Here’s what’s now being stabbed onto the vacant Midtown block bounded by Gray, Austin, Webster, and LaBranch streets catty-corner to the parking lot fronting St. Joseph Professional building and its recently-fallen cross: a 216-unit apartment building. The 5-story brick-and-stucco structure — pictured in the rendering above from architect Steinberg Dickey Collaborative — rests on 2 stories of parking. Its developer Winther Investment bought the full block along with the adjacent one southeast of it in 2013, where it plans to plant another residential building once this current cube is complete.
Rendering: Steinberg Dickey Collaborative
Stack of Bricks
Nice. Too bad it isn’t twice as tall with some restaurants at ground level.
In the last several years, we’ve generally seen two types of block-sized developments. The first type is 200-300 unit apartment buildings that look very much like this one, with the vast majority of units being 1-BR, with a couple of 2-BRs thrown in for good measure. These are virtually always offered on a rental basis.
The second type is 20-30 unit shared-driveway townhouse developments, the vast majority of which are 3BR, 3-story units atop a 2-car garage. Whether or not there are shared walls, these are, for mortgage purposes, treated as single family homes.
What’s missing is something in the middle. 50-100 units of 2BR or 3BR flats, maybe in the 1200-2000 sf range, with shared parking and a price point significantly below that of a 3-story townhouse, say $300k for a 1500 sf unit. These are pretty common in other cities, and I can’t imagine there wouldn’t be a market for something similar here. Seems perfect for the married/cohabitating-but-don’t-have-school-age-children-yet cohort.
ANgostura: I don’t disagree, but why wouldn’t the “married/cohabitating-but-don’t-have-school-age-children-yet cohort” simply rent one of the 1 or 2 beds being offered . Seems each year, as the younger gen gets older, the space desired becomes smaller. Which I think is the reason behind the trend towards larger # of smaller units.
Our small units stay full. We have a hard time renting 2 beds. At one of our midtown/med center properties, we lease 1 beds for $600, 2 beds for $700. We are 100% full on the 1 beds, and have 5-6 2 beds empty. It’s gotten to the point where we’re just going to lease the 2 beds for the same price just to fill them.
Where is the ground floor retail, or at least some friendly windows. Geez
Did they actually break ground? That lot was supposedly ready to break ground back in 2014 and it fell through.
This looks awesome! It’s really nice . I love the architecture and the style
much like their webpage, looks like Winther Investments is still stuck in the 80s
It doesn’t need first floor retail, it’s an easy walk from that center of Houston culture, the Greyhound station and the adjacent gas station.