The familiar contours of a vast supermarket parking lot are already beginning to take shape on the 7.68-acre grounds of the former Wilshire Village Apartments at the southwest corner of Dunlavy and West Alabama. You’ll see the trees that have already disappeared from this site — or more likely, a few of their younger relatives — appearing at various sites around the neighborhood, promises a sign announcing the coming Montrose H-E-B market:
Actual trees are still standing in the Magnolia Grove lot where that live-oak clearance event began last month. What’s left: A little street mustache lining Feagan St., between Snover and Jackson Hill. The reader who sent these photos — and says she appreciates “raw” local real-estate news — wants to know what’s going in.
Three trees have been delivered and installed at the site of the still-under-construction Asia Society Texas Center on Southmore and Caroline in the Museum District, announces the reader who sent Swamplot this photo of the trucked-in foliage from last week (above) — as well as a view from over the weekend of greenery as it now appears in front (below). “The inside of the building has been lit at night lately and it is quite stunning,” reports our correspondent. The building — only the second U.S. design by Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi, which follows his 2004 expansion of New York’s MOMA — isn’t scheduled to open until March of next year.
While thousands of ExxonMobil employees wait patiently to hear confirmation from the oil giant’s tight-lipped management about their rumored “possible” consolidation in a brand-new enormous office campus just south of The Woodlands, aerial photos that show work proceeding on the site have shown up in an update to Google Maps. The photo update appears to be relatively recent; it shows a level of clear-cutting similar to what was evident in the images leaked to Swamplot last month, which dated from March 12:
COMMENT OF THE DAY: SAVE THE GRASSLANDS “One of these days I’m going to start a movement to return Houston to the prairie that it was before World War II. I’ll organize a massive protest every time a new tree is planted, in an effort to restore Houston to the pristine flatland of pastures it originally was, before the invasions of those alien oak, pine and palm trees. (Never mind the tallows….)” [J.V., commenting on Clearing Out the Feagan Oaks from Magnolia Grove]
What’s been going on deep in this pine forest north of Houston, behind the fencing and security guards, where all those trucks have been driving in and out for months? A whole lot of logging at least, it looks like. While ExxonMobil continues to tell its employees that no decisions have yet been made about whether to consolidate approximately 17,000 of them from Houston and Virginia into a new 3 million sq. ft. office campus just south of The Woodlands, contractors working for the company have been stripping what looks like thousands of trees from its 359-acre property and preparing the site for construction of as many as 2 dozen office buildings, 4 enormous parking garages, and several other structures. These aerial photos of the site sent to Swamplot are dated March 12th.
These are probably the last images you’ll see of two large oak trees on the 4200 block of Feagan, says the reader who snapped pix this morning of the clearance event that’s been going on there for the last few days. There’ll be no designing around them, apparently: A worker on the property “said he hated to do it but both remaining oaks were coming down.” Coming in, gathers the reader: maybe 28 new townhomes between Dickson and Feagan St., just west of Jackson Hill. “Numerous smaller oaks, pecans, hackberries that are now crunched on the ground” were hacked away earlier.
The reader who sent in these photos of what appears to him to be the impending demolition of the house at 252 Piney Point Rd. tells Swamplot he can’t tell from the markings which trees are scheduled to come down with it — the ones with the red ribbons or the ones with the green: “There are too many to count and are almost all over 50′ tall.” The 5,022-sq.-ft. house on the almost-an-acre lot dates from 1955. The new owner bought the property last December for north of $1 million, but less than the $1,240,000 asking price. The listing included several photos of the “park like setting” just a couple of blocks north of Memorial Dr. but none of the home.
COMMENT OF THE DAY: THEY TOOK OUR YARDS! “The Chinese Tallow has been taking quite a beating lately in the press. ‘Wahhh, kill them all because they’re not native and they’re invasive!’ I’m starting to get these hateful declarations confused with Arizona’s immigration law. How about if instead of simply dismissing it as a ‘noxious weed,’ we instead think about the potential of that much fast-growing biomass. Fear is what’s invasive.” [kilray, commenting on Comment of the Day: Gotta Know Your Chinese Imports]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: GOTTA KNOW YOUR CHINESE IMPORTS “I think some people are confusing the ‘Chinaberry’ [tree] (Melia azedarach) with the ‘Chinese Tallow’ (Triadica sebifera), the former being much messier but easier on the bare feet, and the latter being much more invasive.” [Superdave, commenting on Don’t Chop Down the Rodney Crowell Tree!]
DON’T CHOP DOWN THE RODNEY CROWELL TREE! Two Chinaberry trees the country-music star planted with his mother by the front sidewalk of his childhood home at 10418 Norvic St. in Jacinto City never grew at all, but a third one Rodney Crowell named after himself did well. “It’s a Spanish-speaking fellow that lives there now,” Crowell tells the Chronicle‘s Andrew Dansby. “He had built a house where our house had fallen down. I got him out in the yard and tried to explain everything. I gave him a record of The Houston Kid. He looked at me like, ‘What do you want me to do with this?’ So we had a pointing conversation. I told him, ‘I planted that tree. Don’t chop it down!’ After a while he said, ‘Yes! Shade!’ I thought, OK, well the tree’s safe. A few years [later] I go back by, and it was cut down. I was livid. But the good news is the trunk is still there, and the trunk had started to sprout some little limbs. So maybe it’ll grow back in some way. These trees are tougher than we give them credit for. But I was mad; I was sure I’d gotten the point across.†[29-95]
Galveston Mayor Joe Jaworski now says he will waive the $10 annual permit fees the city had planned on charging 3 homeowners whose dead-tree sculptures stand in the public right-of-way. Homeowner Donna Leibbert started a small local-media firestorm late last week after she received a permit renewal form in the mail for the sculpture of a Geisha that artist Jim Phillips had carved out of an oak tree outside Leibbert’s home at 1717 Ball St. After the Hurricane Ike storm surge killed an estimated 30,000 trees on the island, artists turned almost 2 dozen of them into sculptures. But Leibbert’s Geisha is one of only 3 of the works that sits on city property.
City spokesperson Alice Cahill, who has helped to publicize the sculpture program as a tourist attraction, tells Amanda Casanova of the Galveston County Daily News that the license-to-use fee is normally required for any designed object that occupies a portion of the right-of-way. “A carved tree is treated the same as a cafe table.” Leibbert tells Casanova she was aware of the permit requirement at the time the Geisha was carved — getting approval for the sculpture required a formal application with the city’s planning commission. But she notes that the tree had stood in the same position for about 100 years, and for free.
Over the summer, Swamplot photographer Candace Garcia tracked down 22 of the tree sculptures, including Leibbert’s Geisha. Here’s her photo tour:
COMMENT OF THE DAY: PRAIRIE HOME COMPANIONS “In Houston, I think a tree over 20 years is considered ‘old growth.’” [Hellsing, commenting on Shopping for Antique Stores on Ferndale]
All 3 designs by San Antonio architects Lake Flato for the new H-E-B Market on the former site of the Wilshire Village Apartments — released by the grocery company in advance of a Neartown Association meeting this weekend — appear to share the same footprint and site plan. H-E-B Houston region president Scott McClelland had promised neighborhood residents would have an opportunity to vote for one of the 3 designs, but the options appear to be limited to the building’s roof shape and exterior detailing. All 3 designs feature a single-story structure that backs up to West Alabama, with the main entrance facing a parking lot on the southern portion of the site. But McClelland tells the Chronicle‘s Mike Morris that the company will be asking for input on other design issues at the meeting, including pedestrian access. Current plans call for a new center lane on Dunlavy, and new sidewalks and bike racks for the store.
McClelland says that drawings for a 2-story store — with parking underneath, allowing for a smaller footprint and a 2-acre park on the site — will be discussed and presented at the meeting. However, attendees won’t get to vote for it. “Until I know we can build it, it isn’t a viable option,” he tells Swamplot. He says the company is still short $800K of the additional $2 million a 2-story store would cost. “I’ve made numerous calls to others in an attempt to find addt’l funds….so far without success. Similarly, the [Montrose Land Development Coalition] hasn’t had success either.” Putting a park on the site is not a high priority for the city parks department because there are other parks nearby, McClelland says. If the money can be found within 45 days, he tells Swamplot, a 2-story option would be “considered.”
What do the 3 single-story Lake Flato designs look like? A set of renderings labeled “The Sawtooth” shows a store similar to the firm’s recent design for the H-E-B at Buffalo Speedway and Bissonnet, but adds an additional jag to the roof overhang on the south-facing entrance — and several north-facing clerestory windows:
So many different sets of tiny signs on the former site of the Wilshire Village apartments have mysteriously appeared and disappeared over the last few years, it’s become hard to keep track. This week, the color is: blue! A reader notes the appearance earlier this week of survey crews on the corner of Dunlavy and West Alabama — the site now slated for a new Montrose H-E-B Market — along with a bunch of new stakes with blue streamers around the perimeter trees. “Also some trees either being trimmed or cut by a tree company,” reports the Montrose Magnolia watcher. Candace Garcia, our on-the-ground (or in this case, pretty darn close to the ground) photographer, has these exciting photos from the scene taken late Wednesday:
