Swamplot Archives by Tag: Trees

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

The Apartments Instead of the Trees at Tomball Pkwy. and Cypresswood

Before construction can begin next month on this 4-story apartment complex planned for the southwest corner of Cypresswood Dr. and the Tomball Pkwy., some things have to go. Developers Embry and Stonelake Capital appear to have in mind an unscraped 15.4-acre site that’s thick with trees, and Real Estate Bisnow’s Catie Dixon reports that the demise of an “existing structure” is imminent. But she doesn’t say which one. And neither has Embry. But: The manager at the Arby’s there on Cypresswood says it’s not the Arby’s.

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Monday, April 22, 2013

Comment of the Day: Can’t Facepalm

   

“No palm trees please!! Why do people still think it’s a good idea to plant them in a non-tropical, urban location? They provide little to no shade, take forever to grow, and aren’t particularly pretty.” [John, commenting on A New South Downtown ‘Garden District’ of Really Wide Sidewalks]

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Friday, April 5, 2013

That Naked Spot on White Oak Bayou

A reader sends this stitched-together panorama of the Heights bike trail spanning White Oak Bayou and wonders what’s going on with all the denuding: “This is kitty corner from where the proposed Emes Place condos will go. Mother nature swamped their work in the bayou with the recent rains. They appear to be taking revenge by bulldozing the nearby clump of forest. This is a larger piece of bird/homeless person sanctuary than the tract Emes Place is to be on, so I wonder what the story is. Harris County Flood Control comes by the site all the time, but I can’t find any mention of it on their website, or anywhere.”

Photo: Swamplot inbox

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Tuesday, March 19, 2013

MacGregor Park’s MLK Memorial Tree ‘Doesn’t Look Good’

   

Last spring, Metro spent $100,000 to relocate this tree out of the way of the expanding Southeast Line. Planted in 1983 near Old Spanish Trail and MLK Blvd., the tree was meant to stand in for an MLK memorial that’s still to come. While Metro crews worked in May to transplant the tree a few hundred feet away to a site inside MacGregor Park, Black Heritage Society president Ovide Duncantell chained himself to it to make sure everything went off without a hitch. But now the 30-year-old tree’s “strugging to survive,” reports the Houston Chronicle‘s Robert Stanton: ”‘The tree doesn’t look good to me,’” Duncantell tells Stanton. “‘I’m not in a position to say that tree is dying, but I’m hoping like hell that it’s not. The city . . . and Metro have a commitment to our organization that the tree would continue to stand there as a sentinel until that statue is completed. They should have been watering the tree all along, and this wouldn’t be a question. . . . Somebody fumbled the ball.’” Stanton adds that Metro has been watering it through an irrigation system and said it would “step up monitoring.” [Houston Chronicle] Photo: KHOU

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Wednesday, January 16, 2013

The Art Guys Go to the Library

   

A Swamplot reader says that the eponymous live oak (shown at right) in “The Art Guys Marry a Plant,” acquired by the Menil Collection in 2011, has been uprooted from Menil Park. Art Guy Jack Massing “didn’t want to say where the tree has gone,” reports the Houston Chronicle: “‘We’ve got it all taken care of,’ he said.” Instead, he wanted to talk about the Art Guys’ 30 years of working together; they’re planning “12 Events:” a year of once-a-month “behaviors” beginning on January 23 with a marathon autograph session at the Julia Ideson Library on McKinney: “They see signatures as something both basic and profound that’s evolved from the simplest mark making — drawing a line — into a legally-binding expression of identity. ‘People say they can’t draw, yet they have a signature. It’s a way of drawing your identity with a linguistic connection so you can be relevant in the world,’ Massing said. ‘It’s simple and basic, and yet incredibly profound.’” [Houston Chronicle] Photo: Robert Boyd

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Monday, January 14, 2013

Breaking Up with the Art Guys

   

Will the newest installation at the Menil Collection be a hole in the ground? The Art Guys were told last week that the museum intends to remove the live oak they “married” in 2009 in “The Art Guys Marry a Plant,” a public ceremony at the Lillie and Hugh Roy Cullen Sculpture Garden at the MFA,H. The museum acquired the tree in 2011 and held another public ceremony when it was planted in Menil Park on Branard St.; the little site (shown at right) backs up to the bamboo grove walling off the park from the Rothko Chapel and Barnett Newman’s “Broken Obelisk.” [Houston Press] Photo: Robert Boyd

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Thursday, November 29, 2012

Plans for Richmond and Buffalo Speedway Corner Include Hotel, Apartments, Restaurants, Demolition

More details are out on the plans to pile taller buildings onto the southeast corner of Richmond and Buffalo Speedway that Swamplot reported on last week: PM Realty, which earlier this month bought the 5-acre site and the 5-story Solvay America office building that sits on the southern portion of it, plans to build the 18-story office tower pictured above on the park-like portion at the north end of the property — leaving in place a bank of oaks facing Richmond, as shown in this view, from the northwest:

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Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Comment of the Day: Bumper Crop

   

“I wish acorns could be sold. I would be a filthy rich millionaire. Unbelievable how many my 2 oak trees produced and they keep falling. this past weekend, I filled my black trash can 4x to dump in the back. There are still a lot more.” [robin varner, commenting on Headlines: Mall of the Mainland Discount; Houston Raining Acorns]

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Friday, September 14, 2012

Knocking the Trees Around Peggy Shiffick Park

   

The duplex at 720 Bomar St. adjacent to East Montrose’s tiny Peggy Shiffick Park is back on the market, a week and a half after its prospective purchaser, developer Vinod Ramani of Urban Living, scaled back his plans to build 3 townhomes on the site (pictured at left) to just 2, and just a few days after backing out of the deal altogether. Some neighbors concerned the planned 3-1/2-story townhomes would clip a large portion of the branches and roots of the park’s signature oak tree had opposed 2 variance requests Ramani had submitted for the project. In the meantime, both Urban Living and neighborhood groups were alarmed to discover that city-contracted workers had severed the main roots of large trees on the property at the corner of Bomar and Crocker earlier this month while installing sewer-line connections. [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Image: Urban Living

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Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Comment of the Day: Building Around Trees

   

“. . . If the new construction were built around the tree branches, that could be used as a real selling point for a nice home. But construction is very hard on trees — Directly across the street is a development of new homes, and the property owner and architect specifically worked very hard to build around the huge tree on that lot and protect it during construction. It appeared that they had succeeded. But take a look at it today . . . the tree trunk is tall and fat . . . but there are only a few pom-pom sized clusters of leaves on the tree. It takes a long time for a tree to die, and damage from construction may show up years later. . . .” [Julie Young, commenting on Big Oak Tree in Little East Montrose Park Branches Out]

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Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Comment of the Day: Who Owns the Tree

   

“The location of the tree trunk does not determine ownership of a tree. If a neighbor’s tree hangs over your property, the portion of the tree that is contained within your property boundary belongs to you. You can do with it as you please. The same rule applies to a tree that hangs over the street. The City may do with it as it pleases.” [Bernard, commenting on Big Oak Tree in Little East Montrose Park Branches Out]

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Big Oak Tree in Little East Montrose Park Branches Out

Those are some pretty hefty tree branches cutting across the front of the duplex listed for sale at 720 Bomar St. in East Montrose. And they’re from a pretty hefty tree — a giant oak that sits on the next lot over, a 3,500-sq.-ft. plot now known as Peggy Shiffick Park. A “for sale” sign appeared in the duplex’s front yard a few weeks ago, a reader tells Swamplot. “Rumors then started flying that the property had been bought, before it went in to the MLS system, by a builder (it is now pending in MLS) and that the existing grand old home on the property, which had been converted to a duplex and has been empty for years, will be torn down and townhomes built.”

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Wednesday, March 7, 2012

The Burger King Live Oak Amputation Mystery Deepens

A second Swamplot reader sends us a pic of another Burger King sporting what appear to be recently hacked-up live oak trees — this one at the corner of Scott St. and Cleburne. That’s far away from any freeway feeder roads, but across the street from UH’s Robertson Stadium. How recently were these trees guillotined? The reader isn’t sure, but the cuts look kinda fresh, and Google Street View is ready with images from last June showing how the sidewalk-side residents looked with their limbs still bushy and intact.

Spot any further Burger King beheadings around town? Snap a photo or 2 and send them in!

Photos: Swamplot inbox

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Monday, March 5, 2012

Mysterious Oak Beheadings at the Yale and 610 Burger King

A graduate of the crape myrtle school of chainsaw insta-pruning appears to have gotten a little creative with the oak trees surrounding the Burger King at Yale and the 610 North feeder sometime over the last 2 weeks. The oak trunks are still standing tall, but all its broccoli-like heads have been knocked off. Is this the work of a rogue landscaper, or a concerted action meant to send a message to any other oaks that dare raise their leaves near power lines, feeder roads, or fast-food signage? “Its the most bizarre thing, and one can only presume it will get more odd appearing once they start to sprout out,” a Swamplot reader notes. “I know there are regulations to plant parking lot trees, but I guess there are none to make sure that they remain? There must be a story behind this odd act, but I can only drive by and drop my jaw each time I see it.”

More closeups of the oak hackery, and a “before” view, courtesy of Google Street View:

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Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Comment of the Day: ExxonMobil’s New Pine-Fresh Scent

   

“. . . And about those trees. Those are shit trees. I know because I grew up around them, they’re second growth pines that shed pine needles half the year, and disgorge nasty pollen for weeks. They’re not Sequoias. They’re not the original Big Thicket and old growth pine and cypress species. I hate those pine trees.” [Scott Bodenheimer, commenting on Urban Escape: An ExxonMobil Video Tour and Explanation for Its Enormous New Houston Forest Campus]

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