Australo-Texan Platypus Brewing has been not-so-secretly secreting away a set of fermentation tanks in the back of the reforming nightclub complex at 1902 Washington Ave (at the corner with Silver St.). The brewpub is readying the northernmost segment of the structure; a tree-lined patio is planned at the corner of Silver and Center streets. Here’s the updated site plan from Lovett Commercial’s latest leasing flier, now with more details about other tenants filled in:
The subterranean snapshot above comes from a reader roaming the Downtown tunnels, where a curved privacy-please construction barrier for a coffee-snacks-and-breakfast operation labeled Nosh now arcs around the spot formerly occupied by the ATM beneath 919 Milam. The change comes in the wake of other food-related shuffling beneath the 24-story tower this year; Genesis Energy also spread out onto another of the tower’s floors back in February.
Photo: ThaChadwick
Johnson Development, the company behind that sugar-company-themed master-planned community in Sugar Land, announced yesterday that it has officially handed over the land for the project’s refinery-centric Imperial Market mixed-use district to the folks who will develop it. The 26 acres freshly sold are along Oyster Creek just north of the crossing of Hwy. 90 (visible on the far left of the rendering above, which faces south). That’s Kempner St. running directly alongside the proposed development and crossing the creek as well; a pair of former railroad bridges currently upstream of Kempner are shown replaced with car and pedestrian bridges respectively.
Plans for the development incorporate structures from out-of-use former facilities of the Imperial Sugar Company. The refinery’s silos (instead of becoming an art space) are marked to host a couple of fast-casual restaurants; the 1925 char house, where huge quantities of carefully burned animal bones were once used to whiten and filter cane sugar syrup, will become a boutique hotel. Both structures are more prominently visible in the southeast-facing view below — the boxy brick char house appears to the left of the single-pour-concrete silos:
Experimental ice cream shop Cloud 10 Creamery looks to be collecting building permits for a space at 711 Heights Blvd., one of the 1920s bungalows prepping for a second career in retail (as shown above) as part of the Heights Mercantile development. The project, which straddles 7th St. and its bike trail companion between Yale St. and Heights Blvd., hit a potential snag last year when the city didn’t approve a variance request that would have lowered the number of required new parking spaces. But the updated site plan below shows the workaround — the Golden Eagle Binder & Tab Co.’s former spots at 717 and 724 Heights, which were purchased by the developers last May, are depicted as additional parking lots:
Tout Suite’s second outpost is now open in the pedestrian crossroads at the west end of Memorial City Mall. The kiosk version of the East Downtown cafe is currently serving drinks and pastries along with at least a few larger entrees. The opening follows the removal of the construction barricades formerly surrounding the space, finishing work previously started by mall vandals or impatient caffeine addicts:
Lovett has been dropping a few crumbs regarding the selection of restaurants and shops that will fringe the parking lot of the retail development planned for the former Fingers Furniture warehouse site on Cullen Blvd., across I-45 from the University of Houston’s main campus. No anchor tenant for the site has officially named (though talk of Walmart has made its way to several tipsters in the Eastwood Civic Association this spring, along with assurances that the marker memorializing the former site of Buffalo Stadium’s home plate will likely be preserved).
A site plan from December (shown above, with north angled roughly toward the top right corner) shows several pad sites along the feeder road marked up as QSR (presumably Quick Service Restaurant). A later sketch now up on Lovett’s website as well adds more clues, however — including  a cryptic label on what could be the first Starbucks to venture into the East End:
A Stand-alone Starbucks is now open at West Rd. and N. Eldridge Pkwy. in the parking lot of the Raceway gas station on the southwest corner. The new building appears to be the first Starbucks to encroach into the area bounded by 290, Beltway 8, Hwy. 6, and I-10 — though it still skirts the perimeter of the area. (Roughly half of that region is occupied by the Addicks Reservoir). The coffee shop joins Hot Donuts in the salon-rich strip center across West Rd.; nearby probable non-competitors include the ITEX Piping International and Berlin Packaging facilities.
Images:Â Randolph Wile (photo), Starbucks (map of area locations)
Lovett Commercial’s latest markup of the warehouse-turning-strip-mall at the corner of Edwards and Sawyer streets includes the B&B Butchers logo, which has wandered about a third of a mile from the carve-it-themselves steakhouse’s year-old spot 6 blocks away on Washington Ave. All of the other logos included on the Shops at Sawyer Yards flier seem to check out: Hair salon Satori and tooth salon Bayou City Smiles are already up and running in the space, while nail salon Polish Parker & Roe, stop-calling-us-Crossfit gym chain Orange Theory Fitness, and Vietnamese noodle shop Local Pho all appear to have at least a few of their permits in place.
Both the updated rendering of the site (up top, facing southeast) and the labeled plan show a restaurant space at the end of the development with a patio facing Sawyer; the flier also labels the slot as a brasserie (as opposed to a steakhouse). The shaded aerial view below shows the development (labeled as just Sawyer YARDS) in place amid a few of the nearby artsy redevelopment projects (marked in green), new townhomes (marked in purple), and the Lovett office:
The spot Braun Enterprises has been sprucing up at 1815 Washington Ave appears to have been leased out last week to the folks behind the Texas expansion of Tennessee’s Gus’s World Famous Fried Chicken. Documents filed with the county show that an entity called Texas All Fry (registered to the address of the Gus’s location in Austin) signed for the space on Wednesday. Pandora and Throne Ultra Lounge are among the latest in the succession of night clubs and bars to have recently occupied the late-1940s structure, which sits across the street from B&B Butchers.
The above rendering (from the same leasing flier that accidentally leaked word of H-E-B’s negotiations for the Archstone Apartments spot at the corner of Washington and Heights Blvd.) shows the front facade with a new patio and a few more windows. A careful look at the building’s past listing photos show that some of the apparent reshaping may actually involve the un-bricking of some former doorways:Â
Following this week’s report from the HBJ that the Loews hotel chain is currently considering an Uptown locale, a sharp-eyed reader points to a lot previously marked for 2 more towers to keep the BBVA Compass building company, just north of 2200 Post Oak Blvd. The land has been owned by Loews since 2014 (or by someone using the address of the company’s NYC headquarters); a tipster separately tells Swamplot that the company has been pricing out construction work on that particular spot, though nothing was official as of mid-May.
Architecture firm Ziegler Cooper has posted some renderings (including the one above) of a mixed use project apparently designed for the same BBVA-adjacent land (though labeled only as Confidential Hotel & Mixed Used Development). TRC Capital (formerly The Redstone Company) currently has some very similar renderings more prominently displayed on its website, once again labeling the residential piece of the project as the Perennial Hotel and Apartments, along with another office tower marked as 2100 Post Oak:
The Panera marker previously spotted all by its lonesome in the leasing flier for Braun Enterprises’ redevelopment of 1705 W. Gray has picked up a companion in the form of the Kriser’s Natural Pet logo. The marker for the grain-averse pet supply and grooming store now appears on the freestanding former home of International Hair Salon & Nail Spa (shown above), previously marked up in Braun’s renderings as a possible coffee shop.Â
The reader who snagged the shot above also spent some time sniffing around the back and sides of the complex (to be known as the River Oaks Collection). The wall in the shot below is starting to get its coat of grey paint cleaned off to match the mottled brick exterior shown in the redo renderings:
The retail strip at 1927 Fairview St. is now being gutted and cleaned out into a large dumpster parked in front of the former Te House of Tea and Trudy’s resale boutique. Permits to clear out some interior walls and redo the space were issued at the start of this month to an entity named Riel Restaurant; also listed on those permits are the company phone number and CEO of South Union-based seafood importer Marine Foods Express.Â
Out back behind the retail strip, the nextdoor 1935 bungalow at 2410 Woodhead St. appears to be joining Te’s former backyard garden in becoming a parking lot — purportedly a green one:
Up on the docket for the White Oak Village redevelopment of the Evergreen Center shopping plaza at Antoine Dr. and W. Little York Rd.: the underway conversion of a long-empty drive-thru bank into a bike-and-drive-thru branch of Houston raspa-smoothie-snack shop Raspado Xperts. The structure sits at 5647 W. Little York on the north side of the complex, right between O’Reilly Auto Care and that eastern strip getting turned around to face White Oak Bayou and its hiking-and-biking enthusiasts.
A rep from Nankani Management claims that the raspa shop will be the first bike-thru business in Houston, and one of only 5 officially Bicycle Friendly businesses in the city (per a designation from the League of American Bicyclists). The shop is hanging on to the bank’s original bulletproof glass side wall and teller shield, which are becoming walls of the restaurant’s kitchen:
A northern ambassador to the Houston restaurant scene appears to be moving into the Uptown spot recently vacated by southwest-centric Canyon Cafe. The logo for Canadian fusion chain Moxie’s Grill & Bar now shows up on Weingarten’s leasing flier for The Centre at Post Oak, across Westheimer Rd. from the Galleria. Tom Gaglardi, the current owner of both the Moxie’s chain and the NHL’s Dallas Stars, told the Dallas Business Journal early last year that he was planning to push Moxie’s into the US market by way of several major Texas cities.
MFT Interests appears interested in tenants for its Heights Central Station project, slated for the site of the increasingly well-loved former post office on 11th St. between Yale St. and Heights Blvd.  The development’s leasing website now includes the first rendering of what those mixed-use lowrises might look like (see above), as well as a site plan.
Although the logo for the center implies a possible train station theme to go along with the name,  the site plan shows that most of the property will be devoted to automobile parking — an 86-car street-facing parking lot separates the storefronts from 11th and Yale streets, though the Heights Blvd. side of the eastern building is much closer to the street:
