CAT CAFE LOOKING FOR A COZY SPOT TO CURL UP SOMEWHERE NEAR MONTROSE, RICE VILLAGE, WEST U 
A group looking to establish Houston’s first-ever combo café and cat lounge is focusing its search on existing retail or former restaurant spaces to lease in the Montrose, Rice Village, or West University areas. The website for Lola’s Cat Café says the new venue will be “more than just a coffee shop with cats.” Instead, it’ll be a hangout for people “who are either looking to adopt a cat or would like to spend some time hanging out with our resident kitties.” All cats on hand will be adoptable. [Lola’s Cat Café] Photo: Lola’s Cat Café
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Tag: Retail
Can’t get enough of that old-shopping-center-knock-down action? Here, courtesy of the Brays Oaks management district, is a view of the carnage currently in progress at the Robindell Shopping Center, where the empty hulls of a slew of colorfully named businesses arrayed from 6711 to 6755 Bissonnet St. are meeting dusty ends. Hello to a new Aldi and company. But before that, a goodbye to Bigwick Liquor, Libreria Cristiana El Resplendor, Ana’s Multi Services, La Sultana Pupuseria, Delta X-Ray, Cute-Cut Salon $5, Eyebrow Threading Salon, and Trudi’s Birria de Chivo. Your ice cream at neighboring Baskin-Robbins will be spared.
- Construction at Robindell Plaza [Brays Oaks Management District]
- Previously on Swamplot:Â Aldi in, Birria de Chiva Out, Baskin-Robbins Safe at the Corner of Beechnut and Bissonnet
Photo: Brays Oaks Management District
Make Way for Aldi
A number of readers have sent in pics of the sign just posted by Lovett Commercial in front of the former Houston Post building (the earlier one, not this one seeing a Chronicle redo) at the corner of Polk and Dowling in East Downtown. A company connected to Lovett owner Frank Liu purchased the former newspaper facility from the Houston Chronicle a year and a half ago. It encompasses the entire double block bounded by Polk, Dowling, Bell, and St. Charles streets. The signs advertise a restaurant-and-shopping rehab for the facility at the 2410 Polk St. address, which sits on 3.32 acres — looking something like this:
Retail and Restaurant Redo
RIVER OAKS BAPTIST SCHOOL BRINGS WAYWARD WESTHEIMER WALGREENS INTO THE FOLD 
A long-contemplated drugstore-to-Baptist-School handover finally took place last month. Back in January, Swamplot reported that the River Oaks Baptist School was in the process of buying the Walgreens at 3900 Westheimer Rd., in order to fit a “possible parking garage and secondary exit onto Westheimer†onto the 1.8-acre site. In announcing the transaction, however, the school hasn’t said precisely what it will do with its new digs — or when or whether the now-vacant drugstore building will be demolished. It is, however, developing a new master plan for the campus. The Walgreens relocated into the former Fresh Market across the street and on the other side of Weslayan — at 3745 Westheimer — in March. Photo: Swamplot inbox
How long can an old-timey Wabash Feed & Garden Store hold out on a totally transformed Washington Ave.? Until the 25,551-sq.-ft. site stretching between Birdsall and Malone gets snatched up. A new commercial listing for the property at 5701 Washington Ave. was posted recently by Boyd Commercial. (Wabash was the voted recipient of the Washington Ave. Award in the 2010 Swamplot Awards.)
- 5701 Washington Ave [Boyd Commercial]
Photo: Boyd Commercial
Feeding Time
Neighbors and passers-by have been curious about the renovations taking place at the strip center at the corner of Lower Westheimer and Helena St., where the Hollywood Food & Cigars #3 convenience store at 202 Westheimer Rd. — and its neighbor Tejas Boots — kicked off a couple years ago. The building, once home to Baby Giant #2, has recently been painted a bright white; its sign has been denuded, and sidewalk reconstruction work is underway:
From Baby Giant to Mattress Pro?
Now we know why the Morgan Group, the developer that applied for a variance last year to allow for a Pearl on Smith apartment complex to fit onto the block surrounded by Elgin, Smith, Brazos, and Rosalie streets, later withdrew the request: To expand the project so that it could include a 40,000-sq.-ft. Whole Foods Market on its ground floor. And here’s a rendering of the design of the whole thing by Houston’s Ziegler Cooper Architects.
Pearl on Smith on Elgin
A couple of brick walls adjacent to the Lower Fifth Ward home of online retailer Spectrum Audio are now graced with a mural meant to pay tribute to an earlier Upper Fifth Ward audio enterprise. Peacock Records, founded in 1949 by Don Robey, captured recordings by Big Mama Thornton, James Booker, Little Richard, and other jazz and gospel artists at its studio at 2809 Erastus St. — now the home of Charity Baptist Church. A couple miles to the southwest at 3301 Cline St., artist Wiley Robertson painted a version of the record label’s Peacock logo — adjacent to another of his signature “Love” murals:
Sounds of the Fifth
What better encapsulation of the recent trajectory of Midtown could you find than today’s news that Whole Foods Market plans to build a new 40,000-sq.-ft. store on the former site of the city’s Social Security Office (pictured above) at 3100 Smith St. in Midtown?
Well, a few details to the story of the ramshackle block surrounded by Smith, Brazos, Elgin, and Rosalie give it even more color as a Houston gentrification parable: Noting, for example, that the former government office, across the street from a couple of bars, had been shuttered by the feds a couple years ago. Or that plans for a Morgan Group apartment complex on the same site were submitted to the city and then abandoned sometime last year. (It would have been called the Pearl on Smith.) Also: When it opens at the end of 2017, Whole Foods Market’s new Midtown location may turn out not to be a Whole Foods Market. The company says it’s developing an unnamed “sister chain” of smaller stores targeting younger buyers, but did not indicate whether the Midtown Houston store would be part of it.
- Whole Foods to open in Midtown [Houston Chronicle]
Photo: O’Connor & Associates
The Midtown Story in a Nutshell
Remember that incident last July when real estate investor and renowned neighbor-dismemberer Robert Durst — the Rice Village’s best-known resident — decided to spread his own bodily fluids in the CVS at 6011 Kirby Dr.? Thanks to the enterprising and patient reporting team at KPRC, surveillance video of the episode is now available for all to see. Together with the shocking scene included at the end of the HBO documentary The Jinx — in which Durst, retreating to the bathroom from an interview while wearing a still-live mic, appears to confess to multiple murders — the footage paints a portrait of a man prone to urination surprises. Durst pleaded no contest to charges of criminal mischief for the CVS episode, after he allegedly exposed himself to a cashier and then peed on a display of candy.
The newly released footage isn’t the clearest (and mercifully, any potentially offending images are blurred out) but it does reveal a few things, including where Durst stood when he began urinating — in case that matters to future customers of that CVS Pharmacy.
Where It All Went Down
King Dollar, Pizza Hut, Sherwin-Williams, Sun Loan, Mini’s Cleaners, Ruchi’s Taqueria, Schlotzky’s, Tiendo Rio Lempa, Denny’s, Hairtex & Nails, Nancy’s Cake Designs, Nationwide Insurance, Edible Arrangements, Todo Jewelry, Video Square, V Star (pictured here), and all of the businesses in the Woodridge Plaza shopping center at 6969 Gulf Fwy. — they’re all going away. The Houston Community College System wants to expand its Southeast College East Side Campus onto the 5.7-acre property to its south, on the north side of I-45 near Gulfgate. A reader who isn’t involved in the legal tussle, but who’s looked through the records on the county clerk’s website, describes the back-and-forth as laid out in the documents: “It looks like the special commissioners valued the shopping center at $12,500,000. Both the landowner, Compass Investors Group LLC, and HCCS objected and are seeking a trial for a higher, and a lower valuation, respectively. Texas Capital Bank is owed about $3.5 million on a mortgage on the property and also intervened. The landowner lawsuit is in Cause number 1043516 in County Court 4. HCCS also filed condemnation actions against all the tenants (cause 1057330 in County Court 4).”
Images: Moseley Commercial
The Taking of Woodridge Plaza
HOW YOU CAN HELP HOUSTON’S FIRST FULL-TIME HUMAN TRAFFICKING COFFEE SHOP COME TO LIFE 
Been looking for a good coffee shop somewhere around the Heights where folks can get together and discuss Houston’s role as a major hub for human trafficking? Where caffeine-hunters can experience moments of genuine outrage — then find themselves drawn toward information sessions, group discussions, planning meetings, and double espressos — knowing that all profits from their chatting and coffee-drinking habits will go toward charitable stuff like providing classes and counseling for survivors of human trafficking? If so, then you’ll be happy to learn about A 2nd Cup, which opened as a part-time “incubator” project a couple of years ago. Now the nonprofit, led by former junior-high science teacher Erica Raggett, has begun work on a buildout for a permanent, full-time home — in the Vineyard Church of Houston’s Storehouse storefront at 1111 E. 11th St., just east of Studewood St. (pictured above, right next door to longtime late-night cop favorite Andy’s Café). A 2nd Cup’s backers are trying to raise an additional $100,000 toward the effort on Indiegogo now. [Indiegogo] Photo mockup: A 2nd Cup
If you thought it was kinda adorable how those 2 same-owner mattress stores are snuggling up right next to each other at the corner of Westheimer and Montrose Blvd. in Montrose, you’re sure to be enthralled by the suburban version of the same like-kind pair-up down about Sienna Plantation, what with their separate, straight-laced façades and separate showrooms. Mattress Firm has been open for a couple years already at 8741 Hwy. 6 South in Missouri City; the same company’s slightly larger Mattress Pro just opened up next door at 8735 last month. Better yet, the buildings are for sale, together!
Bedroom Community
Runaway Shepherd St. jeweler Fly High Little Bunny has marked up the former Occasions Fine Gifts shop at the corner of Rutland and 19th St. in the Heights as its future home. A separate note posted to the store’s Facebook page late last week indicated that the new location at 301 W. 19th St. wouldn’t be open “for a month or so.”
- Previously on Swamplot: The Last Words of Fly High Little Bunny; The Last Hours of That Shopping Center at S. Shepherd and W. Alabama, Where The New CVS Is Going In
Photos: Swamplot inbox
19th St. Retail
Crews working on the site of the former Village Mobil on the inbound I-10 feeder road at 8819 Katy Fwy. have now covered up part of the former gas station sign with a new hood announcing the Starbucks drive-thru now under construction in its place. But only the top part of the sign. “Will the Hedwig Village Starbucks stick with the ‘by the gallon’ pricing strategy of its predecessor?” asks reader (and Metro board member) Christof Spieler, who snapped this photo.
- Previously on Swamplot: Hedwig Village’s New Freeway-Side Starbucks Drive-Thru Is Coming To Save Your Missed Exit
Photo: Christof Spieler
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