Heights scores first MFAH pop-up gallery

The new Heights Mercantile retail development on 7th Street looks quintessentially Houston, with an eclectic mix of bungalows, renovated industrial space and spiffy new construction clustered underneath towering power lines.

Several firsts for the city are tucked into the center's maker-focused stores and craft eateries. Most eye-opening: Owners Evan Katz and Steve Radom are sponsoring the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston's first pop up gallery, in the 714 Yale space next to Bespoke, where most of the gifty goods are made by local artisans.

MFAH contemporary art curator Alison de Lima Greene plans to rotate artworks three times a year in the one-room gallery, "until we learn how to use the space, based on what the community wants," she said. Greene appreciates the opportunity to bring rarely-seen works from the museum's vast contemporary art collection out of storage and back into view.

Greene said the gallery project happened "very informally," as an outgrowth of Katz's philanthropic interest in education and community outreach. 

The  first show occupies just a horizontal sliver of one gallery wall with the five screens of Chiho Aoshima's video "City Glow," first seen in the big 2007 exhibition "Red Hot: Asian Art Today From the Chaney Family Collection." More recently, Greene displayed the piece outside the MFAH's cafeteria, "and people of all ages loved it," she said.

The animated video's theme also is appropriate for this kind of urban development, Greene explained: It's about consciousness of global warming but also a celebration of cities, inspired by Aoshima's view of new skyscrapers popping up across the Bay of Singapore.

Katz and Radom, who own several other small retail centers in the area, thankfully are not into high rise construction."We strongly felt that adapting the older buildings and maintaining an appropriate low density scale on the project would allow the project to be harmonious with the surrounding neighborhood," Radom said. "We always viewed this project with a long-term lens, rather than as a short term trade."

The partners positioned the center's 40,000 square foot of retail space so that its "front door" is the White Oak Bayou hike and bike trail. SWA, the landscape architecture firm behind Buffalo Bayou Park and other new public spaces, designed the festive allee of oaks on the trail that ties it all together.

On nice evenings, even with construction not quite complete, Heights Mercantile has already become a gathering place for families who sit on the picnic tables outside Cloud 10 Creamery or behind LuluLemon: The Local -- the first Southwest outpost of the sportswear apparel company's community-centric concept, where the activities include a bookclub.

The new center is "absolutely representative of the change in the Heights," Greene said. She lived in the area years ago. "If you'd told me then that it would be full of high-end food, bike trails and hipsters, I'd have laughed in your face."

Along with Cloud 10 and Melange Creperie, the Heights Mercantile eateries will soon include Local Foods and Postino Wine Cafe. Retailers Warby Parker, Will Leather Goods, Gypsy Wagon, Rye 51, Chubbies, Marine Layer, the Impeccable Pig and Bespoke are open; Saint Lo Boutique is coming soon. Beauty/fitness tenants include Define, Aesop and Paloma Beauty.