Just a few blocks down the street from that River Oaks Shopping Center highrise site, a reader checks in this week on the French-esque midrise apartment complex that’s been slowly coming together at 1916 W. Gray St. The Houston Ballet’s converted clothing factory headquarters made a grand exit from the site back in the pre-oil-bust days; since then the project has been rechristened from Graybelle to Le Palais, and this sketchy view of a facade has been circulated by the developers:
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The structure’s gauzy costuming, which shows up on the back of the complex on Bell St. as well, makes it difficult to see how closely the sketch and early plans square with the final design. The rendering doesn’t include the building’s gargoyle-spangled Randall Davis condo neighbor to the west, either, nor the urgent care center across the street:
- Previously on Swamplot:Â Dramatic Final Moments of the Houston Ballet on West Gray;Â The Apartments Taking the Place of the Houston Ballet on West Gray
Photos:Â Jonathan C.
Should be called ‘The Haussmann’.
I am in total anticipation of the project. You can see the facade from the side from the parking lot of the boring TJMAXX strip mall. This project has been under construction as long as I’ve been in Houston (3 years).
More thought put into phony names than into getting the thing constructed.
I’ve been looking at this apparition for so long, I don’t see it anymore. (Like living in the front range of the Rockies. After a while, you don’t notice the mountains anymore.)
When did this construction begin? 2010? Has to be some kind of record for incompetence. Probably doesn’t top the bulldozing of a cash cow like Allen House Apartments in 2008(?) to make way for the never-going-happen Regent Square though.