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Tag: Warehouse District
Just days before Harvey hit Houston, the newest corner restaurant at 1302 Nance St. in Downtown’s old warehouse district looked ready to debut. The photos here, taken by Swamplot reader Will Breaux shortly before the rains came and the waters swelled, show the spot formerly occupied by Oxheart sporting a new exterior paint job and window nameplate.
Inside, renovations had been taking place for months. Proprietor Justin Yu had plans to open Theodore Rex later in August. But the restaurant flooded. Now, he writes, “it might take a little more time to open.”
- Justin Yu’s Theodore Rex Sustains Flood Damage In Hurricane Harvey Flooding [Eater Houston]
- Justin Yu Could Debut Theodore Rex By the End of the Month [Eater Houston]
- Previously on Swamplot:Â Justin Yu To Close Oxheart, Spend Some Time in the Heights;Â Dharma Cafe to Ray’s Franks to Latin Bites to Oxheart
Photos:Â Will Breaux
To Redo Again
Glass brick and more glass brick — in the form of 4-square dots and tall shafts — let in the light in this warehouse district townhome built by Edgefield Developers in 2005 as part of a 3-pack. But it’s the ample deployment of recessed lighting that really amps up the interior. The towering property sits on the corner of a fenced, half-built half-block just west of McKee St. and north of a Metro bus barn near a bend in Buffalo Bayou and its bike trail. The home landed on the market earlier this month, asking $645,000.
Let There Be Mottled Light
Early in the last-century rush to loft downtown properties, this 1914 warehouse got converted into 15 condo units, each with a glass-and-iron fronted balcony. That was back in the mid-eighties. A see-it-all-at-a-glance corner spot on the 2nd floor within the San Jacinto Lofts showed up in the listings last week for $195,000.
This relatively gritty Warehouse District warehouse appears to be the subject of some real estate speculation, reports Hair Balls’ Richard Connelly: A website for the Houston Studios building — home to a 10,000-sq.-ft. soundstage with a 30-ft. ceiling for video shoots, rehearsals, and other creative expressions — features renderings that show it as a cleaned-up commercial complex:
DHARMA CAFE TO RAY’S FRANKS TO LATIN BITES TO OXHEART 
That’s only the recent lineage of the tiny corner space at 1302 Nance St. in the old warehouse district at the northern stretches of Downtown, where former *17 chef Justin Yu, his pastry-baking wife Karen Man, and Central Market wine guy Justin Vann plan to open their new Gulf Coast-flavored restaurant. (Latin Bites will be escaping to the former Rockwood Room location at Chimney Rock and Woodway.) The trio promises not to take up any of the mere 26 seats in the former Erie City Ironworks space themselves. Oxheart — yes, named after the central organ of an ox (as well as a kind of carrot, a type of tomato, and a certain cabbage) — will be open for dinner 5 nights a week, including Mondays, beginning next March. [29-95; more from Eater Houston] Photo: Almost Veggie Houston
After a couple years of threats, live-music straggler Walter’s on Washington finally closed its doors at 4215 Washington Ave. this summer. Almost exactly 6 months later, it’ll open for a Christmas show in a new location: This former classic-car showroom, video-production studio, car-parts distribution center, and cabinet shop at 1120 Naylor St. just north of Downtown, behind DiverseWorks and the UH-Downtown parking garage. Owner Pam Robinson had hoped to open the 190-person-capacity venue much earlier. She told the Houston Press‘s Chris Gray in June that she had run into problems meeting city parking requirements for the location.
- Walter’s Finally Has New Digs: Roky Moon Christmas Gig Announced and Walter’s No Longer On Washington, But Not Gone Either [Rocks Off]
- Previously on Swamplot: Guess Where Walter’s on Washington Is Moving!, Walter’s Was the Only One Left: The Death of Live Music on Washington Ave
Photo: LoopNet
What’s so special about this forlorn and blue bungalow just west of the Westheimer Curve? It’s the now-former home of Taurian Body Piercing, the shop where — in late January 2004, Janet Jackson’s stylist purchased a now-famous breast-shield nipple ring. A few days later, near the end of the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show in Reliant Stadium, Justin Timberlake gave the sunburst-shaped piece of Montrose nipple jewelry a good half-second of international media exposure; at least that part of Jackson’s wardrobe didn’t malfunction.
What’s happening to this former armory, having served its forces so well in the Culture Wars, five years on? Taurian recently moved to that Warehouse District tucked below I-10 Downtown — it’s now cohabitating with Epoch Tattoo at 1306 Nance, down the street from the Last Concert Cafe. And the bungalow?
MIDSUMMER AFTERNOON PLUMBING SUPPLY REVERIE “. . . I swear to you — some plumber supply places got it going on. We needed a new water heater and some parts that go with that for the new tenant. So I headed out to find the proper supplies. There’s a couple different plumbing supply places that I’ve seen this set up at now: a long countertop with stools in front of it. People sit on the stools and chat with people on the other side of the counter about all sorts of stuff. It looks like a bar. The place I went to today had the coolest barstools too. They were old metal barstools with white vinyl seats that said ‘Rheem Water Heater’ on them. They’re all beat up and worn. The place is an old building in the warehouse district. It’s hot – there’s no A/C. A warehouse door pulled up lets an all too infrequent summer breeze blow in. The floor is old wood panel that had seen rough wear for years. The men behind the counter were older, smoking, and turn on polite charm for me, a woman, looking for some odd part. I want to hang out here, talk about the job, the work site. Things I can’t do because I have no idea about any of it. But it looks fun. I know I’m romanticizing it. But I imagine tall tales get told here: competitive stories about who found the grossest thing come out of a clogged pipe, or weird disaster jobs with insane and creative resolutions on the fly.” [Dog Food Sugar]
Residents of the Live Oak Lofts, you have been warned! Whoever among you has been smoking weed and stinking up the whole joint, you must cease immediately — the Live Oak Lofts Homeowners Association is on the case!
Don’t want to get all up in your business and all, but now that this has happened, the Association will not fail to contact the proper authorities if anything incriminating is further sniffed — or if you are caught doing anything illegal whatsoever!
After the jump, the scathing marijuana memo distributed to all residents of the Live Oak Lofts!
