WATCHING WHERE YOU PARK IN RAINTREE PLACE 
A resident of Raintree Place received an email complaint from the community’s property owners association approximately 10 minutes after her parked car was spotted in her own driveway. Dianne Josephs, who rents her home, tells the Houston Press she had been loading up her vehicle with clothing and household goods to donate to wildfire victims. Regulations in the private gated neighborhood of 86 lots inside the Loop at 10 South Briar Hollow Ln. between San Felipe and Post Oak Blvd. prohibit residents from leaving cars anywhere other than in their garages or in a few designated visitor spaces. This isn’t Josephs’s first run-in with neighborhood authorities: “Josephs says her neighbor circles the complex several times a day to report open garages and cars parked in driveways. Once, she reported him for having his garage open, and she says he flipped her daughter off with both hands. ‘I wanna buy it [the house], but the people here are so mean!!’ squealed Josephs. ‘They yell at me and say, “You’re nothing but trouble.”…but I question authority. When I think it’s crazy, I question it.'” [Hair Balls] Photo: Raintree Place
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Tag: Parking
THE COMING LOCAL HP IMPLOSION 
Two former Hewlett-Packard office buildings from the original Compaq World Headquarters campus at the corner of Hwy. 249 and Louetta will be demolished in a “controlled demolition” on September 18th. The 2 buildings, a 1,200-car parking garage, and a central chiller plant were purchased for $12.6 million by the Lone Star College System last year, as an extension to the 8 buildings the former North Harris Montgomery Community College System bought a year earlier to create its new University Park campus. But it’s clear the college was mostly interested in the parking spaces that came with the latest purchase. According to the terms of the sale, HP itself will manage the implosion of the 2 buildings, before turning over the resulting “usable green space” to the school. LSCS facilities guy Jimmy Martin explains the reasoning: “The cost to properly maintain the buildings in a ‘mothball’ state until they might have been needed in the future is $1.25 million annually. It was more cost-effective to have the contractor tear the buildings down as part of the purchase agreement.” [Champions Sun; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Geoff Sloan [license]
In the new but apparently burgeoning tradition of Swamplot opening-day (and opening-night) photos of Waugh Dr. parking lots comes this reader photo of the car-filled scene behind the new Tony Mandola’s Gulf Coast Kitchen at 1212 Waugh, taken from Rosine St. last night around 7 pm. Sure, residents of the Piedmont condos along Rosine now can walk to the new Whole Foods Market. But the condos “have no guest parking other than on the street. Now we will have NO guest parking at all,” reports the reader. “People are steamed.” Next on the local agenda: trying to swing permit-only parking signs for Rosine.
- About Tony Mandola’s [Tony Mandola’s]
- Previously on Swamplot: Westheimer Strip-Center Hotspot: Rickshaw to Fins to Tony Mandola’s — to Something Ouisie’s, Tony Mandola Plants His Own Restaurant on Waugh
Photo: Swamplot inbox
COMMENT OF THE DAY: PARKING EQUALITY “Public street Parking Permits should be illegal. The City should not be allowed to give a select few individuals exclusive rights to use public property. I’m surprised no one has sued the COH over this ridiculous practice. What if a neighborhood group signed a petition to only allow themselves to use the local public park, public pool, or public jogging trail because they were too crowded with “outsidersâ€? Public means public. If you want private use of the street then buy it or build you own. Our taxes pay for all the public streets and all of us should be able to drive or park legally on them whenever we please.” [Jon, commenting on Comment of the Day: Street Parking in the Heights]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: STREET PARKING IN THE HEIGHTS “West of Studewood in the Heights has a lot of unpermitted off street parking facilities on public right of ways or parking pads on streets without curbs. These are ditches that are covered up with cars parked on them. Heights residents will tell you that you cannot park in front of their houses on their pads. That leaves the houses without parking pads open to all the parking. I forsee lots of problems with residents telling people they cannot park in front of their houses when these new places come in. And yes, I see my neighbors telling people to move their cars every day. The Parking Wars are coming.” [Studes2nd, commenting on More Heights Second Locations: Sonoma Wine Bar Aims for Studewood]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOUSTON RESTAURANTS NEED THAT STRIP CENTER MAGIC “Good luck to Triniti, it will need it. Just watching locations across the city for many many years, I’ve determined that a restaurant has a huge chance of failure when it doesn’t have parking out front. Don’t know if Houstonians just want to see if someplace is crowded … but that’s why some places are snakebit.” [CJ Yeoman, commenting on Swamplot Street Sleuths: Whiff!]
As of Friday evening, new we’re-gonna-tow-you-if-you-park-here signs have been installed along D’Amico St. just north of the new Waugh Dr. Whole Foods Market, reports the Swamplot correspondent who’s been monitoring the parking situation there — and taking in the scene at the new store: “I think the traffic and mass crowds might be worth it,” was the first conclusion, even before the clampdown. These photos, showing the new signs and an American General security detail along D’Amico just west of the office complex parking garage, were taken on a later visit Saturday morning after a follow-up shopping expedition — where our correspondent happily scored 50 bucks’ worth of soda and candy.
- Previously on Swamplot: Later on Opening Day: Whole Foods Montrose Afternoon Parking Report
Photos: Swamplot inbox
“I don’t know about the Whole Foods parking lot,” writes a Swamplot reader, “but it’s certainly getting real on D’Amico!” Here’s a photo sent in with that report, taken just past the American General Center garage north of the new store on D’Amico St., shortly after 4 pm. But there was plenty of neighborhood-street spillover earlier, too: “Around lunch time, if there was a curb there was a car . . . on both sides along D’Amico, bumper to bumper from the light to just under the garage.” How long will this sort of thing keep up? Our tipster imagines AIG American General will soon put out no-parking signs “along any parts of the street that is their property, such as along the entrance to a parking lot across from whole foods and by the garage. Other areas on the campus have no parking signs where people tend to stop. I know you can’t park within a certain distance to a stop sign, does the same apply to stop lights? If so, some people risked a ticket just to get some groceries! It would be cheaper to pay for parking in the AIG lot or the garage visitor parking.” And no rush, folks. Those free chicken breast coupons are good until next Tuesday.
- Previously on Swamplot: Opening Day: It’s Getting Real Crowded at the Montrose Whole Foods Parking Lot, Beer, Wine, Art, and BBQ on Tap: Here’s Your New Whole Foods Market, Montrose, This Kind of Whole Foods Thing, Getting Real on Waugh at West Dallas This Weekend,
Photo: Swamplot inbox
I’ve been waiting here like 10 minutes, man! No, no no . . . this is my parking space man. Just like the video already? “Despite all that concrete, there is not a single space available as I look out the window,” reports a reader who’s been monitoring today’s grand opening of the new Whole Foods Market on West Dallas and Waugh from an office window high above — and has already started grumbling about the potential evening traffic: “The parking lot has been full all morning.” This photo was snapped around 10:15.
- Previously on Swamplot: Beer, Wine, Art, and BBQ on Tap: Here’s Your New Whole Foods Market, Montrose, This Kind of Whole Foods Thing, Getting Real on Waugh at West Dallas This Weekend, North Montrose Whole Foods’ Rendezvous with Groceries, Austin Powers the New North Montrose Whole Foods, The New Whole Foods at West Dallas and Waugh, Whole Foods Galleria and North Montrose: Still on Track, In and Around the New North Montrose Whole Foods, A Few Signs the Montrose Whole Foods Market Is On Its Way
Photo: Swamplot inbox
A new “final” rendering is out for the second phase of Blvd Place, which includes a brand-new 48,500-sq.-ft. Whole Foods Market near the corner of Post Oak Blvd. and San Felipe just north of the Galleria (and yes, only a few feet east from the old Eatzi’s location), as well as two 4-story mixed-use buildings flanking it along Post Oak. Plus: a parking garage in back. The 4-story buildings (marked 1N and 2 on the recently updated site plan below) will have 2 office levels above 2 floors of retail, like the lone building in Blvd Place’s first phase, which opened last year a block south. Wulfe & Co.’s Elise Weatherall tells Swamplot the remaining portion of the old Pavilion on Post Oak on the site will be demolished this fall; construction on the new Whole Foods and the adjacent buildings is scheduled to begin about the same time, with everything opening in the first half of 2013.
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WEST AVE READY TO PUSH WEST 
Catie Brubaker reports that West Ave is set to begin construction on an expansion in January, consisting of 270 new apartments and 150 new retail parking spaces. The new development will go in the fenced area west of the existing garage, north of Kipling St. and just south of the Regency House condos. Isn’t this area marked “Phase III” on circulated site plans? Yes. The much larger development originally labeled Phase II — stretching all the way south to West Alabama and west to Virginia St. — has now apparently been switched to a later, third phase. Planned for that much bigger extension: “350 multifamily units, a 175-key hotel, 100k SF of office, and an additional 275k SF of retail. Nick [Hernandez of Page Partners] says Page is ‘way down the road’ on preleasing, especially for restaurants.” [Real Estate Bisnow; previously on Swamplot] Photo: West Ave River Oaks
From reader Josh Burdick come these graphic images from this morning’s speedy takedown of the Buffalo Grille — the last remaining portion of the shopping center that stood at the corner of Bissonnet and Buffalo Speedway before the H-E-B Buffalo Market took it over. Can H-E-B chew up this breakfast spot and spit out a few more parking spots for grocery shoppers fast enough? A bit more of Burdick’s bite-by-bite coverage:
YOU OUGHTTA PARK IN PICTURES 
Do you like to park illegally in handicapped spaces? Have you always wanted to appear in a commercial? If you work it right, Wednesday could be your lucky day! Richard Connelly reports that a video crew from the city’s municipal channel plans to follow parking-enforcement officers around Houston tomorrow as they “stake out some of the handicapped spaces that are frequently used illegally.” The channel plans to use footage from the first parking scofflaw they find in a new public service announcement, warning people — that’s right — not to park in designated handicapped spaces illegally. And you could be featured! Special bonus: You’ll also be the first-ever recipient of the new increased fine they’re handing out for this little parking technique. It’s now $500, up from $205, effective today. [Hair Balls] Photo: Flickr user dswagner
“Sometimes I look back and wonder WHAT WAS I THINKING,” writes Jason Perry in a press release he sent to local media outlets announcing the closure of his late-night and after-hours establishment near Montrose and Fairview — and its coming reincarnation as a perhaps quainter little bistro. “Did I really open a penis shaped muffin restaurant, did I really spend more than half of a million dollars on a restaurant that promised to toss peoples salad[?]â€
Housed in a 1940 foursquare at 2310 Converse St., the MuffinMan, which opened only a few months ago, actually promised customers a bit more than that. Perry’s possibly NSFW farewell-to-muffins press release explains it best:
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE SHOPPING CENTER WITH THE MOST PARKING SPACES WINS! “Reducing the number of parking spaces at this store would not encourage people to walk to get their weekly grocery shopping, it would just encourage them to drive to a different store.” [Jimbo, commenting on What the New Montrose H-E-B Is Gonna Look Like]