Tag: Retail

Featured Posts
04/11/18 12:30pm

Meet the Shops on Watson: 5,600 SF of Swanky New Strip in Store for the Corner at Usener St.

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Proposed Developments, Retail, Woodland Heights
12 Comments

Here’s a southeastern view of the 5,600-sq.-ft. retail building — dubbed Shops on Watson — that Edge Realty wants to plant adjacent to the Woodland Heights welcome sign on the corner of Watson and Usener streets. The structure’s front deck looks out beyond a 22-spot parking lot at the new-ish Elan Heights apartments across Usener to the immediate south. On the east side of the building, 4 more head-in spots line a portion of Watson.

The new development is planned in place of a few warehouse buildings that currently sit on a shady, just-under-half-acre parcel at 2401 Watson St.

Rendering and site plan: Edge Realty

Woodland Heights
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Featured Posts
04/05/18 12:30pm

What’s Going on Backstage at Waugh Dr.’s Former Video Central?

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Montrose, North Montrose, Retail
6 Comments

A bunch of pipes arrived yesterday in the vacant field behind a pair of Montrose video stores, a Swamplot reader reports. Audio Video Plus shut down 6 years ago, next door to it on W. Clay is the warehouse home to the lesser known Astro Audio Video equipment rental store — also shuttered. The photo above shows the scene on Peveto St. behind the latter store.

Audio Video Plus neighbors another vacant storefront — Quintanilla Jewelers — in the strip mall on the corner of Waugh:

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North Montrose
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Featured Posts
04/04/18 1:00pm

Braun Enterprises’ Oak Forest Aztec 2-Step on 34th St.

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Garden Oaks, Proposed Developments, Retail
1 Comment

Braun has a 2-step plan for developing the former Aztec Rental Services property on 34th St. between Oak Forest and Ella. A brochure on the developer’s website designates the portion of the site to the east as that of future residences. On the western edge of the would-be housing spot, Aztec’s former storefront — pictured above — looks toward an additional 2-acre parcel the equipment outfitter gave up.

That’s where Braun wants to plant a pair of 10,050-sq.-ft. retail buildings surrounded by a moat of parking:

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One of Each
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Featured Posts
04/03/18 12:00pm

Strip Center Set To Rise Next Door to Where Prince’s Hamburgers Went Extinct on Ella

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Garden Oaks, Proposed Developments, Retail
5 Comments

Here’s the new 2,500-sq.-ft. strip center planned in the parking lot next door to Prince’s Hamburgers’ abandoned building on Ella Blvd. north of 34th St. The photo above, sent in by a Swamplot reader, views the former restaurant from the north, outside the closed-down A1 Auto Deals used car lot near the train tracks that cross Ella south of Judiway St. Between the auto dealer and the restaurant is where the strip center would go, at the west end of what’s now an additional 13,204-sq.-ft. parking lot.

Prince’s took over the restaurant building from Jack in the Box in 2016:

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Garden Oaks Preview
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Featured Posts
04/02/18 4:00pm

Building Out the 3-Block Grid of Springwoods Village Office Buildings, Parking, and Retail South of ExxonMobil

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Office Buildings, Proposed Developments, Springwoods Village
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Developer Patrinely Group is getting ready to start construction on one of the 12 mid-rise office towers it has planned for the 60-acre zone dubbed CityPlace within Springwoods Village — south of Exxon’s new-ish campus off I-45. The rendering at top shows the 5-story CityPlace 1 building — which will fit 2 retailers in its ground floor: one fronting a central green space to the east dubbed CityPlace Plaza, and another along City Plaza Dr., a road that begins at the park and heads between several of the office towers.

You can see the road cutting its way west past CityPlace 1 — at the far edge of the park — in the aerial rendering below:

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I-45 and Grand Pkwy.
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Featured Posts
04/02/18 11:30am

Oak Forest Randalls Now in Everything-Must-Go Mode Ahead of Closure

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Oak Forest, Openings and Closings, Retail, Strip Centers
16 Comments

Longtime anchor tenant Randalls is getting ready to retreat from the west side of the Northbrook Shopping Center on 34th St. just off 290 in Oak Forest. A banner hung up on the front of the 54,806-sq-ft. space announces the liquidation sale now underway inside.

The grocery store neighbors GameStop and a Habitat for Humanity resale store in the 174,181-sq.-ft. strip:

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34th and 290
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Featured Posts
03/29/18 4:00pm

Hump-Backed Goodyear Auto Shop a Block Away from Highland Village Has a Mixed-Use Prognosis

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Highland Village, Medical Buildings, Mixed Use, Proposed Developments, Retail
2 Comments

Ancorian subsidiary CityLands has plans to plant a medical office building with street-level retail in place of the barrel-vaulted 1970 Goodyear auto shop at 3720 Westheimer. Leasing materials dub the new 40,250-sq.-ft. building the Surgery Center of River Oaks. However, the anchor tenant that CityLands says has leased more than half the structure’s square footage has a different take on its whereabouts — the partnership of doctors calls itself the Upper Kirby Surgical Center.

The rendering above shows a drive-up entrance fronting the planned building — which the developer says will include “integrated parking.” The lot that CityLands bought from the car center’s owner earlier this year backs up about 160-ft. north from Westheimer to abut the cul-de-sac of Locke Ln.

Photo: Arch-ive. Rendering: CityLands

Westheimer Retirement
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Featured Posts
03/26/18 4:00pm

Montrose Blvd. Aqua Car Wash Wants To Add Mixed Drinks to Its Menu

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Montrose, North Montrose, Retail, Signage
23 Comments

The Aqua Hand Car Wash & Detail on the corner of W. Dallas could get even wetter pending the TABC’s permission for the business to serve mixed drinks on-site. The photo above, sent in by a Swamplot reader, shows the 680-sq.-ft., butterfly-roofed building where a notice naming Aqua Heights LLC as the applicant for a mixed beverage permit now hangs in the window.

The building went up on the long-vacant field at 1013 Montrose in 2011. Washing, waxing, and detailing take place in a parking lot to the east and south of the structure.

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Wet Bar
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Featured Posts
03/26/18 2:00pm

Fleet Feet Sports Now Up and Running in Neal & Company’s Abandoned Antique Store on the Corner of Greenbriar and Bissonnet

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Retail, Signage, Southampton
2 Comments

The 1950 building at 4502 Greenbriar formerly home to the Neal & Company antique shop has been taken over by Fleet Feet Sports. The running gear retailer bought the building — last renovated in 2005 — just under 2 months ago. Shortly before the sale, Fleet Feet closed its nearby store in Rice Village — on the north side of Rice Blvd. next to Tea Bar and Organics.

Head-in parking now fronts 2 sides of the Greenbriar location — as opposed to just one at the old Rice Village store:

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Head-to-Head Head-In Parking
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Apartments
03/22/18 5:00pm

New Construction Barricades Herald Pending Arrival of River Oaks Shopping Center’s Biggest Corner Tower Yet

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New Construction, North Montrose
12 Comments

Orange barricades now flank the far east side of the northern portion of the River Oaks Shopping Center where a 30-story highrise — dubbed The Driscoll — is planned in place of Café Ginger’s original corner spot on W. Gray. The saucer-like tower shown in the photo above was appended to the retail building as one of many modifications its owner Weingarten Realty has made to the originally Art Deco structure over the years. When the new apartment rises, it’ll tower over 5 storefronts in the retail center, as opposed to just one.

Café Ginger’s northern neighbor Local Pour also shuttered in the portion of the building that’s replaced by The Driscoll’s lobby in the rendering below from architect Ziegler Cooper:

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The Driscoll
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Featured Posts
03/15/18 2:45pm

Your Guide to the Houston Toys R Us Stores Now Getting Ready to Close

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Openings and Closings, Quicklink, Retail
6 Comments

YOUR GUIDE TO THE HOUSTON TOYS R US STORES NOW GETTING READY TO CLOSE As part of the bankruptcy filing it submitted this morning, Toys R Us announced plans to close or sell all of its 735 stores nationwide. Thirteen of those locations are in the Houston area: at the corner of Kirby and Old Spanish Trail, on Westheimer just east of Fountain View, in the Village Plaza at Bunker Hill shopping center on the Katy Fwy., in the Katy Mills mall, in the Houston Premium Outlets on 290 just east of the Grand Pkwy., on Beltway 8 just north of Fairmont Pkwy., in Pearland Town Center, in the Willowbrook Court shopping center next to the Willowbrook Mall, in Sugar Land’s Colony Square, in Baybrook Square on the Gulf Fwy., on the East Fwy. in Baytown across from the San Jacinto Mall, in Texas City’s Tanger Outlets on the Gulf Fwy., and in The Woodlands’ Pinecroft Center. Standalone Babies R Us locations are on the Katy Fwy. at N. Fry Rd., on Cypress Creek Pkwy. just west of I-45, on 59 northeast of First Colony Mall in Sugar Land, and on the Gulf Fwy. at El Dorado Blvd. in Friendswood. The OST and Westheimer Toys R Us boxes (both of which include in-store Babies R Us departments) measure 45,000 sq. ft. [USA Today] Photo of Toys R Us at 1212 Old Spanish Trail: Nhan N.

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Featured Posts
03/15/18 11:15am

The Strip Center with Offices Above Planned for the Corner of Chimney Rock and San Felipe

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Proposed Developments, Retail, Tanglewood
10 Comments

Here’s another development that the Oxberry Group has planned: a strip center for the northwest corner of San Felipe and Chimney Rock Rd. dubbed Shops at Tanglewood. The 2-story retail building and its parking lot would go in place of 4 houses that currently occupy the corner east of the Gables Tanglewood apartments — one pair fronts San Felipe and the other sits along Chimney Rock, as you can sort of see in this map:

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Residential Replacement
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Adaptive Reuse
03/14/18 4:45pm

Gibbs Boathouse Redo Will Welcome Restaurants, Retail, Deck Seating Aboard the Corner of W. Gray and Montrose

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Montrose, North Montrose, Proposed Developments, Retail
15 Comments

The Oxberry Group is ready to rechristen the vacant Gibbs Boats building at 1110 W. Gray St. as Rêve at Montrose: a new, patio-fronting shopping center. The boat business shuttered in the 11,696-sq.-ft. warehouse building it had occupied for 56 years after selling off the last of its fleet in 2014.

Major changes slated for the building now include a takedown of its shed-roofed portion closest to Montrose Blvd. In place of that area, outdoor seating — shown above in the rendering from Tipps Architecture — will line the street. A clock tower planted between the existing 1- and 2-story parts of the building would be its new high point. And at the north end of Gibbs’ former lot — next to the U-Plumb-It hardware store — a 2,630-sq.-ft. retail add-on would take the place of a yard once used for boat work.

The site plan below shows the addition (colored red) jutting out and separating the pedestrian plaza from a driveway to the planned parking lot:

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Rêve at Montrose
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Buying and Selling
03/13/18 3:30pm

There’s Now a Gap on 19th St. in the Heights Where That Open-Air Non-Building Once Stood

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Demolitions, Houston Heights, Retail
14 Comments

The sheet metal façade backed by an assortment of shipping-container parts is now gone, and mountains of stuff have been removed from the longtime junk emporium at 317 W. 19th St. in the Heights, perhaps better known as the open-air building with a front but no roof that lent the shopping district its perhaps now diminished air of funk. The photo at top, sent Swamplot’s way by a flabbergasted reader, shows the now-vacant lot with everything removed. Below it, a rare aerial view from a few years ago reveals secret stashes maintained behind the lot’s corrugated streetfront.

But perhaps what you remember of this lot is different: a mysterious supply house behind whose shiny gate backdrops for hundreds of street scenes emerged over the years? Or a backdrop for fashion shoots?

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Junked
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Featured Posts
03/13/18 12:00pm

All the Body Parts Now Signed Up for Braun’s New Center at Shepherd and W. 24th

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Houston Heights, Leasing, Proposed Developments, Retail, Shopping Centers
7 Comments

The teeth, eyes, and . . . uh, overall shape of the new shopping center Braun Enterprises is planning for N. Shepherd and 24th St. can be considered taken care of, now that Lovett Dental, Eyes on the Heights Optometry, and Club Pilates have each signed leases for space in the development. That leaves 11,555 sq. ft. still available in 3 separate end-cap spots for any nail salon, podiatrist, or dermatology clinic that wants to fill out the theming for the complex, which would go on the block catty-corner to the H-E-B Heights Market currently under construction.

This would fit in with N. Shepherd’s ongoing transformation: Braun plans to demolish the Miller’s Auto Body Repair Experts facility (as of now still open for business) as well a building formerly occupied by Auto Electric Service on the site in order to construct the 24,000-sq.-ft. shopping center, which includes structured parking as well as a parking lot on the roof of one of the 2 buildings.

A full human-body-part-focused buildout for this planned complex at 2401 N. Shepherd Dr. isn’t so far-fetched: the latest renderings released for the development include generic signage for both a nail salon and a fitness club:

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Body Shop to Body Shopping
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