Reader Debnil Chowdhury sends in these pics, taken yesterday, of the steel-framed structure that’s appeared over the last month just north of the new Studemont Kroger gas station in the formerly industrial district just south of I-10 that Swamplot readers have dubbed ‘Katyville’ — in honor of the suburban-style developments rapidly going in there, a mere 2 miles northwest of Downtown. And these latest additions do appear to be pad-site-alicious: Directly north of the McDonald’s going up at 1510 Studemont St. (and pictured here), there’s a sign announcing a new Capital One Bank. There’s no indication yet whether the bank building will have a drive-thru as well, but the signs look good.
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A 31,920-sq.-ft. warehouse-style building housing HVAC company Johnson Supply that sat on the site previously was torn down a little more than a year ago. Construction of the new McDonald’s is expected to be complete by the end of May.
- New McDonalds Planned [Houston River Oaks Real Estate’s Blog]
- Previously on Swamplot:Â Johnson Supply Building Beside Studemont Kroger Coming Down
Photos: Debnil Chowdhury
damn. there’s already a mcdonalds in the walmart on yale right?
The combination of awful patchwork of road and overwhelming traffic, I shall try to avoid this area for the rest of my days.
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Yep.. just like Katy!
the amusing thing is that if it was an In-N-Out people would be in love with it (even though it’s all grease and fries)
Damn! Was hoping it was a Whataburger.
@spiteful, correct.
Our fast food density is rapidly increasing. 2x Mcd, Taco Cabana, Chipotle, Sonic to name a few..
Sad day for the inner-loop :(
I just threw up a little in my mouth.
Sigh. Another missed opportunity.
Good thing there’s new ramp from I-10.
Of course people are whining over this. Typical swamploters. I’m pretty certain McDonald’s is pretty much everywhere and there’s no stopping it no matter how much these yuppies and hipsters protest it in favor of eating fresh, local, green, organic. I’m so tired of these people that try to push there agenda down the throats of everyone. Sure we all need to eat and be healthy yadda yadda…you don’t live in anyone else’s shoes except your own so who are you to judge what goes where and what people should put in there body I could care less if anything gets built anymore since this city has been and always will be a cluster of randomness. There’s no changing what has already happened. Like many people have posted before. If you don’t like something go out there and do something about it. Expressing your opinion won’t get problems solved these days everyone has an opinion like they have an a**h*** it was just super obvious what the comments on this and other posts will be now from reading swamplot for the past few years.
Simmer down…rumor has it this will be a chef-driven McDonald’s
@B…Was hoping it was a Whataburger.
That would have been fantastic
@Whiners for dinner
Thanks, your comment made my day. Awesome.
A missed opportunity for what? A stand alone Dollar Store? What in the name of God would you realistically expect on this plot? It was destined to be a chain eatery spot. Keep your smelling salts in the cabinet–it certainly isn’t at the hallowed ground zero of Heights Blvd and 11th Street.
Before we get too sanctimonious here let’s not forget the McD’s at Yale and 20th, Church’s Chicken on Heights Blvd., the Pizza Hut/Wing Street on Heights at I-10, etc. If the demand wasn’t there you can bet the restaurants wouldn’t be either.
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JT is exactly right – what do you expect to go in a location with an interstate 1/4 a mile to the north and an industrial zone not far away to the south east?
The only good thing I can say about those who owned this lot over the past year is as a user of their sidewalk.
They tore the sidewalk to hell last year, but within a few weeks actually repaved it back. More than I can say about many citizens/businesses in Houston.
@HeightsSR: the Churches on Heights and 6th is supposed to be closing. The land is on the market.
I would not expect much more than a national or regional chain at that location. Pads in front of big boxes are generally too expensive for local interests to develop. But given that the average price of a single family resale in the Heights went up to $439k with average sales prices pushing 500k, I think it is fair game to wonder why the area is getting a McDonalds instead of something more in line with the demographics for the neighborhood. It is also fair game for residents to want something better as similar tracts of land are scarce in the area. Each time a Walmart, McDonalds or strip center goes in, there is less land available for more interesting things that people in the neighborhood want.
National chains are going to look at 10-minute drive time (the less sophisticated ones will use a 3-mile radius). That’s going to bring in the demographics of the Northside and even the 5th Ward and East End, which are not nearly as compelling for more upscale options but fit McD’s and other fast food quite nicely. Furthermore, the demographic services they use aren’t necessarily going to reflect absolute current statistics, as they are developed from Census information that lags by at least two years (the 2012 5-year ACS just became available and there’s no guarantee that it’s been incorporated into the services from the data companies). In an area which has changed as fast as say, Washington Ave corridor, the stats used may more reflect what it was 3-4 years ago.
“Each time a Walmart, McDonalds or strip center goes in, there is less land available for more interesting things that people in the neighborhood want”.
Okay–tell me, what do people in the neighborhood want? Mom and Pop retail? Drive around Houston and see just how little of it is around other than nail salons and taquerias and bars. Every neighborhood cannot support independent clothing stores, independent home furnishings stores, independent chef driven eateries, art galleries, etc…en masse. Hell, even Neiman Marcus could not even keep two mainline stores open here. The point is people want a lot of stuff but they are just not that many other people willing to sacrifice their lives to be retail entrepeneurs. Just as an example, look at Highland Village’s tenant mix–only 6 could arguably be called independent retailers (Valobra, Marmi, M Tossini, Joseph Shoes and Donald Pliner and Mecox as small non corporate chains). In other words, leave your cushy oil company jobs with benefits galore to a career where you give up most holidays, enjoy thin profit margins and depending on the type of store, deal with the great unwashed and all of their litany of complaints. Get back to me when your sea shell shop closes within a year.
hey ya’ll lets teleport back to the early 1900’s then you can have all the mom and pop shops you want, cheap living, and fresh organic everything! Yipeee!
Slightly off topic, why don’t we use metal frame construction for residential development? Seems making house frames out of termite food is not such a smart idea.
Do those companies really use census data to determine drive times and populations in x mile radius? It seems that’s missing so much of the story. I mean, forgot that it’s old data. Worse, it doesn’t tell you about what’s taking place and what looks to be happening. It would seem they’d try to get local experts in various submarkets to tell them what’s going on.
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Where we buy, it would look like crap ‘on paper’, but it does’t take a genius to see what’s happening in midtown/heights/montrose, and then to see what’s happening (and will continue to happen) east — 3rd ward, 5th ward, eado, east of 288 around riverside terrace, etc.
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I can see an unsophisticated investor only looking at ‘now’ data (or worse, census data that’s old), but I’d suspect some of these big companies are trained to look at forward looking data or at least engage in experts that might have a good opinion on forward looking trends.
I get a chuckle every time my Heights neighbors scream about Walmart or McDonalds. Old School claims that McDonalds cuts into space to build what people in the neighborhood actually want, ignoring completely that this is what those people actually want! Oh, sure, maybe he won’t set foot in the place, but all of his friends on the NextDoor sites will, even if they don’t admit it. That is why McDonalds spent the money to put it there…because these Heights residents eat there. Know what else they want? Those big houses and townhomes that people complain about. That is why they get built. People want them.
Nobody is screaming about McDonald’s. I think some people are disappointed by the presence of a fifth McDonald’s within five miles of the others. Take your trolling back to HAIF.
I would think that McDonald’s mostly just cares about visibility, accessibility, and traffic count. And indeed, this is a location where eastbound traffic on I-10 will see the Golden Arches on a tall sign (that obstructs the downtown view). The new feeder roads make it accessible to freeway traffic and a crossover through the median make it accessible to ingress/egress from Studemont. Studemont traffic is heavy enough that it probably doesn’t matter whether some fraction of drivers are food snobs; a lot of that traffic will be coming in from the suburbs on their way to or from work. Then, the cherry on top is that the pad site is effectively grocery-anchored and that the grocery store is drawing from residents of the Near Northside and 5th Ward neighborhoods.
There you have it. All the makings of a Mickey D’s. It’s really quite obvious that it would be developed into something like this when you put everything on paper like that.
Looks like it’s about time for a Stop the Studemont McDonald’s facebook page.
True story: when they took the bulldozer to the McD’s at the corner of Bissonnet and South Gessner, I had visions of it going away permanently, to be replaced by yet another after hours club, or a game room, or (more likely should they demo something to build from the ground up) a payday loan store. I was actually relieved when McD’s rebuilt that location.
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Why? Because unlike many businesses that open in the area, McD’s caters to -everyone-. Whether we admit it or not, we’ve all stopped at a McD’s at some point – probably in the last year- to get a quick, comforting, cheap burger. I’ve never been to a game room, or an after hours club, or even a payday loan store. I have no intention of going to any of these places, even though the business community seems to think everyone in my area does.
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I bring it up here because the complaints about McD’s on Studemont seem a bit misplaced. Say what you want about their food or their business model – we’ve all stopped there at least once in our lives. It’s a bit disingenuous to complain when they open a restaurant in your neighborhood.
Mel +1. Even as interest in putting new retail in the Heights has reached a fevered pitch (I know of a half dozen entrepreneurs who are looking for restaurant opportunities in the Heights), the reality is that easily converted properties are few and far between. And the City makes it incredibly difficult to repurpose buildings and retrofit smaller lots inside the Heights with the arbitrary parking ordinance/minimum set backs and a permitting process that is taking even the most diligent entrepreneurs over a year to just get a green light to build out a restaurant. So, when a prime parcel with plenty of room for parking and no set back issues comes open in the area, it is a loss to the neighborhood when it is developed for the benefit of people driving in from the burbs and to over saturate the area like Walmart has done. A Panera bread or something of that sort would have worked well at that location. There is no demand inside the Heights for cheap and crappy junk food. That is why Church’s on 6th and Heights is closing. Just look at the most recent entrants to the Heights restaurant scene: Height General Store, Sonoma (pricey wine bar), Torchy’s (price of 1 taco=price of McDonald’s value meal), Good Dog ($6-8 hot dogs, kale salad, craft beers, house made ketchup), Boulevard Coffee ($3-4 dollar coffee drinks, house made pastries and panini’s), Fat Cat Creamery (artisan small batch creamery), Liberty Kitchen and Colitvare (chef driven/farm to table Italian). Then you have new comers who are just breaking ground or in the planning stages: Foreign Correspondents/Hunkdory (farm to table Thai), Piatto (high end Italian), Yucatan Taco Stand (pricier Mexican), and the “El” (TexMex). If you look at this list and come to the conclusion that residents in the Heights want low end fast food, you are just not operating in the reality that is the current market in the Heights.
@ Old School: I looked at your list and am validated in my conclusion that the McDonald’s is not targeting the Heights. Not everything is about the Heights, even those things that are kinda sorta nearby.
And as somebody that has suffered financial hardship in their past and worked practically around the clock to fix things, let me just tell you something about a fast food value menu. It’ll fill you up for less money than just about any other prepared food and its available day and night. None of those trendy Heights restaurants can hold a candle to it. Even food from the grocery store doesn’t often work out quite so economically, unless you really really like eating beans and rice. (My preference isn’t McDonald’s and never has been, but that’s beside the point.) There are a whole lot more people going past the Heights on I-10 that exist the way that I did than there are that live in the Heights and exist the way you do. So have some empathy and just let it be. Your community and its fine dining options wouldn’t exist if those poor souls didn’t build it, maintain it, mow the grass, bus tables, et al.
Niche- well lucky for people on a tight budget that there is a McDonald’s on Wescott, and two McDonalds’ on Yale (both at 111 and 2022), and a McDonald’s on North Main, and a McDonald’s on Fulton, and a McDonald’s on Crosstimbers. So manyMcDonald’s! So many choices!
While I am at it, I am tired to people playing the “class” or “elitist” card anytime anyone (including me) has the audacity to want something a little better for our community than McDonald’s or Walmart. It’s a boring, uninformed and lazy tactic. I would never ever feed my kid McDonald’s, and it has nothing to do with class or elitism, it has to do with me wanting to fill my kid with wholesome goodness. I think all people want that for their kids. What is classist and elitist is assuming that all people don’t want the same for themselves or their children and that all people don’t want choices. (i.e., do we really need SEVEN (7!!!) McDonald’s???) And, I would never shop at Walmart because of its abysmal labor practices which actively oppresses and undermines the rights of lower income workers. You know, the same people I and others are accused of oppressing by not shopping at Walmart or wanting a seventh area McDonald’s.
I left the 611 club in montrose saturday night after mid night with my friend who lives in an apartmet on Richmond and she bitterly complained that the mcdonalds on westheimer was not open all night.