Tag: Retail

09/26/18 4:30pm

Car-Wash-to-Coffee Conversion Now Brewing for the Corner of Houston Ave. and Alma St.

Proposed Developments, Renovations, Retail, Woodland Heights

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The building with a roofÂ that’s bigger than its body at 3024 Houston Ave. is now slated to become a cafe operating under the name Uncle Bean’s Coffee Shop.Â The photo at top — posted to the venue’s fledgling Facebook page this morning views the structure from the west side of the road, just south of Alma St. Its most recent occupant: Mr. Details Hand Car Wash.

White paint hit the exterior sometime during the former tenant’s tenure, washing out the yellow splat marks that once graced its north and south sides:

Woodland Heights

77009, Proposed Developments, Renovations, Retail, Woodland Heights

Avondale

09/26/18 10:30am

The Latest Casualty of Mattress Firm’s Chain-Wide Slump Is on Westheimer Next to NJoy Thai

Montrose, Openings and Closings, Retail

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By its own count, Mattress Firm now has just over a dozen shops open inside the 610 Loop after closing its 202 Westheimer location next to the (also recently shuttered) Njoy Thai restaurant on Sunday. The full-strip store pictured above took over from Hollywood Food & Cigars #3 and its neighbor Tejas Boots under the name Mattress Pro 3 years ago before its parent retailer scrapped that pseudonym and rebranded all of its locations under the Mattress Firm moniker.

Over the last year, the chain’s shut down hundreds of stores — reports USA Today‘s Nathan Bomey, who echoes other murmurs that the retailer’s South African parent company Steinhoff could soon file for bankruptcy. And as the legal battle between Mattress Firm and a trio of brokers it says profited through reckless dealmaking continues to play out in court, the company’s been hit with another suit. In it, mattress brand Tempur-Pedic — which lost its contract to sell products in 3,300 Mattress Firms last year — alleges that the retailer’s “Therapedic“-branded product line is a copycat version of its own bedding and that gullible consumers will be “will inevitably be confused and harmed,” by the knockoffs.

Laid to Rest

77006, Avondale, Montrose, Openings and Closings, Retail, Retail Strips

Cypress

09/25/18 10:00am

Cypress Ace Hardware & Feed Has It All, Right Down to the Doohickies

Retail, Signage

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The photo at top shows Cypress Ace Hardware attempting to label its most obscure class of goods, the odds and ends customers know they want but struggle to put a name on. Turns out they’re actually top sellers at the 11655 Jones Rd. store: “We have so many people that walk in with a random part in their hand,” co-owner Susan Murff tells the Chronicleâ€™s Rebecca Hennes. Their question: “Do you carry these doohickies?”

Installed about 8 months ago, the DOOHICKIES lettering matches signs that aren’t visible in the photos but run horizontally to the left and right of what’s pictured, advertising the rest of the store’s offerings: tools, paint, electrical items, plumbing supplies, a fudge bar, and an on-site post office. (There’s also an “indoor grilling center where customers can schedule a time to cook their favorite meat on a grill they are interested in buying,” reports Hennes.) As for what corporateâ€™s got to say, each Ace store is individually owned, so local management gets some editorial power over its own dÃ©cor.

Texas hardware store sells ‘doohickies’ and people can’t get enough [Houston Chronicle]

Photos: Karen M. (storefront); Cypress Ace Hardware & Feed (sign)

The Writing on the Wall

77070, Cypress, Retail, Signage

09/19/18 3:45pm

Orangetheory Fitness Is Now Cropping Up Behind the New 610 Whole Foods

Independence Heights, Openings and Closings, Retail

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The chain’s new 3004 Yale St. location opens next Friday, September 28 in the strip behind the 4-week-old grocery store and its parking lot off 610. Just off-camera to the left of the gym’s spot is the Verizon store that’s already doing business in the retail building.

It’s holding down the fort all by itself right now, but once Orangetheory moves in next door a bunch more tenants are expected to follow:

Independence Heights

77018, Independence Heights, New Construction, Retail, Strip Centers

East Downtown

09/18/18 12:00pm

Empty Leeland St. Furniture Workshop Now Has a Wine Sign on It

Quicklink, Signs

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EMPTY LEELAND ST. FURNITURE WORKSHOP NOW HAS A WINE SIGN ON IT A reader tells Swamplot one of those TABC posters is up on the building at 3107 Leeland St., and the applicant it names: The Wine House, LLC. The last tenant Metamorphose Studios did double-duty in the 2,800-sq.-ft. space: dealing furniture and also guiding visitors in the art of refurbishing items themselves (“I recommend the chairapy class,” wrote the venue’s sole Yelp reviewer in 2016, adding that of the items for sale: “The hand painted and embellished cattle skulls are to die for!“) Despite its departure from Houston, the workshop lives on as part of an antique store up in Navasota. Photo: Metamorphose Studios

Bars and Restaurants, East Downtown, Proposed Developments, Quicklink, Retail, Signs

09/18/18 9:45am

New Blast-Fitness-Sized Hole Adds Room for Aldi in Garden Oaks Shopping Center

Garden Oaks, Openings and Closings, Retail, Strip Centers

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Signage is down and a closure notice is up on Blast Fitness’s now-former 3936 N. Shepherd storefront, which lies within the northern portion of the strip that Aldi plans to take over. Pictured above is that portion — just south of Garden Oaks Blvd. — where Yoga Collective and a next-door vacuum shop took off previously to make room for the grocer. Blast’s turf was on the south side of theirs, near where retail signs and parking activity pick back up on the right in the image.

For those in need of a new gym, not to worry: Blast is letting customers transfer their memberships to any location run by its affiliate brand Fitness Connection. The nearest of that chain’s 14 Houston fitness centers? Eight miles away in Greenspoint Mall.

Previously on Swamplot:Â Aldi Is Making Its Move into the Garden Oaks Shopping Center; ALDI Taking the Yoga Collectiveâ€™s Spot in Garden Oaks; Other New Tenants in the Works; Whatâ€™s Going Into the Garden Oaks Box the Yoga Collective Is Being Kicked Out Of?

Photos: Dan Bradley

Clearing the Way

77018, Garden Oaks, Grocery Stores, Gyms, Openings and Closings, Retail, Strip Centers

09/17/18 9:45am

A Soaring View of Progress on the 23rd St. H-E-B

Houston Heights, New Construction, Retail

5 Comments

Red hyphenated signage hasn’t yet put a name to the building, but you can see all the other makings of H-E-B’s second second-story Houston grocery store from above in the video at top. The footage starts off over N. Shepherd, then pans around the corner of 23rd St., offering a view of the former Fiesta site from the south.

Back in March a spokesperson for the grocer told The Leaderâ€™s Landan Kuhlmann to expect a “late fall opening,” meaning the store’s debut could coincide roughly with the 2 year anniversary of the dry zone modification its management pushed for prior to construction.

Previously on Swamplot: The New Second-Story Heights H-E-B on N. Shepherd Is About To Begin Construction; H-E-Bâ€™s Plan and Backup Plan for the Double Decker Heights Dry Zone Store; H-E-B Will Double Down on a Heights Dry Zone Store or Not Build At All;Â Yes, The Heights Dry Zone Petitioners Really Did Collect Enough Signatures For a Vote;Â Heights Dry Zone Signature Gatherers Return from the Hunt Victorious;Â Former Fiesta Site Preps for Teardown as Heights Dry Zone Petitioners Circle;Â H-E-B Would Like To Plant a Store in a Wetter Heights Dry Zone;Â Somebodyâ€™s Trying to Legalize Beer and Wine Sales in the Heights Dry Zone

Video: Brandon DuBois

Doubly Decked Out

77008, Grocery Stores, Houston Heights, New Construction, Retail

Avondale

09/14/18 12:45pm

Spenga’s Upper-Deck Gym Will Jut Out Real Close to Its Neighbor

Proposed Developments, Quicklink, Retail

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SPENGA’S UPPER-DECK GYM WILL JUT OUT REAL CLOSE TO ITS NEIGHBOR Just 8 in. will separate the cantilevered fitness studio’s eastern, over-the-edge portion from the eaves of the 1915 home adjacent to it — reports abc13’s Christine Dobbyn — which will soon house Arden’s Picture Framing and Gallery. The 15,700-sq.-ft. lot where the new retail building’s planned at 307 Westheimer is currently going up; Italian restaurant Michelangelo’s went to pieces on its west side last December (the east was all parking). [abc13; previously on Swamplot] Rendering of 307 Westheimer Rd.: Spenga

77006, Avondale, Proposed Developments, Quicklink, Retail

09/13/18 4:00pm

Hwy. 6’s Chamberlin Ace Hardware Is a Goner

Openings and Closings, Retail

2 Comments

The second Ace Hardware liquidation of the week will leave behind a slightly larger hole than the one on Westheimer: 19,930 sq.-ft. as opposed to 18,900. Pictured above is the retail co-op’s Hwy. 6 location in the Providence Plaza shopping center off Bissonnet. Management’s selling off everything it’s got left there now, reports a Swamplot reader. And the post office inside the store has already shut down for good.

Before a few years ago, the storefront entrance looked like a smaller version of Dollar Treeâ€™s next door:

Retooling

77083, Openings and Closings, Retail, Strip Center

09/13/18 10:45am

Aldi Has Dibs on Soon-to-Close Batie’s Ace Hardware in the Tanglewilde Center

Openings and Closings, Retail, Woodlake

5 Comments

The mark of Aldi now appears at 9525 Westheimer, smack in the middle of the strip where Batie’s Ace Hardware is going out of business. Liquidation sales began there on Tuesday — reports a Swamplot reader — with the goal of creating an 18,900-sq.-ft. hole in the portion of the building pictured at top, adjacent to Party City.

Currently about half a dozen Aldis are open inside the Beltway, with additional reinforcements scheduled to arrive soon.

Tanglewilde Center [Brixmor]

Photo: Swamplot inbox. Map: Brixmor

Westheimer Near Gessner

77063, Openings and Closings, Retail, Strip Centers, Woodlake

09/10/18 12:45pm

Cloud 10 Creamery Number 3 Heads to Shepherd and Colquitt Corner

Renovations, Restaurants, Upper Kirby

2 Comments

The ice cream shop has plans to shoot the gap between its existing Heights and Rice Village locations with a new spot at 3502 S. Shepherd, in the house next to the Richmond Ave strip where Burgerim’s getting situated. Although Cloud 10’s summer menu — includingÂ mozzarella and black tea-cornÂ flavors, as well as a sundae made with “freeze dried blueberries” — is still on rotation in the 2 current locations, it’ll probably be replaced by a whole ‘nother roster by the time the new store opens.

Five head-in parking spots line the building’s northern frontage along Colquitt St. They’ve been empty for the most part since hair salon All Decked Out checked out of the building, leaving it open to new arrivals.

Previously on Swamplot:Â Bungalow Full of Weird Ice Cream Flavors Now Open on Heights Blvd.;Â Where Cloud 10 and All Those Extra Parking Spaces Will Fit Into Heights Mercantile; Cloud 10 Hitting Sweet Spot in the Village

Photos: All Decked Out Hair Salon (first); Tenavox (second)

The Scoop

77098, Renovations, Restaurants, Retail, Upper Kirby

09/07/18 3:30pm

Windchimes Cinema 8 Has Sold Its Last $2 Movie Ticket

Openings and Closings, Retail

13 Comments

It used to just be a buck, until “about 10 years ago it went to $2,” writes a moviegoer. By then the theater had already been around for decades in the back of its namesake Wind Chimes Shopping Center at Westheimer and Eldridge — once the setting itself of a movie shot by a local production company. Following roughly 40 years there, “It was just about the last dollar movie open in Houston,” the former patron declares. (Still around, notes the sign, is the North Oaks Cinema 6 at FM 1960 and Stuebner Airline — where the same owners will sell you a $2 ticket to see any of 8 selections right now.)

What that price got you at Windchimes: admission to feature films that hadn’t quite made it to DVD yet after finishing up their time in first-run theaters. And on top of that, arcade games:

Cut!

77077, Movie-Theaters, Openings and Closings, Retail, Shopping Centers

East End

09/06/18 2:30pm

Sand Dollar Thrift Nears Houston Extinction

Houston Heights, Openings and Closings, Retail

4 Comments

A sign spotted up on the chain’s East End location (pictured at top) by a thrifty Redditor informs customers that the last 2 Sand Dollar stores will be closing at the end of this month, bringing an end to the retailer’s 37-year run. Both the 7018 Harrisburg Blvd. and 1903 Yale St. stores are now in clearance mode: All purchases over $20 (before tax) are half-off.

Down in Pasadena, the 2535 Spencer Hwy. store has already been emptied:

Everything Must Go

77008, 77011, East End, Houston Heights, Openings and Closings, Retail

Apartments

09/05/18 10:15am

Eye Doc Grabbing Space Next to Dentist in Mid Main Lofts’ METRO Side