A LONG GOODBYE FOR THE WOODLANDS MALL SEARS 
The Woodlands Mall location is among the 11 anchor stores around the country Sears announced it will sell to mall operator General Growth Properties. All of the stores will remain open until 2013; a closing date will be announced within the next several months. [Retail Traffic] Photo: City-Data
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Tag: Retail
Basements are relatively rare in low-lying Houston. But a Swamplot reader who’s been following the progress of construction at the first not-in-a-mall Apple store ever to be built in this city thinks Apple dug deep into its curtained Highland Village Shopping Center site:
Apple not only tore down the existing building they dug down far more than was necessary. . . . I saw big excavators, much larger than what would be expected and I saw an excavation that was far deeper than needed for a typical strip center foundation. If there was anything below grade that needed removal such tasks would have been done during the previous construction. . . . [The excavators] were at full extension which would suggest a foundation 15’ below grade. Sounds like a basement to me. The old saw about you couldn’t have basements in Houston is certainly not true. Many buildings downtown and in the medical center have multilevel basements.
So . . . what might Apple be hiding underground?
COMMENT OF THE DAY: ABOUT THAT 35-STORY TOWER ABOUT TO GO UP DOWN THE STREET “I need some opinions. A friend of mine owns a patio home on W Alabama next to this site. Will this help or hurt her property value? There’s a one acre tract between this development and hers, and we don’t know what it’s going to be. I figure it might help her value because it will be near retail and probably a restaurant or two, but who knows?” [Bill, commenting on First Sign of the 35-Story Apartment Tower Coming to Weslayan and West Alabama]
Turns out this “mysterious construction” going up on the corner of Technology Forest Blvd. and Research Forest Dr. in The Woodlands isn’t meant to house some company’s secret R&D project — instead, it’ll house investigations of a more familiar technology. No name has been announced, but the operator of 2 Sakekawa Japanese Steak House & Sushi Bars (there’s another one Indian Springs Village already) bought the 1.21-acre pad site last year. These photos came from a Swamplot reader who was curious about the unidentified project — but then answered her own question by uncovering the secret sushi plot for us:
Here’s the sign that’s gone up on the northeast corner of Weslayan and West Alabama, where PM Realty plans to start construction later this year on the 35-story apartment tower it announced last year. The tower, PM Realty’s first in Houston, will have 12,500 sq. ft. of retail space on the first or second floor, 250 apartments, and a 3,000-sq.-ft. fitness center, according to a Houston Business Journal report last year. On the 2.6-acre site, which the company bought from Interfin last August: the remains of the State Grille restaurant. New on-the-scene blog Going Up! City has these pix of the site:
Is this the right address? As Swamplot noted last week, Trader Joe’s received a sales-tax permit for a Memorial-area location at 1440 S. Voss at the end of last year. But the company hasn’t officially announced the locations for its Houston stores yet. Swamplot photographer Candace Garcia poked around the scene on Voss between San Felipe and Woodway over the weekend, to scope out any preparations going on there for a TJ’s landing. There didn’t appear to be any.
SURE LOOKS LIKE A TRADER JOE’S IS HEADED FOR VOSS AND SAN FELIPE The second Houston-area Trader Joe’s will move in at 1440 S. Voss Rd., just north of San Felipe, according to this little permit report. [Ultimate Memorial]
H&M LANDING IN HOUSTON, BUT STAYING OUTSIDE THE LOOP Fashion retailer H&M this morning officially announced its first 2 stores in Houston, both in malls. A 19,400-sq.-ft. slot at the Baybrook Mall already mentioned on the company’s website is scheduled to open sometime this spring. Next: a 25,600-sq.-ft. store in the Willowbrook Mall. The company press release didn’t refer to any plans for inner-loop locations. [Shop Girl; previously on Swamplot]
One of several Trader Joe’s stalkers in The Woodlands sends us this pic of the shopping center site at 10868 Kuykendahl Rd. near Woodlands Pkwy., “looking more and more like a store!” The photo was taken Sunday; no opening date is listed on the Trader Joe’s website, but it’s expected to be sometime this spring.
- Previously on Swamplot: Trader Joe’s Braces Itself for a Woodlands Shopping Center Landing, Your Early Photos of the Trader Joe’s in The Woodlands, Here’s Where the First Trader Joe’s Is Going — in The Woodlands
Photo: Swamplot inbox
A SECOND RUN AT GROCERIES FOR DOWNTOWN 
Today is opening day for Georgia’s Market Downtown at 420 Main St., the same space where Byrd’s Market shut down last summer. The opening of Phoenicia Specialty Foods at One Park Place across from Discovery Green in the meantime means Georgia’s won’t be Downtown’s only grocery store. Like Phoenicia, Georgia’s is a second location of a more suburban operation (Georgia’s Farm to Market, in the former Kmart on the I-10 feeder just east of Dairy Ashford), and includes a cafe and bar (The Cellar, underground). [Eater Houston; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Eater Houston
Apartment developer Marvy Finger tells Nancy Sarnoff that he’s the developer who’s buying the Fiesta Food Mart on the corner of West Alabama and Dunlavy — and planning to build a 6-to-8-story complex in its place. Finger says the closing is scheduled for February, and that he’s looking to fit 390 apartments onto the 3.68-acre site. Finger has charged architects Wallace Garcia Wilson with designing something “Mediterranean” — presumably a structure dressed up in that style will fit the neighborhood better than Lake Flato’s new H-E-B Montrose Market across the street, the modern Menil Collection campus nearby, the many bungalows and brick homes surrounding the site in Lancaster Place, and the occasional new gallery along West Alabama. “We’re going to try to create something really beautiful,” he tells Sarnoff.
A reader passes on the rumor that the retail buildings along the west side of Mid Lane north of Westheimer, from Capone’s Bar and Oven (above) up to but not including Crapitto’s Cucina, are under contract to a developer — with a closing scheduled for this month. Purported plans for the properties: demolition and the construction of a highrise, with new retail spaces at the bottom. No rush, though, apparently: “They can’t do anything for 16 months because of the leases.”
Photo: Swamplot inbox
HIGHLAND VILLAGE APPLE STOREÂ REBOOT Did you know the shiny new Apple Store with the glass roof and front and back walls in Highland Village was scheduled to open very soon? Well, not any more, says Nancy Sarnoff. A source tells her the opening of the first Houston-area non-mall store has been pushed back until March. [Prime Property; previously on Swamplot] Drawing: Jeffrey Djayasaputra
WHY HANK’S ICE CREAM IS CLOSED THIS WEEK 
There’ll be no butter pecan, vanilla, or creamed corn flavors available for the next few days at the southern end of the angled strip center at the corner of Murworth and South Main St. — for a period of mourning. Hank’s Ice Cream owner and founder Hank Wiggins, who opened the shop with his wife Okemah in 1985, passed away on New Year’s Eve. He was 74. [Houston Chronicle] Photo: Edgar V.
That’s it, right there, next to Petco: Trader Joe’s first Houston-area store, now in fetal form in the shopping center at 10868 Kuykendahl Rd., across the street from the H-E-B at Woodlands Pkwy. New Swamplot reader Michael E. sends these pix showing how far construction has progressed since the dusty days of last November. The steel frame is up! When do the multi-pack avocados come in?
