12/14/18 3:30pm

Get a load of this multi-chromatic character that’s recently taken shape on York St., between Lamar and McKinney streets: EaDo Storage. Built in place of the Randolph Office Furniture Exchange warehouse that bit the dust in early 2017, the new 107,677-sq.-ft. facility takes up the entire block. It isn’t yet open.

You can see a few cherry-pickers applying the finishing touches to the structure’s exterior in the photo above. If the rendering the business put out last month is to be believed, new trees and hedges should be on the way, too:

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EaDo Storage
11/07/18 5:00pm

How’s this for dockless bike-share pricing: $15 for unlimited rides? Too bad though, the offer has already sold out.

Remember the fleet of nearly 100 bikes from MoBike that mysteriously vanished from The Woodlands last month? MoBike itself, it turns out, pulled them off the streets starting in October and put them in 2 self-storage rentals: one at Amazing Spaces on I-45 just north of Vision Park Blvd., and the other 5 miles down the freeway at the U-Haul Moving and Storage center near the Rayford-Sawdust Rd. exit — which the company used as a repair shop. But no announcement was made and the great bike-share vanishing was kind of mysterious. Residents who called up the township to ask where the bikes had all gone — according to The Villager’s Jeff Forward — were told that the township hadn’t received any communication from MoBike about what had happened.

Then . . . the bikes showed up on Craigslist:

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No MoBike in the U.S. of A.
06/07/17 4:00pm

COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOW THE DECLINING MARKET FOR ANTIQUES IS FUELING THE SELF-STORAGE BOOM “My mom has an amazing collection of stuff like this. I think about it all the time. . . . worried what I’m going to to with my great great grandfather’s table, and my great grandmother’s silver. I don’t have the room for it at this point in my life . . . but I don’t want to give it away. I almost feel like I need to get a storage unit for it.” [Chef DB, commenting on The Underappreciated Riches of Houston’s Antique Set]

02/28/17 5:15pm

4211 Bellaire Blvd., Southside Place, TX, 77025

Black Eyed Pea, 4211 Bellaire Blvd., HoustonBankruptcy and, today, demolition — so ends the journey for the Black-eyed Pea at 4211 Bellaire Blvd. Swirling rumors and previously filed variance requests suggested that apartments would go up on the site, and an actual design for a multifamily midrise was even floating around as early as last year — but the property changed hands again in the fall, as a reader noted.  The new plan for the site, evidently part of Dallas-based serial apartment developer Ojala Holdings’s bid to cash in on the Texas big-box storage market, looks to be a 4-story storage facility. And permitting reviews look to have started in the fall, not long after Ojala’s Uncle-Bob’s-turned-Life Storage got wrapped up across from the no-longer-listed-for-lease Wabash Feed Store:

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Clean Plat in Southside Place
12/02/16 11:15am

Uncle Bob's Storage, 5700 Washington Ave., Washington Ave, Houston, 77007

Los Dos Amigos Mexican Restaurant, 5720 Washington Ave, Woodcrest, HoustonThe old Wabash Feed & Garden building on Washington Ave. may still be sorting out its current relationship status, and missing the company of Los Dos Amigos  and Premo’s Grocery (knocked down across the street last year) — but at least it’s no longer the only property on the corner with an out of date sign (as pictured in the shot above from a reader). The new Uncle Bob’s Self Storage across the street, which replaced Premo’s and Los Dos Amigos, is already waiting on a branding swap-out — the storage company acquired Life Storage in July and decided to take the new name, simplifying its box-of-boxes logo in the process. The 6-story storage midrise is set toward the corner with Malone St. where Premo’s stood, while Los Dos Amigos got the parking-lot treatment:

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All Boxed Up
12/02/15 3:15pm

MAYOR PARKER CLEARS UP RICHMOND AVE SHELL STATION SELF STORAGE TREE REMOVAL MYSTERY Street Oak Tree Stump, 1810 Richmond Ave., Montrose, HoustonStumped by the sudden disappearance of 4 or 5 large oak trees in the city easement fronting a vacant lot adjacent to the recently demolished Shell station at 1810 Richmond Ave, between Hazard and Woodhead? They were chopped down last week, in advance of a new Montrose Big Tex Self Storage facility soon to begin construction on the site. Mayor Parker is on the case, reassuring concerned street-tree watchers: The trees “were in bad health & posed safety threat,” she tweeted earlier today. “Fully permitted removal granted with plan to plant new trees.” [HAIF] Photo of Richmond Ave stump: Kyle Nielsen

02/26/14 3:30pm

COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE RENT VS. RE-BUY DECISION Storage Unit“I once rented a self storage unit. My wife (then girlfriend) and I were condensing from two apartments to one. After a year and a half of paying the rental fee, I did the math. For what I had paid on the storage unit, I could have bought, brand new, everything I was storing in it. So we ended up emptying the unit and tossing whatever we didn’t immediately have use for. Bottom line, the storage unit was some of the worst money I’ve spent in my entire life. I suspect that’s often the case.” [Walt, commenting on Old Prince’s Hamburger Sign Is Leaving North Shepherd for Points Even Further North] Illustration: Lulu

02/24/14 3:30pm

Prince's Hamburgers Sign, North Shepherd Dr. at 15th St., Houston Heights

Prince's Hamburgers Sign, North Shepherd Dr. at 15th St., Houston HeightsSomeday, your Prince’s (hamburgers sign) will go. If you hail from the kingdom of the Heights, today appears to be that day. Swamplot reader Rachelle Varnon sends in the above photo, taken just a short while ago, of the old N. Shepherd Prince’s Hamburgers sign as it sits, mounted on a royal coach for a northern journey. “I saw a bucket truck by the old sign [pictured at left] at 15th and North Shepherd today on my way to lunch,” she writes. “By the time we returned, the sign was down.

Where’s it headed?

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Neon Royalty
08/31/12 12:58pm

The lone residential unit atop the Proguard Self Storage office at the corner of Heights Blvd. and Center St. is available for you to rent — and of course fill up with stuff. Unlike the other units located on the premises, this one comes with a kitchen, a washer and dryer, and an actual bathroom, but lacks roll-up doors. Like the other units, it’s all bills paid. Shaded parking is available under this wooden structure against the north fence, past the controlled-access gate:

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07/07/11 2:42pm

Teevee news cameras provide a glimpse of the open-plan home fashioned out of a 12-ft.-by-25-ft. RV and boat storage unit in a long shed across the street from the I-10 East Golden Corral Restaurant. Prince and Charlomane Leonard have their home of 3 years all to themselves now, but they’re not happy about it: After a single 3-hour visit from Harris County’s Child Protective Services last month, the couple’s 6 children, ages 2 through 12, were removed from the home on McNair St. near Sheffield Blvd., which was declared an “unsafe environment” for the children. The Chronicle‘s Anita Hassan reports the Leonards had been planning to build a home for themselves on land they own in Liberty County, but couldn’t get a loan.

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04/07/11 3:43pm

“One of the construction workers told me that a self-storage place is going in here,” reports the Swamplot reader who sent in these photos of the “massive pile and hole” taking shape at 2412 W. Holcombe Blvd., on the northwest corner of the Morningside intersection, west of the Texas Medical Center. Look, flatlanders, before it’s gone: This is kinda what an actual hill looks like!

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