We’ve already opened the first category for this year’s Swamplot Awards for Houston Real Estate, celebrating the Houston area’s best design clichés. Let’s get started this afternoon on the second category: the year’s Best Demolition.
Teardowns are plentiful in Houston — just take a peek back through Swamplot’s archive of daily demo reports. But for Swampies season, we’re looking for that special award-worthy demo that really goes above and beyond (or below, perhaps). Did a teardown this year have a certain historic weight to it? Did something go down with a bang, or with some extra flair and panache? What property should be honored this time around, and why?
Send us your well-argued nominations to the comments section below — or send them in a private message to our tips line. For more on the nomination process, head here.
Nominations for both categories announced today will remain open until midnight next Tuesday, December 6. We’ll be introducing more fun categories as the week goes on, so be sure to get your nominations in now for the first 2!
- The First Category in the Swamplot Awards, Now Open For Your Nominations: Favorite Houston Design Cliché [Swamplot]
- How To Make a Nomination for the 2016 Swamplot Awards for Houston Real Estate [Swamplot]
- Swamplot Awards Nominations 2016 [Swamplot]
http://swamplot.com/teardown-in-progress-on-those-2-century-old-louisiana-st-buildings-being-demolished-for-lancaster-parking-space/2016-01-12/
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Ugh. To me this one is easy. The unfortunate removal of the beautiful building that once was part of the Incarnate Word Academy downtown. The nuns will need to pray extra long for that one.
Runner up would be the generic removal of east downtown parking lot surfaces. Good riddance. The blocks surrounding Disco Green and Minute Maid look much nicer with cranes on them.
The demolition of the Nicholas Clayton Incarnate Word structure occurred in the summer of 2015. A travesty of the greatest magnitude in regard to preservation.
Kay’s is a shoe in right? Does it need to be mentioned?
The most insulting/embarassing part about the Lancaster Hotel tearing down those ~100 year old buildings (for what, 20 parking spaces?) is how much they tout what a historical hotel they are, as if preservation is even remotely important to them. I’m assuming this category will turn into Worst Demolition, right?
I nominate Meyerland. Damn near the entire thing was demolished after the Memorial Day flood.
Surely some of you who are actually in the real estate field (as opposed to us mere swamplot junkies) can come up with one of the derelict abandoned apartment complex demo that the City was able to get done in 2016. Now that could be a “best” demo!
The old Code Enforcement building at 3300 Main, source of red tags and bane of Cody’s existence for lo so many years.
Can there possibly be any competition for this one? The somewhat faster than planned and videoed demolition of the parking garage on Kirby.
http://www.click2houston.com/news/parking-garage-collapses-onto-excavator-during-demolition-in-upper-kirby-area
I’ll nominate the demo of the Fiesta at Shepherd and 23rd, without which we would never have known that a third of the Heights still supports alcohol prohibition.
@Superdave – I second your nomination. Meyerland demolitions are near-daily occurrence. So sad.
I was going to nominate the Corporate Plaza demo/garage collapse, but Casey beat me to it.
Chronicle building. It has everything that is Houston: history, lawsuit, uncertain future, and the slow death of the newspaper industry.
801 Texas Ave used to be a snappy Chicago style office building that was connected to the Majestic theater. When the theater went bust, the Chronicle took over the space. Decades later when the building needed renovations, the Chronicle opted to slap a new brutalist facade on the building. Now that the building has fallen into the hands Hines, the all things new and shiny people, it is getting demoed.
The demo was met by a lawsuit from a neighboring property on the grounds that the demo would interfere with tunnel access and an underground easement.
Then, Hines has announced that it has nothing to announce about any kind of shiny new building that will be going up on the site because Houston has enough excess office space to house an . . . oil boom. So, Hines is just buying and holding for now.
Finally, the Chron occupied 801 Texas Ave for over a century and decided to head out to the southwest freeway to consolidate its operations in an even more brutalist building, if not the most brutalist building in Houston. This is because the newspaper industry is on the ropes and the Chron is no exception.
Oakbrook Apartments on White Oak Bayou. How many demolitions get a speech from the mayor?