The Avenue Grill could close sometime soon, but not if somebody doesn’t hurry up and buy the place. Or maybe buy the place and keep it running for the cops, firefighters, judges, judges, lawyers, and other frequenters of the neighboring municipal court and police complex that regularly eat breakfast and lunch there? To hasten either outcome, a small sign went up a week or 2 ago at the corner of Houston Ave. and Center St., a block north of Washington Ave., indicating that the 1940 building and a total of 19,600 sq. ft. of land is available for sale. That spurred attention from a Swamplot reader who — like most people — hadn’t been aware that the property had been on the market since last August.
The $1.5 million asking price includes 4 lots — one where the building sits at 1017 Houston Ave., 2 adjacent parking lots, and an additional surface parking lot across Center St., just where the Houston Ave. underpass begins. That lot is visible just beyond the building in this view from the corner of Washington Ave:
“The site plan for this block, where the apartment complex stands like J.J. Watt blocking the retail from the park for which it should have been the activity generator, stands as a symbol of a city at a pivot point in its urbanization, where all the lessons it has learned the past ten years still can’t make up for the decades it snoozed in urban neglect and public space amnesia. Imagine if you took the George R. Brown and dropped it halfway across Discovery Green, splitting the park’s integral components and killing its interaction with surrounding elements — that is the Superblock in a nutshell. Midtown will still benefit from a central greenspace, and the little pocket park at the north end might turn out to be something nice. But however modestly successful this becomes will only be a painful reminder of what could have been.” [
“I’ve heard 610 called a lot of things, but never ‘prestigious,'” writes a Swamplot reader who is curious to learn 
Georges Bistro co-owner Monique Guy tells Eater Houston’s Jakeisha Wilmore that the French restaurant in the space formerly occupied by whole-hog-HQ 
Deeply embedded Houston real estate reporter Catie Dixon comes back from a panel event sponsored by her employer with a clickworthy account 
“1.) Get a wide lens
2.) Shoot with a 7 stop bracket
3.) Comp exposures and tone in 8 bit
4.) Crank up to 32 floating point because you read somewhere that was good
5.) Boost your shadows as far as the dial will take you
6.) Compress, no, demolish your highlights
7.) Huff on nails and polish on thy hairy chest. . . . You’re now a big time real estate photographer.” [
A note on the purchase of 2 Houston apartment complexes by Atlanta’s Radco Companies noted in this morning’s roundup of Headlines: 
The latest event in the growing trend of establishments far from the center of the city adopting names that convey an aura of centrality comes from the firm turning the former Camp Strake Boy Scout facility just south of Conroe into a large suburban residential development. Henceforth, Johnson Development announced today, 
What is the Montrose Value-Add Portfolio? “
