Tulane St. earlier this month, Franzoni had it stocked with a carefully pruned collection that included a biography of Ho Chi Minh, John McCain’s Character Is Destiny, Portia de Rossi’s anorexia tell-all, and Max Brooks’s World War Z, on the coming Zombie War. “I loved the idea where people could go and grab a book (and hopefully — if they can – bring a different one in return) and basically making this library into a gift that keeps on giving,” the newly minted front-yard librarian wrote the Heights Kids Group. “I hope some of you will stop by and pick up/bring a book. And if not, maybe you can share it with everyone you know so eventually everyone in Houston knows where to go when they want/need a book to read.”
Photos: Mag Franzoni
ICE CREAM MAN REOPENING MYTIBURGER 
Oak Forest’s Mytiburger, which shut down 2 weeks ago, is expected to reopen tomorrow under new ownership. Shawn Salyers, the owner of a local Baskin Robbins franchise 9 blocks away, noted the lines out the door at the tiny burger joint at 2211 W. 43rd St. after owner Kathy Reynolds-Smith announced her intention to close up shop. Salyers plans to add free Wi-Fi, a touch-screen ordering system, and an outdoor seating area under a tree outside. He’s also hired Reynolds-Smith, who ran the restaurant for 24 years after taking over for the previous owner — as a consultant. [The Leader] Photo: Charlotte Aguilar
GALLERIA RICHARD’S BECOMES SPEC’S, AND OTHER RICHMOND AVE. SWITCHES 
“The Richard’s Liquors off Richmond Avenue and Chimney Rock turned into a Spec’s almost overnight,” begins a reader report on recent happenings in the area. More turnovers in the commercial landscape, from our tipster: “It seems like Richmond Avenue is going through redevelopment since the Taco Cabana and Jack in the Box closed, and they too were by the Chimney Rock intersection. Also the new apartments going up called Avenue R off Barrington have started to build the wooden frames and a large parking garage. The Jack in the Box actually turned into a ‘TitleMax’ title loans shop and it’s painted blue. The old Taco Cabana building is just sitting there and empty but a gas station would be nice there.” The Galleria-area Richard’s rebranding took place last week; other locations of the Spec’s-owned local liquor chain appear to be holding onto the Richard’s name — for now. [Swamplot inbox] Photo: Spec’s
STRIPPED 
Has the Strip House — the Shops at Houston Center stripper-themed steak house — closed its doors for good? Or is it just, you know, trying to renegotiate its lease with a landlord’s lockout notice for non-payment of rent taped to its McKinney St. front door? Reported outages of the Strip House’s Facebook page and Twitter feed may turn out to be mere negotiating tactics. “Our goal is to resolve this matter as soon as possible,” a release sent out this morning quotes owner Penny Glazier as saying. Her company, the Glazier Group, declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy in late 2010. The chain owns Strip Houses in 3 other cities. [Eater Houston] Photo: Flickr user jerry1540
The robbers who held up a couple of IBC Bank locations inside Houston-area Kroger stores in 2 separate incidents over the last few months won’t have those branches to kick around any more. The IBC Bank in the Kroger at 11565 Hwy. 6 South in Sugar Land (at the corner of West Airport) and the one in the store at 3135 FM 528 and Bay Area Blvd. in Friendswood (featured in the surveillance video still above) have now been shut down — along with 2 other in-Kroger locations. The closings weren’t a direct result of the robberies, but part of International Bancshares Corp.’s plan to close up grocery-store locations — which have grown unprofitable as a result of new restrictions on bank fees — and open a few more standalone branches. IBC closed 20 Houston-area grocery-store branches — 19 in H-E-B Markets and another inside a Randall’s — last December.
- IBC Bank closes half its Houston branches, plans strategic growth [Houston Business Journal]
- Friendswood Police searching for lone suspect in Kroger store bank branch robbery [Bay Area Citizen]
- $5K reward out for grocery store bank robber [MyFox Houston]
Photo of suspect in Friendswood Kroger IBC Bank: Bay Area Citizen
Last night at the Fiesta on Dunlavy was the last night at the Fiesta on Dunlavy. Photographer-about-town Sarah Lipscomb, who began shopping at the store on the corner of West Alabama back when it was a Safeway, grabbed a few shots of the grocery store’s interior as she strolled the aisles there one last time:
COMMENT OF THE DAY: PACK THEM IN “Swamplotters crack me up. If this site were home to a bunch of crack houses and Fiesta wanted to tear them down and build this exact strip center (with or without decades of deferred maintenance) with a giant parking lot out front, every one would be up in arms about because it’s not dense enough, or urban enough, mixed use enough or pedestrian friendly enough. I see an eyesore going away, just [like] that dump that used to be across the street. I see $40-50 million of additional tax base that will toss another $1 million each and every year toward HISD and local government. I see room for 500-600 new residents in Houston’s core who will drop countless millions of dollars into bars, restaurants and retail stores and help Houston become an even more dynamic and vibrant city. I see progress. And I like it. Companies are hiring in Houston. People WANT to live in Houston. I say we accommodate them rather than force them to the next mile of empty prairie in the suburbs while letting our own city rot from the inside out.” [Bernard, commenting on Montrose Fiesta on Dunlavy Will Close Forever in Less Than a Month]
Fiesta Mart announced today that it will shut down its store at the corner of Dunlavy and West Alabama — across the street from the newly built modern H-E-B Montrose Market — on July 15th. Developer Marvy Finger plans to build a 6-to-8-story “Mediterranean-style” apartment complex on the 3.68-acre site, which he bought last fall. Fiesta has operated the former Weingarten grocery store on the site since 1994.
- The end is near for Montrose Fiesta [Prime Property]
- Previously on Swamplot: Montrose Fiesta Building Owners: That Variance Is for Future Generations, The Montrose Fiesta Is Over: Here Comes Lancaster Square, West Ave-Style Apartments and Retail Planned for Dunlavy Fiesta Site?
Photo: Candace Garcia
CAMERA STORES CRYING WOLF 
Didn’t the country’s biggest retail camera chain already declare bankruptcy and close a bunch of its Wolf Camera and Ritz Camera stores in Houston? Yeah, but that was back in 2009; now the successor company is going down that path again, a couple years after bouncing out of bankruptcy protection. In a news release, the company’s restructuring officer makes it all sound like part of a pretty picture: “To achieve our strategic vision of a super-store chain offering unique value-added services . . . it became necessary to implement this vision through a Chapter 11 filing.” Ritz Camera & Image, which has its headquarters in Maryland, is “evaluating which of its 265 stores to close, including at least three stores in the Houston area.” [Houston Business Journal; previously on Swamplot]] Photo of Rice Village store: Wolf Camera
Dancers ranging through the 100,000-sq.-ft. former JCPenney at the West Oaks Mall — now known as the West Oaks Art House — “got pretty vigorous,” explains local art blogger Robert Boyd, who attended one of the inaugural performances in Houston’s newest, largest, and loneliest independent arts facility. One of them kicked the hole in the wall pictured at right. No grief from the free-range arts center’s laid-back L.A. landlord, though: “I kind of love the hole in the wall,” Pacific Retail’s Sharsten Plenge tells him. “It is like a souvenir of the energy that Suchu graced WOAH with.” (Yes, Plenge is an artist herself.)
That new vaguely Mayan looking mound with the flat roof suspended above it at the head of Rice University’s forlorn upper quad is artist James Turrell’s latest Skyspace — one of only 73 in various incarnations he’s made so far, and the the second in Houston. But it’s the first Skyspace designed for music — the kind you’d want to listen to while staring through a 14-ft.-by-14-ft. opening in a raised roof at the darkening sky around sundown, or a lightening one at dawn.
In advance of any unique OMG-the-sky-is-changing-color experiences you might have while sitting in it, the structure has been named Twilight Epiphany. It sits just outside the east entrance of Rice’s Shepherd School of Music. A sold-out, silent performance in the space last night marked the space’s public opening. Last month, the new structure, designed by Turrell with New York architects Thomas Phifer and Partners, posed for a photo shoot with photographer Karen Dressel:
Brave Architecture’s new Sicardi Gallery across from the Menil parking lot is “pretty amazing,” declares Glasstire art critic Kelly Klaasmeyer, who was there for Thursday’s opening opening. The 2-story 5,800-sq.-ft. stucco-and-steel structure is a big step up from the gallery’s small previous space next to the McClain Gallery on Richmond. That lone window on the second floor of the new building facing West Alabama is designated as a rear-projection screen for exhibited videos, but they’re not showing yet:
This 1963 warehouse on the corner of Delano and Dallas in East Downtown was converted into an ultramod residence in 2003. But its new owners, who purchased it about a month and a half ago, are turning it back to commercial use as a co-working space and high-tech accelerator intended for small startup companies developing applications for mobile phones. The 5,000-sq.-ft. building now features a single 800-sq.-ft. dedicated office space and a 3,000-sq.-ft. co-working area which entrepreneurs can use for a $199-a-month per person fee (all-hours access, wi-fi, printer, and coffee included) — or reserve a specific desk in for $299. Here’s how it looks:
HOUSTON PINKBERRY NO. 3: ACROSS FROM CENTRAL MARKET 
On the occasion of the opening of the Houston area’s second Pinkberry (in the Woodlands Mall, tomorrow), the frozen-yogurt franchisor is announcing its first inside-the-loop location: next to Walgreens, across the street from Central Market in the retail building formerly occupied by Village Kids and Janie and Jack — at 3838 Westheimer. The first area Pinkberry (pictured at right) opened last year off the Gulf Fwy. in Webster. Photo: Tone N.
