A version of the peaky rendering above was spotted this weekend at the construction site in the recently-cleared space between Indika and the Cat Doctor. The drawing comes from design firm A Parallel Architecture in Austin, which identifies the project only as “Westheimer restaurant”; the firm’s first restaurant project was the building for Paul Qui’s Austin restaurant Qui, which opened in 2013.
The 3,800-sq.-ft. structure takes after its parental name, sporting 2 parallel peaked patios between what appear to be upstairs terrace spaces. Construction is going on now at the site, which previously housed the LV massage parlor and a psychic.
- Westheimer restaurant [A Parallel Architecture]
- Previously on Swamplot: Gazing Into the Future at the Former Psychic Locale Between Indika and the Cat Doctor on Westheimer; Avondale West: Do Not Bother
Rendering: a parallel architecture
A Parallel Project
“Amazing how that works – we demolish houses and businesses next to schools to make way for parking, meaning there will be fewer homes and errand stops within walking distance of the school. Meanwhile, the Red Line is only a few blocks away, which could’ve meant fewer employees and students needing to drive there. So now we have HISD paying more money it doesn’t have on acquiring land and building parking infrastructure while simultaneously devaluing a public transit asset and decreasing the school’s user base in the area. Great recipe for success, here!” [
“An alternative that I would heartily recommend would be to work on nearby crosstown routes that may serve to relieve pressure on downtown-area freeways. Those would also be expensive and controversial, but also they are the low-hanging fruit; for example running a toll facility along the north-south Union Pacific ROW. Or completing SH 35 and then creating individually-tolled grade separations from there up Scott St. or Lockwood. OST is a very good candidate for this, as is the N. Shepard/Durham corridor. Do anything possible to speed up thru-traffic along Bayous by removing signalized intersections, especially along the Braeswoods, the T.C. Jesters, and of course Memorial Dr. and Allen Pkwy. These are all things that we would want to have around later on during the course of construction, anyway — but also, decentralized improvements have the advantage of being less subject to economic obsolescence resulting from…say driverless cars and rideshares…which place a big question mark on the near-term utility of mega-projects that required perhaps a decade to finish.” [
“I was for this reroute plan early on initially, but as time has gone by I’ve grown against it. This massive freeway is going to ruin an up-and-coming scene happening currently in EaDo, all for the sake of meshing Midtown/Downtown. The best alternative is to tunnel the Pierce underneath its current route. It’s the least destructive and will make all parties happiest I.M.O. And don’t give me this crap excuse that nothing can be underground here because of floods. If everything is supposedly so ‘big’ here in Texas, then please think bigger when it comes to this project.” [
Mayor Turner announced this week that bidding will start over for the first few contracts for a 
