Angostura

Bobby Heugel with some cryptic information on this spot. It may be called Foods and Liquids. It may have a BLT on the menu.

And no pedestrians.

...or like the WF on Post Oak. Problem on this site is you'd still have a bunch of surface parking, since the lot is 180k s.f. and the store is only 90k. (The midtown Randall's is on a ~90k s.f. lot.) The site is too small for a typical suburban store, and too large for a typical urban one, unless you add a ton more retail or a multifamily component, which the neighborhood would freak out about.

FWIW, variance request signage was removed from the property, and the request appears to have been withdrawn for now:

78% turnout among voters in the (now semi-) dry Heights, compared to 61% in the county as a whole. About 3/4 of voters on this issue voted early, and early voters voted 65-35 FOR. Election day votes were 60-40 FOR. It looks like the announcement of the store on Washington and/or the leaked renderings of the Shepherd store changed a few minds, but not many.

WF on Waugh and CM on Westheimer have the following in common: - 100% surface parking - The long side of the site fronting the major street\ Neither applies to this site. Those stores set their main entrances facing the parking lot, and neither can be reasonably described as street facing. For this size store on this size site, you basically have three options: 1 - Store over parking structure 2 - Parking structure over store 3 - Parking structure next to store The Heights & Washington store will be option 2: The store entrance behind two rows of surface parking, with 1-1/2 floors of parking above the store (on the same footprint), then 4 floors of apartments on top of that. When the footprint of the store is (basically) the entirety of the site, it's easy to make the entrance face the street without alienating the majority of shoppers who arrive by car. When, as on Shep & 23rd, the store takes up a much smaller proportion of the total site area, doing parking above the store would probably result in a big surface lot, with some additional spaces on top of a concrete building (see Sprouts on Yale for an example). The ceiling height of a grocery store is going to be very different than a parking garage, so doing store + parking on the ground floor, then all parking on the 2nd floor is tricky. Doing a parking structure next to the store, with the store itself set as close as allowable to Shepherd, would probably require the main entrance to either face the parking structure, or, best case, 23rd or 24th St. You'd still need a setback variance to make this site plan viable, and you'd still have, essentially, a blank wall facing Shepherd. Plus you have a somewhat awkward main entrance/exit, with most people wanting to both enter AND exit through a single corner of the building. This is unusual in grocery store layouts for obvious reasons. If this site is only going to have a 90k s.f. grocery store (no additional retail, no residential), this plan (store over parking structure) is probably the best of the three options. By placing the store over the parking, instead of vice-versa, the architect has a broader set of choices for building materials for the store itself (i.e. not limited to concrete) and can design a lighter-feeling structure than would be possible if there were cars on the roof.

- Limited setbacks - Wide pedestrian realm - Zero surface parking - 60+ new street trees Ticks a lot of boxes. The main pedestrian entrances appear to be on 23rd and 24th streets, where pedestrians will have to cross two rows of parking between the sidewalk and the ground floor lobby.

Whatever goes in there, part of the green space is almost certain to become a parking lot.

Don't know if this is the final design or whether it's just representative for the purposes of the variance request, but it looks very similar to the renderings for the Bellaire store. I think Lake Flato has only done a couple of their stores: Montrose and one in Austin.

The request is to reduce the building line on Shepherd to 10-ft, with the parking structure built right next to the sidewalk, rather than a row of surface parking between the sidewalk and the parking structure on the side facing Shepherd.

Same reporter that published the story on the Heights & Washington store, but she never asks about it. (TBF, not clear when the interview was recorded.)

This has apparently been sold, pending City Council approval, to an as-yet-unnamed buyer. Not clear from the article if the sale includes the second tract between 20th and 21st streets.

If the beer/wine prop fails next week expect long waits to turn left from southbound Heights onto Washington once this store opens in 2019.

Several dozen people on HAIF and the real estate reporters at the Houston Chronicle, for starters. I have no doubt that HEB believes their chances of getting the ballot measure passed is lower if people think the Washington store is a done deal, which is why they didn't go out of their way to publicize it. But if they really wanted to hide it, they could have done a better job. There's also the matter of the people who are getting evicted from their homes so they can be demolished to make way for this development, something with which HEB may not want to be quite as directly associated.

The lease memo was available to the public since it was filed with the county clerk back in May. The lease is in the name of "HEB Grocery Company LP," not some cryptically named shell company (e.g. "BKR Memorial II, LLC," which is the grantor in the lease memo), so it comes up when searching for "HEB" on the county clerk's website. I stumbled across it when looking for the Shepherd & 23rd lease and posted it to the Going Up thread yesterday (coincidentally, just a few minutes before the first Chronicle article on the lease was posted yesterday afternoon).

Thought the same thing, if for no other reason than to match the setback of the new apartments immediately to the south. Midtown is in a transit corridor, so setback requirements are different, but there's a lot of legacy zero-setback property on Washington, so a variance wouldn't be out of the question. I haven't seen a timetable announced, but I'd guess mid-2018.

Hadn't seen this posted anywhere, but the lease memorandum signed by HEB for this site has some site plans in it. The store will be sited on the NW corner of the property, at Heights & Washington. A little over 90,000 s.f. ground level, with parking on the 2nd floor, and what looks like four floors of apartments above that. Looks like additional retail is slated for "Zone B" adjacent to HEB. HEB Heights&Washington.pdf

Some things you cannot do in Texas: Buy or sell beer or wine between the hours of midnight and 7AM. Buy or sell beer or wine before noon on Sunday Buy a drink in a bar or restaurant after 2AM Leave the premises of a bar or restaurant with an open container BYO to an establishment with a private club license Buy liquor in a grocery or convenience store Operate a liquor store outside of the hours of 10AM to 9PM, Mon-Sat Produce beer, wine or spirits and sell them directly to a retailer. Produce beer, wine or spirits and sell them to the public at a location other than where they were produced. Purchase beer, wine or spirits from the producer and sell them to the public. Purchase beer, wine or spirits from a retailer in another state. Yes, some states are worse (esp. in the NE), but a lot of states are much more permissive. TX is pretty middle-of-the-pack, and still has a lot of consumer-unfriendly laws on the books.

Oooh, what's the other one? Mine is off-street parking.

Variance requests signs have been posted at this site, apparently regarding a reduction in building line.

Ahead of Super Bowl LI, a very useful round-up of noteworthy upcoming Houston restaurants, a number of which are in the Heights (or nearby), including: - Heugel/Yu concept at 6th & Yale - FM Burger on Shepherd - Presidio on 11th (former Java Java) - Starfish on Heights (former Bradley's) - Field and Tides on 1th (former Zelko) - Pinkerton's Barbecue on Airline (former Cappelini) - King's Bierhaus on TC Jester - Bernie's Burger Bus at 22nd & Yale - Rice Box on 20th (former Chirp's) - Heights Bier Garten/Wooster's Annex at 14th & Shepherd - Mellow Mushroom on Shepherd My guess is that, of these, 6 or maybe 7 actually open before the Super Bowl.

This is not factually accurate. Neither CVS nor Walgreen's qualify as a grocery store under chapter 3, and therefore run afoul of the 300-ft rule due to their proximity to Hamilton Middle School. La Michoacana is not in the dry zone, but would presumably also run afoul of the 300-ft rule due to its proximity to Love Elementary since, although it is largely a grocery store, it is less than 10,000 s.f., so it doesn't qualify under Chapter 3. Both the 20th St Kroger and Sunny's on 14th will likely apply for and receive off-premise licenses, so you'll be able to pick up a 6-pack while waiting to pick up your pizza at Pink's. I would also not be surprised if Revival Market applied as well.

If it's a dated concept (which it is) then it should be worth getting rid of anyway, HEB or no HEB. If no grocery stores in Texas, or even Houston, for that matter, could sell alcohol, it wouldn't be an issue. The problem is that a store at this site that isn't able to sell beer and wine will have to compete with one 12 blocks away that can.

People value things differently I suppose. On my personal scale, my desire to control what other people do with their property weighs less heavily than my belief that it shouldn't be illegal to buy and sell alcoholic beverages. This is especially when that control mechanism is almost entirely ineffective, and there is a real, concrete advantage to me of loosening prohibition (in the form of a new grocery store that I can walk to). I understand that other people's scales may tip the other way, but I hope that when given a choice between more freedom and less freedom, enough of us will choose more.

The document filed with the clerk is a memorandum of the lease agreement, not the full lease agreement, to which reference is made in the memorandum. (I checked because I was curious about a potential opt-out clause in the event the local option election fails.)