CUPCAKE ATM IS REALLY COMING TO HIGHLAND VILLAGE THIS TIME, SPRINKLES PROMISES 
If news that Sprinkles plans to bring a Cupcake ATM to Houston sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Today’s announcement marks the third time in 3 years that the California chain has declared that its lone Houston location — in Highland Village, snuggled up next to the Apple Store — would soon have one of the company’s signature baked-goods vending machines installed for all-hours use. Houston was to receive the second-ever such machine, after the Beverly Hills pilot (pictured here), in the summer of 2012. A second announcement the following year earmarked Houston for the fourth-ever Cupcake ATM that October (by then Chicago and Dallas stores had received theirs), after a holdup caused by “design issues.” Now Sprinkles is promising Houston the ninth Cupcake ATM in the country, opening this June 11th. It’ll be installed on the back side of the building at 4014 Westheimer, facing the parking lot. Inside, Sprinkles will be expanding its offerings to include cookies, ice cream, and attendant shakes, malts, and floats. Frequent Highland Village shopping center cupcakers will want to mark May 12 through 19th on their calendars — though perhaps only in pencil. That’s when the store is scheduled to be shut down for the installation of dipping cabinets along the back counter and cookie trays in its cupcake display area, as well as the exterior vending station. [Sprinkles Houston] Photo: Sprinkles
Sign up for the Newsletter
Tag: Retail
SUSANNE DISCOVERS THE GROCERY LURE 
How nice to live where there’s a grocery store just across the street! And how nice to have your apartments across from the supermarket — at least when you’re trying to fill them up: Ellie Sweeney, property manager for Finger Companies’ 396-unit Susanne apartment complex on the site of the former Montrose Fiesta Mart at 3833 Dunlavy St., tells reporter Catie Dixon that 80 percent of traffic to the leasing office from potential residents has been from shoppers at the Montrose H-E-B across the street (where the Wilshire Village apartments once stood). The Susanne’s website speaks highly as well — though somewhat distractedly — of its neighbor: “You’ve got your very own café right across the way,” the marketing copy announces, explaining that the H-E-B was “Designed to be the flagship Lake /Plato [sic] extravaganza.” Nine people have already moved into the Susanne’s first floor; the second floor opens for move-ins next month. All construction should be complete by the end of October. [Real Estate Bisnow; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Finger Companies
Framing of the new “Jewel Box” on-garage drive-up pad site Galleria add-on has begun. A reader sends in this view from above, showing how the building has been perched onto the next-to-top level of the Blue Garage, which underlies the mall’s parking-lot approach from Westheimer. Westheimer runs from left to right at the top of the photo.
- Previously on Swamplot: Garagebreaking Begins for the Galleria’s New Jewel Box Pad Site Drive-Up Add-On; Construction Set To Begin on the Luxury Jewel Box, the Galleria’s Chi-Chi Pad Site; A Grander Galleria: More Retail, More Restaurants, More Revenue — And a Residential Highrise Too?
Photo: Swamplot inbox
Drive Up Luxury
Here’s an aerial view of the Royal Oaks Village II shopping center, where the Houston area’s fifth Trader Joe’s is already under construction behind the Harvest Organic Grille. (That’s the unidentified pad-site restaurant at the top right of the shopping center, which is outlined in red.) There the new grocery store take its place among a spread of nearby food-shopping options along the south side of Westheimer, which include the Walmart Supercenter at W. Houston Center Blvd., the Chick-Fil-A and H-E-B at Kirkwood, and the Whole Foods Market at Wilcrest.
Parking Lot Touchdown
Blogger and amateur bedding-sales analyst Christopher Andrews has updated a few of his maps of mattress chain stores in the Houston area (including the one shown above) to include Mattress One (or Mattress1 One, or Mattress 1 One, as the company variously refers to itself). Altogether, that Florida-and-Texas chain, plus Mattress Firm and Mattress Pro (owned by Mattress Firm), operate 166 separate retail locations in the region.
- Mattress Manifest Destiny Part 2: Mattress Firm, Mattress Pro and Mattress 1 One [Not of It]
- Previously on Swamplot:Â How and Where Mattress Firm Is Conquering Houston, One Sleepy Strip Center Storefront at a Time
Map: Christopher Andrews
Bed Spread
A reader wanted to make sure Swamplot readers had a chance to see the sign that’s gone up on the construction fence surrounding the Park Place Memorial strip center at 5801 Memorial Dr. — on the south side of the street just east of Westcott St. near Bayou Bend — for the new Mattress One store. (It’s the red banner on the far right of the submitted image, above.) When the store opens this August (on the opposite side of the 10,000-sq.-ft. center from Dunkin’ Donuts), it’ll count as the Florida and Texas chain’s fifty-seventh Houston-area location. Also moving in: Express Rolls, Piada Italian Street Food, and Omni Cleaners.
- Previously on Swamplot:Â How a Stretch of the Memorial Dr. Strip Earned Its Newest Strip Center
Photo: Swamplot inbox
57 Varieties, Near Donuts
Crews are hard at work converting the former hair salon (with 2-bedroom apartment upstairs, pictured above) at 6640 W. Montgomery Rd. in Highland Heights (aka the east side of Acres Homes) to an “edible garden center.” Farmstead is meant to become “the go-to spot for Houstonians wanting to grow their own food at home.” It’ll offer fruit trees, vegetable transplants, and herbs for purchase, along with seeds appropriate for this region. Plus gardening tools, supplies and DIY kits for raising your own garden bed above the gumbo line.
Grow House
REIGN OF NEW EAST END FARMERS MARKET ON THE NAVIGATION ESPLANADE BEGINS THIS SUNDAY 
Local veggie standouts Finca Tres Robles and the Last Organic Outpost will be among the 35 vendors on hand on April 12th for the inaugural East End farmers’ market on the Navigation Blvd. esplanade (pictured here), across from the original Ninfa’s. The East End Foundation, the event’s nonprofit sponsor, says it’ll be the first farmers market in Houston to accept electronic food stamps. The market will run every Sunday from 10 am to 2 pm at 2800 Navigation; strolling mariachis will kick of this weekend’s grand opening, to be answered by a few sets from Sister Sister y Los Misters. Also available: meats from Texas T Kobe Beef and Al Marcus’s Grateful Bread. Photo: East End Foundation
Crews have broken open the front of the former Randalls grocery store in the Westchase Shopping Center at the corner of Wilcrest and Westheimer, and are busy inserting a new, smaller Whole Foods Market inside. The photo above shows the view from the One Westchase Center office building, immediately to the east. This isn’t Whole Foods’ first Randalls redo; a new Whole Foods at 1407 S. Voss, on the former site of another Randalls, is scheduled to open next Wednesday.
Westchase Front
Here’s the brick-and-splitface-block strip center that the owner of the building housing the Barnaby’s Café on West Gray at the eastern edge of North Montrose plans to construct in the next 6 months. It’ll be right next door to the Barnaby’s parking lot between Stanford and Taft, on a 15,000-sq.-ft. piece of land that long ago held 3 houses. The West Gray Plaza at 504 W. Gray St. would have 6,000 sq. ft. of retail or office space on the ground floor, plus a 1,600-sq.-ft. half story with a deck above.
The site plan shows a row of head-in parking in front of the building, which would be set to the back of the site:
For Trudi’s Birria de Chivo and other now-shuttered mainstays of the east corner of Bissonnet and Beechnut in Robindell, just down the road from Bayland Park, it’s all over except the asbestos-clearing and smashing. Going up in place of the 1956 Robindell Shopping Center, according to Sharpstown Civic Association, will be a new Aldi grocery store.
The site plan below for the center at 6751 Bissonnet St. predates the Aldi announcement, but shows a possible arrangement of freefloating buildings to replace the about-to-be-demolished retail row now backing up to Albacore Dr.:
Robindell Shopping Center Redo
“Now we know why we seem to have hit peak mattress along Westheimer,” declares Christopher Andrews, after producing and walking through a series of maps intended to shed light on where in the Houston area and why Mattress Firm has opened 92 separate showrooms, and is working on another 19 for the lower-priced “competitor” the same company operates, Mattress Pro. The highlights from his analysis are the 2 maps excerpted here, showing (at top) the correlation between areas with lots of apartments (dark green) and the stores (red for Mattress Firm, blue for the usually outside-the-Loop Mattress Pro); and (above) a Learning from Las Vegas-style diagram of Houston’s very own Mattress Corridor.
Houston may be the sleepy chain store’s hometown, but it’s not the only beneficiary of all that new retail padding; in the 14 weeks ending February 3rd alone, Mattress Firm opened or acquired 118 new U.S. stores.
- Mattress Manifest Destiny in Houston: Mattress Firm and Mattress Pro [Not of It]
- Previously on Swamplot: Now It’s 2 Mattress Stores Moving in Right Next To Each Other at the Corner of Westheimer and Montrose; What’s Arriving Now at the Sleepy Corner of Westheimer and Montrose; Sorry, No Mattress Store Can Sneak into Highland Village Without Somebody Noticing
Maps: Christopher Andrews
Behind the Mattress Store Boom
NOW IT’S 2 MATTRESS STORES MOVING IN RIGHT NEXT TO EACH OTHER AT THE CORNER OF WESTHEIMER AND MONTROSE 
Montrose watchdogs worried about the aura of chain-store sameness about to descend on the center-of-it-all corner of Westheimer Rd. and Montrose Blvd. once the new Mattress Firm store opens in the former Blockbuster Video spot at 1002 Westheimer: The nation’s largest purveyor of all things mattress understands your concerns. That’s why, this time, it’s mixing it up. As reporter Katherine Feser discovers, a separate store for the same company’s lower-priced (and normally outside-the-Loop) chain, Mattress Pro, will be moving in right next door. [Houston Chronicle] Photo: Katherine Feser/Houston Chronicle
If you’ve been waiting to see what changes are coming to Dallas St. after the street-tree-chopping event earlier this month, here’s your scoop: the Downtown Redevelopment Authority is redoing the streetscape from Milam St. to Discovery Green with hopes of identifying Dallas St. as an actual shopping district. The plan was hatched back when one of the buildings facing Dallas was Downtown’s lone remaining department store, but it’s still going forward with the Macy’s out of the picture (actually, its former site is just behind and to the left of the view in the rendering above).
Instead, the repaving and re-treeing plan is intended to allow a bit more pedestrian activity and street parking for the remaining retail — including the entire northern flank of GreenStreet, the Houston Pavilions redo — and encouraging more to move in.
The changes will shrink the number of car lanes on the one-way street from 4 to 3, but add a parking lane to its north side.
Tree Chopping for Street Shopping
Is the park-in-back strip center now a certifiable thing in Houston? Here’s the latest rendering of the small shopping center designed by Ziegler Cooper Architects for the corner of W. Alabama St. and Mandell St. in Montrose, across the street from the Menil Collection parking lot. Like the smaller center at the corner of Westheimer and Dunlavy now home to the Common Bond bakery and the slightly larger one developed by Braun Enterprises at 20th St. and Rutland in the Heights, Alabama Row scoots up just about as close to the main drag as the city’s development rules will let it. And it looks like the building’s south face, fronting West Alabama, is meant to be seen as its front:
Alabama Row
